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If these are "doctors", I don't want them to treat me! ER is a different kind of health care!

ER doctors are not virologists or epidemiologists. So, to use their own example, you don't want a plumber to do your roof!

Apparently, they own a private Urgent Care center.

Yeah, and the clinic is in the remote Bakersfield, California, not yet affected by the epidemic [0] - many fail to notice that important fact!

[0]: https://kernpublichealth.com/covid-19_dashboard/

Also they seem to either intentionally or because of negligence take a sample of confirmed cases that has hard bias (general populations are excluded from eligibility -- you must have sometimes severe indications of infection to be eligible for the limited tests) to simply equate to a random sample of the state enough to conclude a state wide infection rate. Further they use those poor statistics to claim the mortality rate of covid-19 is similar or less than the flu.

Dr Daniel Erickson and Dr Artin Massihi have since been condemned by the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) and the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP):

https://www.aaem.org/resources/statements/joint-endorsed/phy...

The statement about fauci is also blatantly false. He did go out of his way to treat an (multiple?) ebola patient in 2015 for example

> Coronavirus lasts on plastics for 3 days, and we're all sheltering in place. Where'd you get your water bottles from? Costco. Where'd you get that plastic shovel from? Home Depot. Those are fomites and carries of disease... and if I swab things in your home, I would likely find COVID-19.

> When you go to Del Taco and you get a plastic bag or piece on your burrito from someone not wearing a mask who's just wiping their arm on your thing, do you think you're protected from COVID?

The point isn't that chance of infection goes to zero. Yes of course there are still transmission vectors, the point is to reduce the transmission rate. Even if there is a small chance of catching covid from your water bottles or dell taco, those chances are also reduced relative to no lockdown because the people who would be transmitting that virus to you are less also less likely to be sick.

> We wear masks in an acute setting to protect us. We're not wearing masks, why is that? 'Cuz we understand microbiology, we understand immunology, and we want strong immune systems. I don't want to hide in my home, develop a weak immune system, and come out and get diseased.

Then these guys are selfish, putting their own desire for health above the needs of their more vulnerable familty, friends, neighbors and fellow citizens.

> Is the flu less dangerous than COVID? Let's look at the death rates, no it's not. They're similar in prevalence and in death rate.

Covid outpaced the standard flu season's death total in less than half the time and did it in the face of the most draconian public health measures in a century (or ever depending on your location).

Also

"If people can go to Costco, then why can't they go to church".

Man may not live by bread alone, but bread will get you through times of no religion better than religion will get you through times of no bread.

Let's look at the death rates, no it's not. They're similar in prevalence and in death rate.

That statement alone is justification for removing their video as a public health hazard.

There's lots and lots of bad stuff there... The question is should youtube be censoring it?

if so, why this, and not others?

Videos like this not only spread false info, they do something more pernicious by distorting or distracting an already partially-numerate public from understanding growth rates and scale. Eg, the important thing about an outbreak is its second and third derivatives, rate of growth and rate of rate of growth.

Here they claim SARS-NCOV-2 is "similar in prevalance and death rate" to flu, somehow missing the fact that the former reached that point in one month and keeps going unless extensive social distancing, lockdowns and mask wearing is put in place.

I hate censorship, but I support censoring information sourced from the idiocracy (or malevolent foreign power as the case may be).

i am almost with you there, but i see youtube as a biased actor

also, when experts themselves (not these 2 guys) have come up with different recommendations - and cant agree with themselves, youtube should allow a free exchange of ideas.

they are free (and should) to add a notice that says that it is potentially false, etc.

Yes YouTube and Google appear to have deprioritized neutrality in recent years, which I think is a mistake for them.

But I also think this particular instance is not the right hill for people who care about that to die on. It’s a form of falsely or mistakenly crying wolf and will cost them credibility.

Yes. They should for others as well. If something is provably false and puts lives at risk, I’d say they have a moral obligation to “censor” it.

I'm still kind of conflicted on this particular case, but if someone yells "fire" in a crowded theater should the theater owner be able to kick them out? What if the fire alarm is going off, but a so-called "expert" is claiming that the fire alarm is just malfunctioning? Should the theater owner be able to silence them? Deep down I think I still believe that free speech should be protected even if it costs lives, but it's getting harder to hold onto this philosophy in recent years. Misinformation and propaganda is a plague that is nearly impossible to beat since it takes an order of magnitude more effort to refute a lie than to spread it. The only ways I can think of to solve this problem are either to restrict free speech or to spend huge resources on teaching the public critical thinking skills and the scientific method. The second option will take decades to work, if it's even possible at all.

lets take the fire example

now, what if the theatre owner has no way to know if there is a fire or not (lets assume he is locked in a room), some guy screams fire, a bunch of people run out, another guy says running out will make it worse, some should sit down, some should walk out, etc.

i am just making this up to tell that the theatre owner (youtube) simply has no way to tell. In this case, he is not even responsible for the theatre ( as youtube has argued in courts before)

That depends. How much liability and risk is Google taking on by being more hands-off? From this perspective, it's understandable why Google would wish to delegate medical judgments to a known institution, similar to how the rest of the video content industry delegates to the FCC.

I'm sure Google would like to have no risk and simply host pirated content like they used to.