Dr. Dan Erickson, one of the two doctors from Bakersfield, California, who were censored by YouTube after holding a press conference calling for an early end to the China virus lockdown in their state, says that attempts to censor the video backfired, causing the press conference to be distributed more widely.
Speaking at the America’s Frontline Doctors summit in Washington, D.C., Erickson said that the Google-owned video platform ultimately failed to stop the message of himself and his colleague, Artin Massihi.
“When we did our initial press conference it went to about 5 million and then they’d had enough, so they pulled it down and it went to Bitchute…. But it got shared so many times they were having trouble, because people had recorded it on all kinds of devices and were re-sharing.”
“Sometimes when they take it down, that negative attention causes a lot of positive movement … It got shared all over the place.”
“To Facebook’s credit, they left it on there, but YouTube said no.”
Views on the Facebook video went to 15 million, said Erickson.
“I almost think that the censorship caused an increased spread, because all different countries, heads of state were calling, wondering why we were taken down, and very interested in the topic at that point.”
Breitbart News reported on the censorship at the time:
YouTube has taken down a video of two doctors from Bakersfield, California, who held a press conference calling for the reopening of the country. According to the Google-owned video platform, the doctors “violated community guidelines.”
The doctors, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, operate out of an urgent care clinic in Bakersfield. Citing fatality statistics in California, the doctors argued that the Chinese virus has proven less deadly than anticipated.
“We have 39.5 million people, if we just take a basic calculation and extrapolate that out, that equates to about 4.7 million cases throughout the state of California,” said Dr. Erickson. “Which means this thing is widespread, that’s the good news. We’ve seen 1,227 deaths in the state of California with a possible incidents or prevalence of 4.7 million. That means you have a 0.03 chance of dying from COVID-19 in the state of California.”
Erickson concluded his remarks by calling on Democrats and Republicans to move past partisan “hate” to focus on problem-solving.
Are you an insider at Google, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
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