In Second Edition of His Book Covid-19, California Physician Maintains Trump’s Approach to Pandemic Is Correct
President Trump’s approach to dealing with Covid-19 is on the right track, according to the author of Covid-19: A Physician’s Take on the Exaggerated Fear of the Coronavirus. The second edition of the book was released today.
Dr. Jeffrey I. Barke, a family physician based in Newport Beach, Calif., with more than 25 years of medical practice, writes that governmental reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic — shutting down businesses, curtailing organizations, stopping gatherings, shuttering schools, requiring face masks and urging social distancing — is causing an unnecessary self-inflicted wound to the U.S. economy and way of life.
The book’s first edition, released on Sept. 16, sold so quickly that a second edition, expanded by more than 40%, was rushed into production. The revised edition appears as the U.S. is experiencing a third wave of infections. Once again, the question of how best to respond to the epidemic tops the blogs, cable news shows and many newspaper columns, and was a key issue in the Presidential election.
In the second edition, Barke expands on the latest scientific studies to refute the common wisdom of how best to protect the population from the disease.
“There is no doubt that Covid-19 is a dangerous virus to the elderly and frail," Barke writes. “But the fact is that the overall reaction . . . has caused more harm than the virus itself.” He cites the economic and emotional turmoil caused by closing down businesses and schools as well as the almost complete shutdown of the country’s outpatient healthcare system. When the history of this pandemic is written, Barke predicts, it will show that our reaction to the virus was a great mistake. “If you are young and healthy, you have nothing to fear from the coronavirus except the fear-mongering from the media.”
Barke dismisses the value of wearing a typical protective mask, which he notes can filter no objects smaller than 3 microns in diameter. “A 0.12 micron Covid-19 virus particle will pass through an ordinary surgical mask . . . It is the equivalent of erecting a chain-link fence to keep out mosquitoes.”
He also notes that the expected final fatality rate of the Covid-19 pandemic will be around 0.2%, which “is in the ballpark of a bad influenza season.”
Barke adds, “A healthy society protects its most vulnerable members and isolates [only] the sick while allowing the healthy individuals to go about their lives.” Much of the U.S. has done the reverse by taking huge and intrusive steps to protect the healthy against the few who are sick.
His book’s foreword was written by Dennis Prager, the noted political commentator and radio and television talk show host. Barke has guested with Prager several times as well as with Larry Elder, another prominent radio personality who endorses the book in these words: “Great collection of eye-opening, thought-providing essays.”
In the book’s introduction, the publisher acknowledges that some of the author’s ideas are controversial. He urges readers to “keep an open mind” while considering Barke’s views and notes George Bernard Shaw’s famous admonition that “those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
Covid-19: A Physician’s Take on the Exaggerated Fear of the Coronavirus, 2nd Edition
The Americas Group, 520 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 204, Los Angeles CA 90049-3534 www.AmericasGroup.com
$9.95, paperback, 104 pages, 4 x 8 inches. Release Date: Nov. 9, 2020
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