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‘It’s Not Mostly COVID-19’: Dr. Marc Siegel Explains Texas Hospital Surge

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Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel contended Wednesday on Tucker Carlson Tonight that a majority of those accounting for the surge of hospitalizations in Texas are likely not COVID-19 cases.

As cases spike in younger people, Houston and other cities have reported being dangerously close to capacity, sparking Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbot to pull back on some of the state’s reopening measures.

“Texas officials say that every hospital patient with the coronavirus is being counted in their hospitalization total, even if they are getting treatment for something completely different,” said Fox News host Tucker Carlson as he introduced the segment. “It doesn’t seem honest. What’s going on?”

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After citing the “widely reported” facts, like the surge in cases in the south and west and several states reversing their reopenings, Siegel jumped to “what hasn’t been reported.”

“As the case counts are going up, the death rate remains under 700 for every 24 hours per day of new cases,” he said. “Why? Why is that? Because most of the people that are getting COVID-19 now are young people and the CDC just released a statistic that again was not reported that of the last 15,000 deaths from COVID-19, only 3.9% were under the ages of 44 years old. The same group that’s now spreading it in Miami or spreading it in Austin, Texas, or spreading it in Phoenix. That group has mild cases.”

“It’s been widely reported that the hospitalization rate has been going up, but it’s not reported that it’s not mostly COVID-19,” Dr. Siegel continued. “It’s actually the cases that were there because of the reopening, because they are now getting the elective surgeries they need – cancer operations, heart disease operations, hernia operations – they are filling the hospitals. Only COVID-19 is actually getting in the way of all of that because these mild cases require isolation.”

The Fox News medical contributor argued that young people “are bursting the bonds of all this” because of the depression and anxiety caused by “excessive lockdowns.”

“So tell me, let me ask a question. Why is that whole story not being reported as I’m trying to do?” he asked. “The answer is one word, Tucker. Politics. And I’m here to cut through the politics and bring you the science, to report on the science.” (RELATED: ‘I Think We Should Largely Be Left Free’: Rand Paul Sounds Off On Schools, Lockdowns, And Mandatory Masking)

“Everything that happens in an election year is about the election,” Carlson said.