Tech Giants Censor Pro-Hydroxychloroquine Video Promoted by Trump
A video pushing back against the mainstream media’s summary judgment against the use of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to fight the coronavirus was removed by Facebook and other tech giants not long after it was promoted by President Donald Trump.
Breitbart News reported Monday that its video of a group of doctors who held a news conference near the Supreme Court in Washington was removed from its Facebook page.
Facebook framed the removal as part of its policy of limiting “false information” about the coronavirus.
The video, which also included Republican Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, was subsequently yanked from YouTube and Twitter.
The group, America’s Frontline Doctors, says on what appears to be its website that “American life has fallen casualty to a massive disinformation campaign. We can speculate on how this has happened, and why it has continued, but the purpose of the inaugural White Coat Summit is to empower Americans to stop living in fear. If Americans continue to let so-called experts and media personalities make their decisions, the great American experiment of a Constitutional Republic with Representative Democracy, will cease.”
New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose inquired about the video and was told by Facebook spokesman Andy Stone that it was taken down “for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19.”
Yes, we removed it for sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) July 28, 2020
Stone did not detail what was false in the video.
As Mark recently wrote about newsworthiness: “A handful of times a year, we leave up content that would otherwise violate our policies if the public interest value outweighs the risk of harm.” It being from a publisher has zero to do with it.”
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) July 28, 2020
On Tuesday, Twitter suspended the account of the president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., because he shared the doctors’ video, according to his spokesman, Andrew Surabian.
BREAKING: @Twitter & @jack have suspended @DonaldJTrumpJr for posting a viral video of medical doctors talking about Hydroxychloroquine.
Big Tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America today & they’re continuing to engage in open election interference – full stop. pic.twitter.com/7dJbauq43O
— Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) July 28, 2020
Twitter claimed that it didn’t suspend the younger Trump but decided to “limit some account functionality.”
When the features “temporarily limited” are the abilities to tweet and retweet, what would you call that?
Anyone with a functioning brain would call it a suspension, despite the BS word games @Twitter is playing here. https://t.co/kt5S4Wvt3A
— Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) July 28, 2020
Although many in the media have attacked the use of the drug ever since Trump began to suggest it was an option for coronavirus patients, Dr. Harvey Risch, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine, recently said the controversy is absurd.
“This is a drug that’s been used for 65-plus years in billons of doses around the world that people take without even thinking about it. And suddenly it’s become dangerous? That’s ludicrous,” he said.
Although the battleground that is the world of medical studies has shown any number of plusses and minuses for the various drugs being suggested to fight COVID-19, a new study also showed that the drug could be very effective: Thirteen percent of patients treated with just hydroxychloroquine died compared with 26.4 percent not treated with the drug.
So what was said in the news conference that was so awful that the nation needed to be protected from hearing it?
According to a transcript at Rev.com, Dr. Stella Immanuel of Houston said she has treated 350 COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine and other drugs and has “not lost one. Not a diabetic, not a somebody with high blood pressure, not somebody who asthma, not an old person. We’ve not lost one patient.
“And on top of that, I’ve put myself, my staff, and many doctors that I know on hydroxychloroquine for prevention, because by the very mechanism of action, it works early and as a prophylaxis. We see patients, 10 to 15 COVID patients, every day. We give them breathing treatments. We only wear surgical mask. None of us has gotten sick. It works.”
According to the transcript, Immanuel lashed out at studies claiming the drug does not work.
“So if some fake science, some person sponsored by all these fake pharma companies comes out say, ‘We’ve done studies and they found out that it doesn’t work,’ I can tell you categorically it’s fixed science. I want to know who is sponsoring that study. I want to know who is behind it because there is no way I can treat 350 patients and counting and nobody is dead and they all did better.”
Immanuel added, “This virus has a cure. It is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc and Zithromax. I know you people want to talk about a mask. Hello? You don’t need mask. There is a cure.
“I know they don’t want to open schools. No, you don’t need people to be locked down. There is prevention and there is a cure. …
“I tell all of you doctors that are sitting down and watching Americans die. You’re like the good Nazi … the good one, the good Germans that watched Jews get killed and you did not speak up. If they come after me, they threaten me. They’ve threatened to … I mean, I’ve gotten all kinds of threats. Or they’re going to report me to the bots.
“I say, you know what? I don’t care.”
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