Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi co-own a chain of urgent-care clinics. They don’t appear to have any significant epidemiological experience. And their claims about coronavirus have been widely debunked by experts, including a national physician and emergency-care group that issued a joint statement “emphatically” condemning their “reckless and untested musings.”

Nevertheless, the two California doctors have managed to become rising stars on Fox News for downplaying COVID-19’s severity. And they recently garnered another round of news coverage after inviting local media outlets to their office last week with an announcement that they had research that proved it was time to end the state’s shelter-in-place order. 

“Do we need to shelter in place?” Erickson said. “Our answer is emphatically no. Do we need businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no.”