Dr Austin Baeth, the "Hitler Youth"-looking physician with UnityPoint in Des Moines, continues to make the rounds in the media and pushing his partisan quackery and pro-authoritarian bullshit for the Democrats.
As this blog has pointed out before, Dr Baeth is a member of the New Leaders Council, a commie front group that the media uses as a list of "safe" people to interview and get quotes from.
When he was in med school in Iowa City, he was a City Council liaison for the University of Iowa. Iowa City is a town entirely run by Leftists and Communists.
Dr Baeth has blogged about going to Africa, the Middle East, and India, and seeing malaria patients. Surely he has taken hydroxychloroquine or some quinine variation in his travels, and yet he never talks about this medicine as a treatment for COVID.
When Governor Kim Reynolds did not issue a lockdown order, this dickhead kept going to the news media pushing for one.
Now, Dr Baeth has been pushing a mask mandate on all Iowans, even though there are zero controlled studies showing the effectiveness of masks.
A more recent interview with Baeth was on CNN (archive link):
KEILER: as you're well aware, the governor has also rejected a mask mandate and closing the bars, which are considered quite the vector when it comes to spreading coronavirus. Why do you think this is?
DR. AUSTIN BAETH, PHYSICIAN, UNITYPOINT HEALTH DES MOINES: Why is she resisting these evidence-based measures? I don't know. I don't know how it makes public health sense. I don't know how it even makes political sense. I mean, that's probably the thing I'm personally struggling with the most.
The facts are clear. We know through science how to slow down this pandemic. And she isn't doing it. I don't know what it's going to take.
KEILAR: Do you think it will take the petition? Do you think the petition will work and sway her?
BAETH: So the petition I started, I think, about four months ago has not several thousand signatures. And I just started a petition for a statewide mask mandate. It has the signatures of hundreds of Iowa's physicians. We have several different physician groups in the state along with other health groups who are calling for this. And we have had a consensus and she is not listening to it. So, no, I don't maintain hope that our voices are going to be heard.
KEILAR: Right now -- and we are seeing -- look, we're seeing school districts in Iowa. Some of them are doing one thing when it comes to reopening. There is some disparity. Sioux City's public schools are still scheduled to resume in-person learning next week. Do you think that that's safe right now to do full in-person?
BAETH: So the governor has actually enacted a statewide mandate to return to school, at least 50 percent of the time, those localities who are not, who are actually doing that in defiance of the governor and that is going to plays out in the court.
You know, I think it depends on the local infection rates in each school district. And so I do think it's okay to have local control on this. The CDC has talked about the balancing the risks of keeping kids out of school and not having a social interaction.
What we know is this though. Going back to school will lead to more COVID-19 infections, older kids, ten and over, are shown to spread this as readily as adults. And things are bad now and I think it might only get much, much worse from here.
KEILAR: And to your point, that idea of looking specifically, how is one county doing and another county, because we know there is disparity, do you have confidence that when you look at some of these school districts that are in defiance and then when you look at the school districts that aren't, that they are following a model of being realistic about the conditions are coronavirus in their counties or is this just patchwork hodgepodge?
BAETH: Not only do we have a difference in the test positivity rate in the various counties, we have a difference of opinion of the severity of the disease itself, the severity of the pandemic and what is needed to get it done. We don't have a universal leadership that shows that when things are bad, you should do this, such as, close down schools or wear masks.
So, it's anybody's guess what any of these school districts are going to do because it depends on the superintendent, it depends on local officials.
[13:10:02]
KEILAR: I want to ask you about something that one of your Iowa senators has said. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst kind of backtracked on her baseless claims that U.S. coronavirus deaths are being overcounted. She had also thrown out a very serious charge against medical practitioners. That was essentially fraud, suggesting that they are inflating the numbers of coronavirus patients in order to make more money.
As a health care provider, I just wonder what you think about that.
BAETH: First of all, as you said, it's false. Physicians are not paid based on the diagnosis of their patients. They're paid based on the services they provide. Secondly, it is insulting. My colleagues and I risk our lives every single day when we come into the hospital to take care of the patients that we care about. We have had colleagues who have gotten sick. We have had colleagues across the country who have died. And while we are making these sacrifices, we are being accused of insurance fraud. I can't imagine a bigger insult.
Not only that it's dangerous, it's downplaying the severity of this pandemic and that gets breathing room for the deniers to act recklessly. And so those who are down playing this have blood on their hands.
Dr Austin Baeth is a total liar, but then he's on CNN trying to score political brownie points.
Dr Baeth, where is the evidence that mask usage slows down the transmission of viruses? There is no evidence in controlled studies.
The doctors have a consensus? No, all the commie doctors have a consensus! Anybody who doesn't agree with the Democrat doctors is probably considered a "conspiracy theorist".
Why is the media and the Left obsessed with the test numbers? In 2009, during H1N1, we quit testing once it was in a community. Same thing with 1968-1969 with H3N2.
At least Baeth mentions that tests don't have that good of an accuracy rate. This is from a lawsuit in the Western Division for the Northern District of Ohio. Renz, Calderaro et al vs Mike DeWine, Lance Himes:
Why are so many capitulating to whatever the CDC says? The CDC is a political entity full of nanny state Karens. The CDC is putting out guidelines on alternatives to Halloween (archive link).
Finally, Dr Baeth lies about the inflating of numbers of covid patients in order to make more money. The American Hospital Association indicated that as part of the CARES Act that there is a bonus (archive link).
But you know what we haven't heard from Dr Baeth in all of his media appearances?
We haven't heard anything from Dr Baeth about actual prevention or treatment.
Dr Baeth has never said anything that we can find about hydroxychloroquine, z-pak, & zinc.
Dr Baeth has never said anything that we can find about Ivermectin.
Dr Baeth has never said anything that we can find about budesonide through a nebulizer.
Dr Baeth has never said anything that we can find about taking or getting Vitamin D.
Dr Baeth has never said anything that we can find about improving our immunity systems or reducing our chances at having comorbidites such as obesity.
The only thing we hear out of this Democrat Commie's mouth is more authoritarianism such as mask mandates and shutting down the economic well-being of the state because mostly old people and those with comorbidities are dying, and then only 6% of those who died just had Covid. The other 94% had something else, or they were gunshot victims, car accident victims, suicides, etc.
