Two #California #Doctors Issue #MAJOR #Warning about “#ShelterInPlace” #Orders

by: Sara Middleton, staff writer | May 3, 2020

(NaturalHealth365) Is it finally time for Americans to get back to work? Two doctors from California certainly seem to think so. In a new and recently banned YouTube video, Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi share their professional opinions regarding California’s COVID-19 stay-at-home (“shelter in place”) orders.

The pair of docs, along with many other concerned citizens, believe that maintaining shelter-in-place policies for too long, and without a sensible plan for reopening the economy, will have shocking consequences that go well beyond hurting Americans’ livelihoods.

West coast physicians warn: Stay-at-home orders could actually harm our health by weaken immunity

In an April 22 interview with a local Californian news station, Dr. Erickson and Dr. Massihi of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, CA state that based on their data – which includes over 5,200 patients tested for COVID-19, or more than half of all the testing in their county), the chances of dying of COVID-19 in their community is less than one percent (about 0.03 percent, according to Dr. Erickson).

As a comparison, the seasonal flu has a reported fatality rate of 0.1 percent. Meanwhile, the tentative

“#ShelterInPlace” #CAUTION: How #SocialIsolation Changes the #Brain

by: Damon Hines, staff writer | March 31, 2020

(NaturalHealth365) As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, millions of people around the globe are forced to hunker down. Shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders have increasingly cut people off from society, and even in countries and cities where executive orders aren’t prohibiting public and private gatherings, “social distancing” is being practiced to mitigate the spread of the virus.

But beyond the inconvenience, boredom, and cabin fever commonly associated with long-term social isolation, what sort of effect does it have on people’s physical and mental health?

According to researchers at the California Institute of Technology, chronic social isolation transforms the brain by causing an overproduction of the neural chemical Tac2/nkB; in turn – the overproduction of the Tac2 gene expression and production of NkB throughout the brain causes increased aggression and fear. The build-up NkB has debilitating effects on mental health in mammals, and it has long been associated with depression and post-traumatic stress in humans.

And that’s just the beginning.

Understanding the physical and mental effects of long-term social isolation

Staying away from one another is not something that comes naturally to our species. We have hard-wired impulses for connection, especially during times of stress.

The short-term effects of social isolation have not been well-researched. It has been known to cause an increase in anxiety or depression “within days,” but it depends on the extent to which a person feels they have the resources to cope with being hunkered down and cut off from society.

Long periods of social isolation, on the other hand, are known to increase a variety of health problems, including heart disease, depression, dementia, and even premature death. In 2015, researchers at Brigham Young University determined that chronic social isolation increases the risk of