Dr David Samadi tackles the misinformation on COVID-19

There is a lot of misinformation around COVID-19 and people are being confused. Dr. David Samadi shared important information in his interview with Governor Huckabee.

Here are the video and the transcript of the first part of the interview.

What mixed-up messages are being spread about COVID-19?

Governor Huckabee – Dr. Samadi, there seems to be so much misinformation about COVID, how vulnerable we are, how serious it is, what we should do, and what we should not do. If you could just speak to the nation and have a prime time address, what would be the most important message you would give to the American people medically?

Dr. David Samadi – The biggest message I have for the American people is: “Do not let panic and fear get ahead of your life!”.

You know, governor, the DNA of any pandemic is being scared, being fearful. When you start getting some misinformation from some of the authorities, some of the doctors out there, that even magnifies the panic level and that is where we are. Do not forget that this disease is called the invisible enemy.

We did not have any idea about what was coming to us. Overnight we heard about this virus coming in. The Chinese government did not give us a lot of information about this virus. The human to human transmission was not really known. Now, we found out that the WHO along with the Chinese Government did not come forward and they did not give our country all the information they needed. So, we had to learn everything on our own. 

We found out that this virus has been around since August of last year. So, what that means is that probably millions of Americans may have antibodies. I have seen in my practice many patients that have come and said: “Look, I have no symptoms, but I have the antibodies, which is fine. That means that they have recovered well. 

The biggest news and the biggest decision that we made was the fact that the President of America, President Trump, did a travel ban against this virus. That saved millions and millions of Americans and people need to understand that the first rule of any infectious disease or virus is isolation and containment. That is what he did. Since then we have learned a lot. 

The information is controversial: You may get this virus from the surface, you may not get this virus from the surface. Asymptomatic people are not going to be contagious but just 24 hours after this statement WHO took it back and said that asymptomatic people are contagious. 

As a result of these mixed-messages people are confused and are losing their trust. It is our job, as someone who cares about this country and you know how much I care about America, is to really come forward and give the facts to the best of our knowledge. 

I want to tell the public that we have made huge progress, we are in a very good position, we have many treatment options which I am happy to talk to you about. Our hospitals are extremely equipped and I believe in the health system in America. We will win against this virus and we have come a long way. 

This virus is no longer invisible. We know exactly who is going after us. We know whom it targets and we are more than capable of taking care of it. 

Was the COVID-19 lockdown in America a good decision?

Governor Huckabee – We locked the economy down, we told people to stay at home. We were told that if not we were going to lose 2 or 3 million people to death. We did the lockdown and a horrible number of about 150.000 people lost their lives, but nowhere near the millions. Did we do the right thing? Did we do too much? Are we still doing too much in the light of what we now know?

Dr. David Samadi – We understand that the initial models were completely wrong. Remember that they came with the model that 2 million Americans are going to be in body-bags. The media ran with that and the scare in the country was tremendous. At that time, not knowing exactly what was coming to us, almost like a war overnight, we chose the lockdown as a way of flattening the curve.

Buy some time, make sure that the hospitals are equipped, nobody ever expected to hear news like this overnight. We should have gotten are ventilators in place, our doctors equipped, found out exactly what this virus is doing. So, the initial lockdown was basically to flatten the curve, to buy some time for the hospitals. And we did. Again, credit to the President. He was one of the few Presidents who were able to bring in the private sector and the public sector and put them together and rump on these ventilators, medications, the clinical studies that normally would have taken years.

As this went on, the narrative changed. Basically, we see that as the number of new cases got up, states go back to the lockdown, such as California. This does not make any sense. And if you look at my Twitter account I wrote: “Lockdown is not the cure for Coronavirus”. The reason is that you are gonna do more harm by keeping people at home. 

What are the negative effects of the lockdown?

First of all, we are finding out that when you are at home, the risk of passing the virus to your family or to your friends coming over, is high. You have air conditioning, so this virus can get everywhere as opposed to being outdoors.

The other fact is that anxiety, depression, psychological issues are very serious. Millions of people that have lost their savings are coming suicide. Children are being abused and on and on. Now, the risk of the lockdown is more than the virus. I think that we are overdoing this. These are the United States of America. We should be able to be true.

We can take care of this virus without paralyzing the country and harmony. That is what people need to know. Today, when we see the death rates coming all the way down and it is kind of flat, we need to mandate mass across the country. We should have done this in February instead of the lockdown. When people and the economy start to open up to go back to the lockdown is really devastating.

I do not think it is necessary.