Dr. Alexander Rivkin, the founder of Westside Aesthetics, who specializes in non-surgical procedures, has decided to close his office until further notice and do consultations via Skype or FaceTime. “We are not making house calls because that really goes against the whole point of social distancing and shelter in place,” he says, noting that a house call potentially exposes the provider or the patient to the virus.

“The U.S. still has extremely limited testing for COVID-19 and we have yet to see the kind of organized, effective government measures that are curtailing the epidemic in China,” he says. “The federal response to this threat has been abysmal. As the leading global superpower, we should have implemented universal testing weeks ago and we should currently be running coronavirus isolation field hospitals.”

Rivkin believes the U.S. should have ramped up ventilator production two weeks ago, along with implementing a shelter-in-place policy. “Instead, we are on the same infection curve as Italy and headed for an overwhelmed medical system. Social distancing is our only hope right now to buy time as we race to develop a treatment and a vaccine.”

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