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He thought the coronavirus was 'a fake crisis.' Then he contracted it and changed his mind.
Brian Hitchens said he thought that the coronavirus "is a fake crisis" that was "blown out of proportion" and "wasn't that serious."

Coronavirus skeptic has change of heart after testing positive: Crisis 'wasn't some made-up thing'
MAY 19, 202001:43
May 18, 2020, 12:32 PM EDT
By Janelle Griffith
A Florida man who thought the coronavirus was "a fake crisis" has changed his mind after he and his wife contracted COVID-19.

Brian Hitchens, a rideshare driver who lives in Jupiter, downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus in Facebook posts in March and April.

Brian HitchensBrian Hitchens.WPTV
"I'm honoring what our government says to do during this epidemic but I do not fear this virus because I know that my God is bigger than this Virus will ever be," he wrote in a post on April 2. "Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords."

In mid-April, Hitchens, 46, began documenting his and his wife's health on Facebook.

"Been home sick for over a week. Both my wife and I home sick," he wrote in a post on April 18. "I've got no energy and all I want to do is sleep."

A day later, Hitchens and his wife, Erin, were admitted to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, Hitchens said in a Facebook post.

Hitchens could not immediately be reached for comment Monday. The voicemail box for a number listed for him is full.

There have been at least 46,442 cases of the coronavirus in Florida, with 1,997 deaths, reported as of Monday morning, according to state health data.

In a lengthy post on May 12, Hitchens said that he was once among those who thought the coronavirus "is a fake crisis" that was "blown out of proportion" and "wasn't that serious."

That changed when he started to feel sick in April and stopped working, he wrote.

Hitchens said he "had just enough energy" to drive himself and his wife to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center on April 19, where they both tested positive for the virus.

"They admitted us right away and we both went to ICU," he wrote. "I started feeling better within a few days but my wife got worse to the point where they sedated her and put her on the ventilator."


Hitchens said he never experienced terrible aches and pains but felt weak and exhausted. He said he felt better on May 12, at which point he had been in the hospital for three weeks, and that he still had COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. He also said he had pneumonia in his lungs.




"As of today my wife is still sedated and on the ventilator with no signs of improving," Hitchens wrote. "There were a couple times were they tried to start weaning her off the ventilator but as soon as they've done that her oxygen level dropped and they had to put her back on the ventilator full time."

He said his wife of eight years has been sick "quite a few times" in the past and she always fought through. This time, he said, "I have come to accept that my wife may pass away."

Hitchens, who has seen his wife infrequently since they were hospitalized, said he was holding out hope she would recover.

"This thing is nothing to be messed with please listen to the authorities and heed the advice of the experts," he wrote. "We don't have to fear this and by heeding the advice doesn't mean that you fear it that means you're showing wisdom during this epidemic time."

The May 12 post, in which he implored people to "use wisdom," has been shared more than 500 times.

"Looking back I should have wore a mask in the beginning but I didn't and perhaps I'm paying the price for it now," he wrote. If he passed the virus on to his wife, he said, he knows that she and God forgive him.

"So just think about what I said and if you have to go out please use wisdom and don't be foolish like I was ... so the same thing won't happen to you like it happened to me and my wife," he wrote.

Hitchens had one thing to say in a Facebook post Monday to people who have sent him "nasty messages" saying he deserved to die: "'I AM NEGATIVE"! "PRAISE THE LORD!'"

Trump

Says everything in one simple image.

Doctors raise alarm about health effects of continued coronavirus shutdown: 'Mass casualty incident'

More than 600 doctors signed a letter Tuesday to end the "national shutdown" aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus, calling the widespread state orders keeping businesses closed and kids home from school a "mass casualty incident" with "exponentially growing health consequences."

"We are alarmed at what appears to be the lack of consideration for the future health of our patients," the doctors say in their letter. "The downstream health effects ... are being massively under-estimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error."

Link?

It may get deleted if I provide the link but here it is...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doctors...avirus-shutdown

Thank you

“She’s not a data scientist. She is somebody that has a degree in journalism communication and geography,” “She is not involved in collating any data, she does not have the expertise to do that.”

“She is also under active criminal charges in the state of Florida for cyberstalking and cyber sexual harassment,”

“I asked the Department of Health to explain to me how someone would be allowed to be charged with that and continue on.”

-Governor Ron DeSantis
Florida

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/...fficial-1284725

No, its the guy who has been right about things over the last 4 years while you were wrong.

None of this has anything to do with what conclusions you drew/claimed from the story we discussed. None of it.

You talked a bunch of shiite, got called out, and then simply found some ancillary article to post as a lamezz distraction from the fact that you have no legitimate response to the call-out in question.

"Squirrel!" doesn't work on me.

Thanks for playing; try again.
d00d... how long we been knowing each other?

Please don't waste time like this.
You're no younger than I. Can you really afford this?


pffft.

Some people can smell a rat long before they see it.

I am one of those people and it turns out I was right.

She is a "Resist"-er and lost a good job being political when she should have asked for help from someone who knew how to keep their politics and science separate.

NOBODY on this board is more wrong than you bro! NOBODY!

You and Arch on this OCD is wrong crap crack me up. It's like watching children proudly celebrate saying their ABCs right when they messed up so much you just couldn't bring yourself to tell them.

Being beat by cheaters, people who didn't follow the rules, people who lie constantly, and the unscrupulous fools who support that is not really being beat by anyone. Here's a buck for the both of you:




Go buy a clue.

From the looks, actions, and language of the 'Open it Up' protesters I've seen, mental health problems were a pre existing issue.

That is as delusional as listening to Biden's babble.
At least you are not trying to become the leader of the US.

You calling anyone delusional is just priceless!

Bet his public defender doesn't get him off. Just another nutjob who thinks he is more important than everyone else.

This seems to suggest that the death tool in most countries (including the US, but really every country) is higher than the official estimates. That is -- more coronavirus deaths are being missed, than other deaths are being mis-labeled as coronavirus deaths.

They list 52,300 excess deaths (compared to the average in previous years) as of April 18. The official tally on April 18 was 34,178. Of course, there are also reporting delays (of say 3-5 days), which means it might be better to compare with the official death tool as of, say April 23, which was 44,038.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/joe-concha-media-florida-desantis-new-york-cuomo

Florida should be the model that all states work off of going forward. New York is the model what not to do.

It shouldn't get deleted, but rather moved to PP.

GOP fronts ‘pro-Trump’ doctors to prescribe rapid reopening
By MICHAEL BIESECKER and JASON DEAREN yesterday

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican political operatives are recruiting “extremely pro-Trump” doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible, without waiting to meet safety benchmarks proposed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

The plan was discussed in a May 11 conference call with a senior staffer for the Trump reelection campaign organized by CNP Action, an affiliate of the GOP-aligned Council for National Policy. A leaked recording of the hourlong call was provided to The Associated Press by the Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive watchdog group.

CNP Action is part of the Save Our Country Coalition, an alliance of conservative think tanks and political committees formed in late April to end state lockdowns implemented in response to the pandemic. Other members of the coalition include the FreedomWorks Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council and Tea Party Patriots.

A resurgent economy is seen as critical to boosting President Donald Trump’s reelection hopes and has become a growing focus of the White House coronavirus task force led by Vice President Mike Pence.

Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, confirmed to AP that an effort to recruit doctors to publicly support the president is underway, but declined to say when the initiative would be rolled out.

“Anybody who joins one of our coalitions is vetted,” Murtaugh said Monday. “And so quite obviously, all of our coalitions espouse policies and say things that are, of course, exactly simpatico with what the president believes. ... The president has been outspoken about the fact that he wants to get the country back open as soon as possible.”

During an emergency such as the current pandemic, it’s important that the government provide consistent science-based information to the public, said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, has been among the most visible government experts warning that lifting lockdowns too quickly could lead to a spike in deaths.

El-Sadr said having doctors relay contradictory information on behalf of the president is “quite alarming.”

“I find it totally irresponsible to have physicians who are touting some information that’s not anchored in evidence and not anchored in science,” El-Sadr said. “What often creates confusion is the many voices that are out there, and many of those voices do have a political interest, which is the hugely dangerous situation we are at now.”

Murtaugh said the campaign is not concerned about contradicting government experts.

“Our job at the campaign is to reflect President Trump’s point of view,” Murtaugh said. “We are his campaign. There is no difference between us and him.”

On the May 11 call, Nancy Schulze, a GOP activist who is married to former Rep. Dick Schulze, R-Pa., said she had given the campaign a list of 27 doctors prepared to defend Trump’s reopening push.

“There is a coalition of doctors who are extremely pro-Trump that have been preparing and coming together for the war ahead in the campaign on health care,” Schulze said on the call. “And we have doctors that are … in the trenches, that are saying ‘It’s time to reopen.’”

The idea quickly gained support from Mercedes Schlapp, a Trump campaign senior adviser who previously served two years as the president’s director of strategic communications.

“Those are the types of guys that we should want to get out on TV and radio to help push out the message,” Schlapp said on the call.

“They’ve already been vetted. But they need to be put on the screens,” Schulze replied.

Schlapp’s husband agreed the president is getting criticized for not appearing to follow the advice of public health experts. Matt Schlapp is chairman of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference attended by conservative luminaries.

“The president’s going to get tagged by the fake news media as being irresponsible and not listening to doctors,” Matt Schlapp said on the call. “And so we have to gird his loins with a lot of other people. So I think what Nancy’s talking about … this is the critical juncture that we highlight them.”

Matt Schlapp told AP on Monday that he stood behind what he said on the leaked call.

“There is a big dynamic in the national media that will not give President Trump any credit,” he said. “It’s important to get the message out there that most people recover from corona. Most people are not in mortal danger with corona and that we can safely open up the economy.”

As several Republican governors moved last week to lift their state lockdowns, the National Ensemble Forecast used by the CDC to predict COVID-19 infections and deaths saw a corresponding increase. The CDC now forecasts the U.S. will exceed 100,000 deaths by June 1, a grim milestone that previously was not predicted to occur until late in the summer.

As of Tuesday, more than 1.5 million Americans had tested positive for COVID-19, with more than 91,000 deaths reported nationwide.

Experts, including Fauci, have said that is likely an undercount, with the true number being much higher. Meanwhile, Trump has suggested, without providing evidence, that the official death toll from the virus is being inflated.

Schulze, who was working to organize the pro-Trump doctors, did not respond to messages from AP seeking comment. But after the AP contacted the Trump campaign seeking comment for this story, a Washington public relations firm that frequently works for conservative groups distributed an open letter to Trump signed by more than 400 doctors calling the state coronavirus lockdowns a “mass casualty event” causing “millions of casualties” from alcoholism, homelessness, suicide and other causes.

“It is impossible to overstate the short, medium, and long-term harm to people’s health with a continued shutdown,” the letter said. “Losing a job is one of life’s most stressful events, and the effect on a person’s health is not lessened because it also has happened to 30 million other people. Keeping schools and universities closed is incalculably detrimental for children, teenagers, and young adults for decades to come.”

The first signature on the letter was Dr. Simone Gold, an emergency medicine specialist in Los Angeles who is listed as a member of the Save Our Country Coalition on the group’s website. She has recently appeared on conservative talk radio and podcast programs to advocate for the use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that Trump says he is taking because he believes it can prevent COVID-19 even though his own administration has warned it can have deadly side effects. Gold said she has prescribed the drug to two of her patients with good results.

The Food and Drug Administration warned health professionals last month that the drug should not be used to treat COVID-19 outside of hospital or research settings due to sometimes fatal side effects.

Gold told AP on Tuesday she started speaking out against shelter-in-place and other infection control measures because there was “no scientific basis that the average American should be concerned” about COVID-19. Like the president, she is advocating for a fast reopening, and argues that because the majority of deaths so far have been the elderly and people with preexisting conditions, younger people should be working.

Gold denied she was coordinating her efforts with Trump’s reelection campaign.

“But put this in there: I’m honored to be considered,” she said.

https://apnews.com/4ee1a3a8d631b454f645b2a8d9597de7

Cuomo blamed Trump for getting all the eldery killed by putting the covid positive in nursing homes ..Cuomo said that he followed Trump and his teams advice that told him to do it..yeah ok, I guess that Americas GOV.had no problem with the release of dangerous felons that were infected into society to rob, assault.murder and infect the innocent I dont think he can blame Trump for that but some how he will and the nutbags on the left will defend that phony liar.

So by calling them pro-Trump Doctors are you saying they happen to agree with the President's opinion on getting back to work?

OR

Are you insinuating 600 Doctors have thrown their patients under the bus and thrown their Hippocratic Oaths in the trash for political reasons?

OR

Does it simply not fit with the Liberal View on Corona in Everything Else?

I didn't write or report the details in the article or call them anything.

Generally speaking, can doctors be bought and paid for? Yes, happened all the time in medical device sales.

Doctors have differing opinions all the time. In fact, it's why second opinions are encouraged when making a major health decision. Where an issue arises is when you intentionally seek only the opinion that suits your agenda for personal gain.

I'm confident you understand this.

You did read the entire article, no?

“Anybody who joins one of our coalitions is vetted,” Murtaugh said Monday. “And so quite obviously, all of our coalitions espouse policies and say things that are, of course, exactly simpatico with what the president believes. ... The president has been outspoken about the fact that he wants to get the country back open as soon as possible.”

Just remember that "4 out of 5 Dentists believe that sugarless gum is better than gum that contains sugar"....

Moral of the story, you can have consensus, but there is always the contrarian to deal with.

That 5th dentist has beach house to pay for. Chew your Hubba Bubba and plenty of it!

Yes I read the article.

I am now curious when you will begin to judge which Doctors are pro DeWine in their advice to him and which are not. Are they bought and paid for? Are you biased?

In your vast medical knowledge, are you so sure those 600 Doctors who are trying to warn us of a Pandemic within a Pandemic which has been created by locking their patients down for longer than necessary is not worthy of consideration in EE due to the simple fact they agree with our President?

Florida Health Department manager told to delete coronavirus data is ousted

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/202...er-emails-show/

She wouldn't cook the books for the governor so she was fired.

j/c

‘Pro-Trump’ doctors sought to push rapid reopening of economy


Republican political operatives are recruiting sympathetic doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible, without waiting to meet safety benchmarks proposed by public health experts to help slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus...omy-coronavirus

Propagandists being sought to misinform the public. Taking applications now!

Lol.

I guess they could just put covid patients in nursing homes like Democratic Governors. Oh! The media does not report on that so it must not have happened.

From what I understand, she was asked to hide a column of data on the site temporarily until the data could be confirmed.

Or I guess someone could be told the virus was coming and do nothing about manufacturing PPE or manufacturing ventilators for two months. Then blame it on everyone else.

I remember all of those doctors Obama had speaking who were against the ACA... I'm sure they weren't vetted to ensure they would say the right things..

Fact is, the people are still doctors, they are "experts"... they just disagree with your "experts"... so need to find a sinister motive.

Yeah, that's why they haven't been speaking out until suddenly this administration is out recruiting them. So it's your assertion that these doctors they will find are more expert than those who have been running the major virus agencies and health organizations on the entire planet?

I have no idea what the hell happened to you.

Supposedly there were also unrelated criminal complaints against her.

You do realize that the haters that deny doctors and scientist that simply agree with Trump are dazzeled by the new wisdomful 17 year old Greta Thornberg lmao

You do realize it was The White House own team of experts that were disagreeing with Trump, right? The coronavirus team he appointed as the proper experts on the virus. But he can't stand to be disagreed with. So as usual, he'll stab anyone in the back who disagrees with him.

Here are the CDC Guidelines for Reopening that Trump was accused of "shelving and ignoring", take a look, tell me which ones we are in violation of.

I don't know how much time you spend on social media but Twitter has been full of doctors and other healthcare professionals speaking out in favor of opening businesses for a long time... Both sides of the issue are actually well-represented.. but if you rely on CNN, MSNBC, NYT, or WaPo, all of their articles seem to only favor one side... so I would understand why you don't realize there are a lot of people out there with different opinions.


I didn't sell my soul to the democratic party.

One side ... STAY shut in and do not go out under any circumstance...

Other side... it's over, Now go out and fire up that economy for November!

Reality... it is not over until it's over, and we had better take some precautions to protect ourselves and those at higher risk.

I told my buddy the other day that now is the time to be more diligent. The last few weeks have been very controlled. People have generally been compliant with health and safety regulations. As these regulations get loosened and people are getting ‘bored’ of the rules, the rest of us need to be more conscious of our self protection. The numbers will grow. Don’t get lazy and become a number.

I sold my soul to help keep my fellow Americans alive. I listen to things like Hopkins University, Columbia University and those who our nation has depended on for decades.

Of course you wish to make that political. It's not. Covid will kill a Republican just as fast as it will kill a Democrat.

And let me tell you, a lot of people are breaking those guidelines. Everywhere I go I witness it.