Doctors Who Challenged Contra Costa Public Health Orders Still Fighting Back

Three John Muir Hospital physicians recently sent a letter to Contra Costa Public Health Doctor Dr. Chris Farnitano, challenging several crucial issues surrounding the state and county health officials’ handling the COVID-19 virus in California, and the data being manipulated to keep Californians in lockdown, California Globe reported in December.

Dr. Farnitano never responded to the doctors directly, and then John Muir Hospital let one of the doctors go and reprimanded the other two.

In an op ed for the Globe, Dr. Peter Mazelowski, one of the three doctors, explained his concerns: “I am highly critical of how the county is handling the rest of the community–specifically with regards to mandated closures of schools and businesses. These extreme policies do nothing to affect hospital census. In addition, we now know what was initially feared: closures of businesses and schools lead to immediate loss of livelihood which is followed imminently by loss of life.”

Dr. Mazelowski included the evidence against lockdowns and closures of schools and small businesses especially in the outdoor setting in his op ed, which bears repeating:

1. An early 2020 study out of China, scientists evaluated the mechanisms of transmission of COVID19 and identified 318 case clusters involving 1245 patients in 120 provinces. The ability to contract-trace in China is extraordinary. Of all these patients in this study of case clusters, only one person-to-person transmission was identified to have occurred in an outdoor setting. When they included another 6079 cases with “sufficient descriptions,” they did not find any further suspicious outdoor transmissions. Therefore, over 99.9% of COVID19 transmissions occurred in an indoor environment.
2. Shelter-In-Place (SIP) hypothetically would only aid in the initial pandemic wave of a naïve virus. The only reason to mandate such a policy would be to limit the initial surge in hospitalized patients due to a relatively unknown virus with limited treatment options.
3. Currently California finds themselves in a very aggressive SIP mandate by Governor Newsom but the state alone is the cause of the ENTIRE country’s current overall “rise” in COVID cases as per the Mercury News. SIP did not stop this current “wave” in California.
4. Masks were only intended to hypothetically combat disease transmission in an indoor environment when people could not socially distance. Masks are not intended to block outdoor transmission since outdoor transmission is rare –even without masks.
5. The CDC and pediatric societies have stated on numerous occasions that it is much safer for children to be in an in-person learning environment and that all schools should open.

Dr. Mazelowski followed up with the Globe and addressed last Thursday’s county COVID meeting. Contra Costa Supervisor Candace Anderson asked what came of the doctors’ “controversial questions.” Dr. Mazelowski reported that another supervisor said the doctors “were refuted… and actually had to back down.”

Dr. Mazelowski said no such thing happened. “Such an outright lie.”

This prompted another letter from doctors Pete Mazolewski MD, FACS, Brian Hopkins MD, and Michael deBoisblanc MD, FACS, who also refer to themselves as Contra Costa County residents, fathers and physicians.

In the latest letter, the doctors want answers they have not yet received:

“We write this letter in follow up to our previous letter dated December 10, 2020. In that letter we asked several questions regarding the following issues: PCR testing, and how the county was accounting for false positives?

Hospital census data including ICU capacity and how that was being interpreted vs previous years? What data do you have that supports closures of businesses and outdoor dining of restaurants?

Why is Contra Costa County still preventing our schools from opening?

Those questions were asked over a month ago and to date no private or public answer has been received. Supervisor John Gioa dismissed our questions as “not reflective of accurate, current thinking.” Today, we stand by our letter and its questions. During the last month, data continues to accumulate supporting our position that lockdowns imposed by the Contra Costa County are doing more harm than good. Contra Costa residents are suffering immensely.”

Dr. Peter Mazelowski spoke with the Globe in January. He said the doctors were concerned that their private letter to Contra Costa Public Health Doctor Farnitano asking legitimate questions, lead to Dr. Michael deBoisblanc being terminated by John Muir Hospital. Mazelowski rightfully wondered if this may be a government agency intimidating the hospital.

He said county health doctors also forced a Danville restaurant to shut down.

Mazelowski said hospitals being crowded this time of year is not unprecedented. He was frustrated that county public health doctors are misleading the people.

He also noted, “masks are are not important outside as they do not stop aerosolized viruses,” and “lockdowns clearly don’t work.”

In the letter, the three doctors are also critical of the PCR testing, which results in the high rate of false positives, as the Globe also reported in December. The doctors say:

“PCR testing has proven to be seriously flawed when used to track disease prevalence, and the number of false positive tests has contributed to fear, panic and unnecessary quarantine of many. The peer review of the original Corman-Drosten PCR paper points out the serious flaws and conflicts of interest in the original article describing the PCR test (Peter Borger Et al., 11/27/2020). This paper is the basis for the PCR test used in the United States. On January 21, 2021 the World Health Organization published direction on the interpretation of a positive PCR test. They now caution about calling a test “positive” without symptoms, a confirmatory test, and physician oversight. They also cite the serious problems with high cycle thresholds leading to a high number of false positives. In short, they agree with what we argued last month.

With this information, your COVID positive case numbers are highly suspect and using this data to determine which tier the population falls into has been, and continues to be, completely unreliable and arbitrary. Our recommendation is to move forward quickly with rapid antigen testing. These tests are less expensive, and more appropriately sensitive to detect people with active, contagious disease. As an example, the country of Austria recently halted PCR testing and realized a pronounced decrease in test positivity rate from 12% down to 0.4% when they switched to an antigen-based lateral flow test. The UK government estimated the false positive rate for this test to be approximately 0.32% under optimal conditions. This test is also felt by many to better reflect true potential infectiousness and onward transmission.”

Dr. Mazelowski said the harm being done to society with the lockdowns is immediate. He addressed the higher than usual number of suicides, and particularly in teens and children. Apparently, Dr. Michael deBoisblanc noticed a lot of suicides in the hospital, but instead of addressing this, Mazelowski said the hospital gave Dr. deBoisblanc a warning. “He should be a hero,” Dr. Mazelowski said. “Now the question is, ‘Are we doing harm?'”

“We swore the same oath as sheriffs, swore to the Constitution, and not to some rule by the governor, mayor or President,” Dr. Mazelowski said. “This hurts the community.”

The State of California COVID-19 website reports:

• 41,470,634 total Californians have been tested for COVID-19;
• 3,186,610 total “positive cases” are positive tests, not 3.1 million sick people;
• The state does not report the 38,284,024 negative tests in California. The state population is 40 million residents, so nearly the entire state has tested negative for COVID-19.

Gov. Newsom has tried to convince the public that only a zero risk standard is acceptable in dealing with COVID, but this is impossible with a virus. And not one California reporter has questioned him about it. Fortunately Drs. Mazelowski, deBoisblanc and Hopkins are asking all of the right questions.

Read their first letter here;

Read their second letter here: