Tucker Carlson Touts Dubious, Flawed Coronavirus 'Study' From CA Urgent Care Owners
Fox host Tucker Carlson gives his fellow hosts a hand -- helping to make as many of their viewers as humanly possible infected with this deadly virus.
Fox has been carrying water for Dear Leader Trump from day one on the coronavirus, parroting his talking points downplaying the dangers and health risks from the virus, calling it a Democratic hoax until it finally became untenable to do so, pushing the same dangerous, untested drugs as Trump, and attacking blue state governors for their response to the emergency.
Despite the fact that the Murdochs have expressed serious concerns over their liability for putting their viewers lives at risk, Fox is continuing to do just that day in and day out.
Case in point, this Monday, primetime host Tucker Carlson started off his show with an attack on blue state governors for the lockdowns, dismissed the evidence that they've "flattened the curve" during the pandemic, and pushed a dubious "study" from a pair or ER doctors turned urgent care owners that's gone viral in right-wing circles this week: Cue the debunking: Two Bakersfield doctors go viral with dubious COVID test conclusions:
They dressed in scrubs. They sounded scientific. And last week’s message from two Bakersfield doctors was exactly what many stuck-at-home Americans wanted to hear: COVID-19 is no worse than influenza, its death rates are low and we should all go back to work and school.
Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, who own urgent care centers in the region, had called a press conference to release their conclusions about the results of 5,213 COVID-19 tests they had conducted at their centers and testing site. They claimed the results showed that the virus had spread further in the area, undetected, and thus wasn’t all that dangerous.
But public health experts were quick to debunk the doctors’ findings as misguided and riddled with statistical errors — and an example of the kind of misleading information they are forced to waste precious time disputing. [...]
In a rare statement late today, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine declared they “emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Messihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.”
As the article explained, these two have a financial stake in ending the lockdowns:
But already the Bakersfield doctors — who tout their support of President Donald Trump and refuse to wear masks in public — had become heroes on social platforms and conservative media outlets, with some commenters calling them “brave.” Others who support continuing to shelter-in-place described the doctors as self-promoters whose chain of urgent care centers would benefit from reopening. Non-COVID medical visits have plummeted during the pandemic, endangering the practices of many doctors.
Somehow Carlson failed to mention any of that during his rant above. Here's more from Media Matters where he lies about the benefit from the lockdowns and downplays just how lethal this virus is:
The virus just isn't nearly as deadly as we thought it was, all of us, including on this show. Everybody thought it was, but it turned out not to be.
Hospitals never collapsed. Outside of a tiny number of places, they never came close to collapsing, at least not from an influx of infected patients.
Instead, something remarkable happened, something amazing, really without parallel in American history. The opposite happened. Thanks to the lockdowns, hospitals have begun to collapse.
Why? From a lack of patients. Politicians who couldn't pass ninth grade biology decided that practicing physicians should not be allowed to calculate the risk of transmitting the virus. They're just not qualified -- unlike us.
So, these politicians banned so-called "nonessential" procedures, many of which are, in fact, essential. The results of this policy? In many hospitals, entire floors have been mothballed.
Doctors and nurses are being furloughed in the middle of a pandemic. This is insanity. It weakens our healthcare system. Its effects will last for many years. That's all from the lockdown.