Dr. Perez and team are keeping normal clinic hours and seeing all patients including aesthetic treatments and procedures.   For select visit types a Telemedicine visit is an option through your patient portal.  We are not testing nor treating any COVID-19 patients at our clinic.  The health and well-being of our patients and staff has and will always be our top priority.  We are taking measures at the clinic to keep everyone safe. There’s an increased schedule of disinfection and all patients are required to wear a mask.  It is also our responsibility as healthcare providers to provide patient guidance and continue care of routine visits, follow-ups, vaccine schedules, and addressing other medical issues. 

We want to assure you that we have been keeping up with the latest developments and guidelines with trusted medical resources. With the outpouring of information from social media and news outlets, Dr. Perez will be updating information below to address concerns we’ve been encountering:

September 4th 2020

Dear patients,

The last 5 months we have been under a disproportionate amount of negative news. At the forefront of this avalanche of doomsday predictions, the COVID-19 pandemic is still center stage. My initial response was disbelief. I figured this was a slightly more aggressive flu-like syndrome and I figured it would soon pass. Then, medical conferences and many other events were cancelled and not soon after, we were in a mandatory stay home situation. I complied with all the imposed recommendations but continued to be skeptical since the preliminary data seemed to be premature and incomplete. Mortality rates looked augmented as we had no idea about the total number of infected people and the way we were facing the situation appeared to me draconian. Rarely in medicine is there a one for all prescription, and this was precisely what we are doing. As a good member of society, I have been abiding by the rules, although the science behind such decisions have seemed weak and questionable at best.

To my surprise everyone I speak with has become expert epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists. As I listen to them carefully, I can hear the same lines and rhetoric being repeated relentlessly in the different media outlets.  I have realized that those who are most passionate about mask wearing, staying home, and keeping kids at home from school, etc., are the most scared about acquiring the disease and losing loved ones. People are left with the impression that getting COVID-19 equals imminent death. And this makes sense, as there is a “death counter” along with terror feeds on every news channel, every university website, and every social media post.

Fast forward to now. Hundreds of businesses are suffering and even closing. People unemployed coming to me to treat depression and anxiety. Hundreds of patients dealing with obesity due to the “COVID Diet”. Kids depressed at home without being able to socialize and getting suboptimal education. Patients afraid to come in for the regular visits to manage their riskier underlying conditions. And I can go on and on, but you all already know. At this point, I have reached what I call “Pandemic Fatigue”. I no longer want to look at the news and I try to avoid speaking about it. I simply cannot wait for this to be over. But since this isn’t over and since we now have a lot more data not only from here but from around the entire world, I want to once more try to be a beacon of hope instead of another carrier of bad news. Here are the developments in the last month that have caught my attention. I will present them to you unbiased so that you can form your own opinion:

• According to the CDC indicators that tract Covid-19 like illnesses and the percentage of laboratory testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 have continued to decrease nationally since mid-July. The same is true for the number of weekly hospitalizations rates and mortality.
• Africa, a continent that for obvious reasons has countries that did close to nothing to contain the disease, has had a negligible impact. This has puzzled all experts. The same has been seen in some poor Asian nations. The going theory is that these countries had previous exposure to illnesses that left them with at least partial immunity against this novel virus.
• Sweden also did not do much to contain the virus. It banned gatherings of more than 50 people and asked those at risk to wear masks and stay home if desired. Life otherwise went on as usual. It saw a rapid increase in cases and deaths but also had a sudden fast and drastic fall in those metrics. They have about 560 deaths per million, while their neighbors who did implement more severe prevention and containment measures have about 60 deaths per million. The caveat is that their numbers are still actively and rapidly climbing while Sweden has reached a rate that has experts speculating that this nation has now achieved herd immunity. They have not had any economic impact.
• Peru has had one of the most thorough and severe responses on the planet to the pandemic. As soon as the first handful of cases was confirmed the military was mobilized to lock down the nation, both from air and land. There was a mandatory stay home order and social distancing and use of masks as well as curfews. Their mortality is now in the 840 per million and still climbing.
• The CDC released new data this week that I find fascinating: the current mortality rate in the U.S. is now estimated somewhere between 0.2 and 0.8%. This means that 99.2 to 99.8% of the infected patients did not die; here is where it gets interesting: only 6% of that 0.2-0.8% died exclusively from Covid-19. The remaining 94% had an average of 2.4 other serious co-morbidities.
• The number of deaths per 100,000 due to Coronary Heart Disease is 102.6 in the U.S. The number of deaths per 100,000 due to COVID-19 in Arizona is 69.
• The CDC has asked all State local officials to be prepared to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine to their populations by November 1^st, 2020.

All the state metrics are steadily improving.  I am optimistic in that perhaps we can see a visible light at the end of the tunnel and the worst is over.  I come from a country where stepping out of my house carried a much higher mortality rate than 0.2%. The Colombian cartels where in a full out battle against each other and the guerrillas kept a reign of terror. The country was impoverished, and the criminality rate was soaring.  I witnessed friends get kidnapped, tortured, or killed. I have been shot at, stabbed, and assaulted more than once. I have walked away from a building that seconds later was blown into pieces by bombs. And yet I got up every morning and went to school every day. I took care of my own safety and never expected the government or anyone else to come and protect me. Therefore, I may seem callused when talking about this subject.  Given my personal and professional experience my views can be different, but I can still respect and value yours. For me it is not about right or wrong, left or right. It is all a matter of perspective and risk tolerance. I truly, fully believe, that once more we will prevail, and this too shall pass.

Stay safe and healthy,

Arneyo Perez, M.D.