BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Bakersfield doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi are now in the spotlight on the national stage, following their comments made about shelter-in-place orders that have been seen across the country.
23ABC News aired their press conference Wednesday, which has garnered over 5 million views on YouTube, before the media company removed it, stating "inappropriate content" a reason.
In the video, Erickson and Massihi state that healthy people don't need to shelter-in-place anymore based on data they extrapolated from Kern County's COVID-19 testing.
The video gained recognition from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who tweeted 23ABC's video of the doctors, stating "docs make a good post."
Docs make good points https://t.co/WeXuZpMghY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2020
On Monday, Erickson told 23ABC News that he was not expecting national attention and shared his thoughts Musk's shout-out.
"To have someone that in my opinion is brilliant and one of the top minds in the country and in the world give you some affirmation is powerful," Erickson said.
But, not all the feedback has been in favor of Erkcson's viewpoints, including New York emergency physician Stuart Weiss.
"The reason why I think it's dangerous is because they are advocating that we should be quickly lifting social distancing and that's just not correct. While the virus is still out there, here in New York state we're still seeing hundreds of people lose their lives," Weiss said Monday.
Other emergency physician's like Palm Springs M.D. Lawrence Heiskell support Erickson's view that people with compromised immune systems should be quarantining, but healthy people should not.
"Quarantine by definition is to sequester people who are sick. You don't quarantine well people. You let them be exposed in the general public so they can acquire immunity."
Erickson says he has scheduled meetings with various California senators to discuss his data and beliefs on Tuesday.
