Vindicating hydroxychloroquine

Don’t expect a mea cupla from Facebook, Twitter or Youtube for cancelling hydroxychloroquine in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, no matter how many people died and no matter how much research now says the drug saved lives.

A study released last week on treatment of severe Covid patients by medRxiv showed patients on ventilators had nearly a 300 percent better chance of surviving the virus when treated with hydroxy and zinc than those who skipped the regimen. The study was conducted by St. Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey on 255 Covid patients.

It’s yet another revelation of the wrongness of Big Tech and corporate media censorship of what’s turned out to be verifiable fact, and the reticence of those culture swaying oligarchies to admit when they’re wrong.

In the case of hydroxychloroquine, the memory of the video posted in July 2020 by a group known as the Front Line Doctors and then quickly banned from Big Tech sites and attacked by other media as conspiracy is still fresh in the minds of Americans. Real doctors who were treating Covid patients, whom no one in the Big Tech arena chose to listen to at the time, had been prescribing hydroxy for decades for various conditions and started using it early to treat Covid patients because of its symptoms’ similarities to other conditions. The press conference by the FLD in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in late July of last year went viral before Facebook, Youtube and Twitter “fact checked” it against information from government sources, including the World Health Organzation and the National Institutes of Health. 

The lynchpin however in the false debunking of the drug was, of course, that a video endorsement of it by one of the doctors was re-tweeted by President Trump. Like so many other assertions from the President later verified as fact, Big Tech and the powers of the liberal establishment – the Swamp – had to immediately discredit it less they bolster Trump’s standing in his re-election bid.

This was the litmus test for life-saving treatments during a pandemic by the powers-that-be – whether or not Trump or anyone from his administration endorsed it.

Meanwhile, doctors across the country were quietly continuing to use hydroxy to treat millions of patients under the radar because of the effectiveness of those treatments and because of their desire to avoid having their careers ruined by CNN and Facebook. Even professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health, Harvey Risch, penned a mostly ignored column in Newsweek advocating the widespread use of hydroxy early in Covid treatments because of its effectiveness and his chagrin at its neglect by his colleagues. But the tide was too strong by CNN and other media hacks against all things Trump to ever do more than regurgitate incomplete studies that tried to debunk hydroxy in favor of other far more expensive treatments. CNN anchors even pronounced hydroxy, which had been prescribed for 65 years for other ailments, as “killing people” in their rush to attack the President’s endorsement of it.

It all begs the question – how many people died because of reluctance among patients and doctors to use hydroxy, and how much of the panic of the pandemic – closed schools, business lockdowns, etc., – could have been avoided had the modern cultural oligarchy provided fair coverage?

         The post-game analysis of Covid-19 is only now beginning, and no doubt more will be revealed as to the degree to which Big Tech, corporate media and the government swamp worked to keep stoking the fears of Americans headed into the 2020 presidential election instead of delivering accurate, factual information. It takes time, but the real facts about things like Russian Collusion, Lafayette Square and the Wuhan lab eventually bubble to the surface.

         Thank God at least some doctors in America had the courage and tenacity to buck Cancel Culture, “follow the science” on hydroxychloroquine, and save lives in the process.

– Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.