Does the corona scare have a design? Are fear-mongers magnifying the threat that Covid-19 poses to humankind? Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi of California’s Accelerated Urgent Care tend to answer in the affirmative.

At a press conference on April 22, they made claims that shook the global public health establishment that has been frightening the world for quite some time. They alleged that physicians were being pressured to add Covid-19 to death certificates as well as diagnostic lists even without any evidence of the coronavirus infection.

“They say, ‘You know, it’s interesting. When I’m writing up my death report I’m being pressured to add Covid,’” Erickson said. “Why is that? Why are we being pressured to add Covid? To maybe increase the numbers, and make it look a little bit worse than it is?”

The video of the press conference, posted on YouTube, went viral, getting five million views. The billionaire Elon Musk supported it. But such is the influence and reach, if not tyranny, of the public health establishment that YouTube removed it. So much for free speech in the US, the ‘land of the free.’

“We quickly remove flagged content that violates our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local health authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance,” YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said in a statement.

What, pray, is the sanctity of ‘guidance’ that the authorities keep offering? The World Health Organization, the most haloed of public health bodies, is actually headed by a lackey of China’s. Its ‘guidance’ has brought the world to grief, for the WHO’s criminal incompetence and egregious credulity (in believing Beijing’s version of the disease) led to the death of lakhs of people and shut down of the global economy.

Other authorities also keep changing their guidance. For example, masks were regarded as useless; now wearing them is seen as an anti-corona measure.

Furthermore, the allegation the doctor duo made is not groundless. On April 8, Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Minn., a physician in Minnesota, told the Fox News hold Laura Ingraham something similar. He said the Medicare patients listed as corona infected get three times as much money if they need a ventilator.

Jensen wrote on his Facebook post on April 15: “How can anyone not believe that increasing the number of Covid-19 deaths may create an avenue for states to receive a larger portion of federal dollars. Already some states are complaining that they are not getting enough of the CARES Act dollars because they are having significantly more proportional Covid-19 deaths.”

Again, on April 19, Jensen said, “Hospital administrators might well want to see Covid-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it’s a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for—if they’re Medicare—typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. But if it’s Covid-19 pneumonia, then it’s $13,000, and if that Covid-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000.”

Lest this be dismissed as typical conservative-Republican-Fox conspiracy theory, we must add that USA Today fact-checked the claim. Its verdict: “We rate the claim that hospitals get paid more if patients are listed as Covid-19 and on ventilators as TRUE.”

This may be the answer to the question Erickson during his press conference: “We aren’t pressured to test for flu. Why are we being pressured to add Covid?”

The California doctors also raised pertinent questions about the lockdown in the state. “[Y]ou have a 0.03% chance of dying from COVID in the state of California,” said Erickson. “Does that necessitate sheltering in place? Does that necessitate shutting down medical systems? Does that necessitate people being out of work?”

The Covid-19 fatality rate also seems to be much lower than earlier claimed by ‘experts.’ The World Health Organization’s website says that “the data we have so far indicate that the crude mortality ratio (the number of reported deaths divided by the reported cases) is between 3-4 per cent.”

The operative part here is “the reported cases.” But the real denominator is much bigger, for much more infected people are asymptomatic. In India, the number is 80 per cent, as per the India Council of Medical Research.

Elsewhere too, the numbers are much higher. The New York Times reported on April 30 (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/antibody-test-coronavirus.html">https://www.nytimes.com/article/antibody-test-coronavirus.html</a>): “Widespread antibody testing may also give us a clearer picture of the scope of the disease. Results from a random testing of 3,000 people in New York City recently suggested that as many as one in five residents—or about 2.7 million people—might have encountered the disease without realizing it. When describing the results, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that because the rate of infection might be far higher than initially thought, the death rate of the virus might be far lower than we thought.”

Maybe as low as 0.1 per cent, that of flu. In the US, the total corona positive cases are 1.1 million, whereas the new study quoted by NYT suggests that in New York alone 2.7 million people got the virus, which was overcome by the antibodies.

The two California doctors, therefore, were not spreading lies. Yet, they were silence by Big Tech—YouTube. The health establishment, whose canon regards Covid-19 as apocalyptic, came down on them. The American College of Emergency Physicians and American Academy of Emergency Medicine called their claims as “reckless and untested musings” that “are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding Covid-19.”

The truth is that the duo’s claims are inconsistent with the current dogma of the science establishment. Science and dogma are as different as chalk and cheese, but when the science establishment starts starting regarding itself as infallible, it also starts behaving like the medieval church—brooking no divergent views, indeed persecuting anybody holding them. Therefore, Erickson and Massihi are not seen as those holding non-mainstream views; they are treated instead as heretics endangering the faith..