“I Have to Plead for Tests”: NYC ER Doctor Warns “1000s of US Cases by Next Week”

Dr. Matt McCarthy, an infectious disease physician at an NYC Emergency Room, and author of the best-selling book “Superbugs”, unleashed a storm of man-on-the-ground doom-speak about the Covid-19 virus spread across the US this morning on CNBC.

“Before I came here this morning, I was in the emergency room seeing patients,” he said on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

“I still do not have a rapid diagnostic test available to me.”

Alongside, former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, McCarthy pointed to problems identified with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) diagnostic tests for the virus. The CDC sent test kits earlier in the outbreak to public health labs around the country, but those kits were problematic and potentially inaccurate, CDC officials have since said.

McCarthy, a staff physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, says he still does not have access to test kits.

“I’m here to tell you, right now, at one of the busiest hospitals in the country, I don’t have it at my finger tips,” he said.

“I still have to make my case, plead to test people. This is not good. We know that there are 88 cases in the United States. There are going to be hundreds by middle of week. There’s going to be thousands by next week. And this is a testing issue.”

In contrast to McCarthy’s “in the field” analysis, TV Doctor Drew Pinsky claims it’s “overblown press created hysteria.”

David Drew Pinsky, otherwise known as ‘Dr Drew’, has slammed the media for over-hyping the coronavirus, leading people the world over to panic buy provisions and medical supplies.

Speaking with Daily Blast Live, Dr Drew said

“Let me frame it this way: we have in the United States 24 million cases of flu-like illness, 180,000 hospitalizations, 16,000 dead from influenza,”

“Why is that not being reported? Why isn’t the message: get your flu shot?” he added.

In a previous appearance on the show, Dr Drew urged that “We are not overreacting; the press is overreacting, and it makes me furious.”

“The press should not be reporting medical stories as though they know how to report it,” he continued.

So, who do you believe, the TV doctor or the NYC ER doctor who wrote the book on epidemics?

Republished from ZeroHedge.com with permission