One of the most stunning parts of this
pandemic has been the denial of basic science, and one of the most
shocking developments from that has been the attack on medical doctors
who try to set the record straight.
As reported by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — professor of health policy at
Stanford, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research
and coauthor of the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for
focused protection of the most vulnerable1
— a California bill is now threatening to strip doctors of their
medical licenses if they express medical views that the state does not
agree with.2
Bhattacharya’s Personal Battle
Bhattacharya has first-hand experience with this kind of witch hunt.
He was one of the first to investigate the prevalence of COVID-19 in
2020, and found that by April, the infection was already too prevalent
for lockdowns to have any possibility of stopping the spread.
Bhattacharya has called the COVID-19 lockdowns the “biggest public health mistake ever made,”3
stressing that the harms caused have been “absolutely catastrophically
devastating,” especially for children and the working class, worldwide.4
After Bhattacharya co-sponsored the Great Barrington Declaration, Dr.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and his former boss, now retired National
Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins, colluded behind the
scenes to quash the declaration from day 1.5
To that end, they set out to smear and destroy the reputations of
Bhattacharya and the other coauthors of the declaration. In one email,
Collins referred to the three highly credentialed and respected
scientists as “fringe epidemiologists” and called for a press “takedown”
of the trio.6,7,8,9 I detailed this treachery in “Authors of Barrington Declaration Speak Out.”
“Big tech outlets like Facebook and Google followed suit, suppressing our ideas, falsely deeming them ‘misinformation,’” Bhattacharya writes.10 “I
started getting calls from reporters asking me why I wanted to ‘let the
virus rip,’ when I had proposed nothing of the sort. I was the target
of racist attacks and death threats.
Despite the false, defamatory and sometimes
frightening attacks, we stood firm. And today many of our positions have
been amply vindicated. Yet the soul searching this episode should have
caused among public health officials has largely failed to occur.
Instead, the lesson seems to be: Dissent at your own risk.
I do not practice medicine — I am a professor
specializing in epidemiology and health policy at Stanford Medical
School. But many friends who do practice have told me how they have
censored their thoughts about COVID lockdowns, vaccines, and recommended
treatment to avoid the mob ...
This forced scientific groupthink — and the fear and
self-censorship they produce — are bad enough. So far, though, the risk
has been social and reputational. Now it could become literally
career-ending.”
Do You Want Your Doctor To Be Muzzled by the State?
California Assembly Bill 209811
— introduced by Assemblyman Evan Low, a Silicon Valley Democrat, and
coauthored by Assembly members Aguiar-Curry, Akilah Weber and Wicks, and
Sens. Pan and Wiener — designates “the dissemination or promotion of
misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus,
or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct” warranting “disciplinary
action” that could result in the loss of their medical license.
Misinformation or disinformation related to SARS-CoV-2 includes
“false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the
virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and
effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.” But as far as what might constitute
“misinformation” or “disinformation” is unclear and basically left open
for interpretation — by the state. As noted by Bhattacharya:12
“Doctors, fearing loss of their livelihoods, will
need to hew closely to the government line on COVID science and policy,
even if that line does not track the scientific evidence.
After all, until recently, top government science
bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci claimed that the idea that COVID came from a
Wuhan laboratory was a conspiracy theory, rather than a valid hypothesis
that should be open to discussion. The government’s track record on
discerning COVID truths is poor.
The bill claims that the spread of misinformation by
physicians about the COVID vaccines ‘has weakened public confidence and
placed lives at serious risk.’ But how significant is this problem in
reality? Over 83% of Californians over the age of 50 are fully
vaccinated (including the booster) ...
What is abundantly clear is that this bill represents
a chilling interference with the practice of medicine. The bill itself
is full of misinformation and a demonstration of what a disaster it
would be to have the legislature dictate the practice of medicine.”
The Shanghai Model
We don’t have to guess at what life might look like if this and other
bills like it are implemented, Bhattacharya warns. The drama currently
playing out in Shanghai offers a clear look into what can happen when
public health is dictated by the state rather than by qualified medical
professionals rooted in sound science.
“Shanghai is the model for the terrifying dangers of giving dictatorial powers to public health officials,” Bhattacharya writes.13 “The harrowing situation unfolding there is a testament to the folly of a virus containment strategy that relies on lockdown.
For two weeks, the Chinese government has locked
nearly 25 million people in their homes, forcibly separated children
from their parents, killed family pets, and limited access to food and
life-saving medical care — all to no avail. COVID cases are still
rising, yet the delusion of suppressing COVID persists.
In America, many of our officials still have not
abandoned their delusions about COVID and the exercise of power this
crisis has allowed. As the Shanghai debacle demonstrates, of all the
many terrible consequences of our public health response to COVID, the
stifling of dissenting scientific viewpoints by the state might be the
most dangerous.”
The Science Deniers Are in Power
As stressed by Bhattacharya, the California bill includes a number
falsehoods and fails to acknowledge basic science, starting with natural
immunity. High-quality studies have repeatedly shown that natural
immunity is equivalent or superior to the COVID shots. Were this bill to
pass, a California doctor could lose his license for taking a patient’s
COVID history into account when recommending the shot.
It also negates doctors’ ability to prescribe off-label drugs for the
treatment of COVID, even though this has been a common and
uncontroversial medical practice for many decades. It’s not uncommon for
a drug intended for one condition to be used off-label for another. But
for some reason, when it comes to COVID, this practice is now deemed
hazardous and unprofessional.
The bill also falsely asserts that the “safety and efficacy of COVID
vaccines have been confirmed through evaluation by the federal Food and
Drug Administration.” Anyone who has followed this circus over the past
year realizes that the FDA has completely ignored loud and clear warning
bells showing the shots are far from safe and nowhere near as effective
as initially claimed.
The bill also ignores the fact that the safety depends on the
individual patient’s medical history and current state of health. “For
example, there is an elevated risk of myocarditis in young men taking
the vaccine, especially with the booster,” Bhattacharya notes.14
Doctors have an ethical obligation to treat each patient as an
individual, and to ensure each patient receives the safest and best
care. Bill 2098 will turn doctors into government agents, leaving no one
to advocate for patients’ health.
“The false medical consensus enforced by AB 2098 will
lead doctors to censor themselves to avoid government sanction. And it
will be their patients, above all, who will be harmed by their silence,” Bhattacharya warns.
Californians, Vote NO on COVID Tyranny Bills
California Bill 2098 isn’t the only bill seeking to enshrine tyranny into law. Other pending California bills include:15
Senate Bill 1390,16 introduced by Sen. Pan, which seeks to criminalize “amplification of harmful content” on social media platforms. |
Assembly Bill 1797,17 introduced by Assembly member Weber, which calls for the creation of a centralized vaccination registry. |
Senate Bill 1464,18
introduced by Pan, which would strip state funding from any law
enforcement agency that “publicly announces that they will not follow,
or adopts a policy stating that they will not follow, a public health
order.”
Those funds would instead be reallocated to the county public health
department. Essentially, this bill would coerce sheriffs and police
officers to violate their conscience or the law, or both, in the name of
“public health policy.” |
Senate Bill 871,19
introduced by Pan, which would mandate all school children, ages 5 and
older, be “fully vaccinated” against COVID-19. The bill would also
repeal exceptions to mandatory hepatitis B vaccination to attend school,
and would remove the personal belief exemption against vaccination. |
Senate Bill 866,20
introduced by Wiener and Pan, which would authorize minors, 12 years
and older, to consent to vaccines without the consent of a parent or
guardian. |
Senate Bill 1479,21
introduced by Pan, which would expand “contagious, infectious, or
communicable disease testing and other public health mitigation efforts
to include prekindergarten, onsite after school programs, and child care
centers,” and require each school district, county office of education,
and charter school to create a COVID-19 testing plan, and report
testing data to State Department of Public Health. |
If you live in California, please review these bills and VOTE NO. In a
Substack article, Margaret Anna Alice, offers the following guidance to
Californians:22
“If you are a resident of California, please consider taking the additional step of contacting your respective senators and assembly members in addition to filling out the online portal. See Californians for Medical Freedom
for step-by-step instructions on how to contact your local legislators
as well as what to say if you decide to call (which is recommended).
The PERK website is also a very helpful way to track the hearing dates and status of these bills. In the comments, Donald Tipon has provided additional links for opposing AB2098 and AB1797 from A Voice for Choice Advocacy.”
Front Groups Marshal the Ignorant
Regulating the medical views a doctor can and cannot have is
dangerous in the extreme, and hopefully the Californians who are left to
vote in that state will quash such efforts. On the national level, we
must also stay vigilant against similar legislative proposals, and push
back against phony front groups that promote this kind of medical
tyranny.
This includes the No License for Disinformation23 (NLFD) group, which promotes the false information disseminated by the dark-money group known as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
As most now know, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a medical doctor in his
own right, has been the primary challenger of Fauci’s lies, and the
NLFD has been instructing individuals to report him to the Kentucky
Medical Board, with the aim of getting his medical license revoked.24
Just who are the NLFD?25
In November 2021, I wrote about the NLFD, pointing out that the bottom
of their website declared, “Created & Developed by
EverydayAmericanJoe.”26
At the time, I took a screenshot of it, in case they’d wise up and
change it. Good thing, because that notice has since been deleted.
And, no wonder, because it leads right back to the Biden White House.
EverydayAmericanJoe, created by a marketing strategist named Chris
Gilroy, was a website dedicated to supporting Joe Biden’s presidential
campaign. (That website has since been disabled.27)
According to his LinkedIn profile,28
Gilroy created EverydayAmericanJoe.com — “the largest Biden-Harris
grassroots website online” — as a freelance senior marketing consultant
and designer for the Biden campaign. Since 2007, he’s been the president
of The Microtechs LLC, an online marketing, web development and digital
advertising firm that produces custom websites and apps “that our
clients can manage themselves.”
Aside from the EverydayAmericanJoe clue, there’s no indication of who
is actually running the NLFD. It simply claims to be a “nonpartisan
grassroots coalition of Americans” whose goal it is to get state medical
boards to “protect the public” from medical professionals “who spread
medical disinformation.” In all likelihood, the NLFD is run by a
coalition of one — Gilroy himself — who is far from nonpartisan.
Not surprisingly, the NLFD has promoted and relied on the CCDH’s
fabricated “Disinformation Dozen” report, which has even been denounced
as biased and flawed in the extreme by Facebook.29
It’s quite clear that the CCDH exists to fabricate “evidence” that is
then used to destroy the opposition in order to control the
information, and the NLFD uses the CCDH’s fabrications as justification
to suppress First Amendment rights.30 Indeed, Biden himself has publicly promoted and relied on this dark money CCDH report.31
The point of all this is that the censorship is being authorized and
directed from the very highest level of our government, and there’s only
one reason for that. Democracy flourishes under free speech and dies
under censorship, and anyone who claims differently has an ulterior
motive for trying to confuse these simple truths.
In my view, the war against “misinformation” and “disinformation” is
nothing less than a covert war against the citizens of planet Earth.
It’s an attempt to seize power by controlling what people can know, and a
number of high-profile world leaders, past and present, have shown
their true colors.
Among them, former president Obama, who in April 2022 gave lectures
at the University of Chicago and Stanford, arguing for the regulation of
information — what people can and cannot view on social media and
elsewhere — “to protect democracy.”32
However, as noted by nonresident senior fellow of the American
Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), Mark Jamison,
“Such controls have done the opposite throughout history and would this
time too.”33
An Open War on the Public
We find ourselves in a situation where asking valid questions about
public health measures are equated to acts of domestic terrorism. It’s
unbelievable, yet here we are. Over the past two years, the rhetoric
used against those who question the sanity of using unscientific
pandemic countermeasures, such as face masks and lockdowns, or share
data showing that COVID-19 gene therapies are really bad public health
policy, has become increasingly violent.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a virologist who for years has been at the forefront
of promoting vaccines of all kinds, for example, has publicly called
for cyberwarfare assaults on American citizens who disagree with
official COVID narratives, and this vile rhetoric was published in the
prestigious science journal Nature, of all places.34
Doctors and nurses are now facing the untenable position of having to
choose between doing right by their patients and toeing the line of
totalitarianism. This simply cannot go on. It’s profoundly unhealthy and
dangerous in a multitude of ways.
While frustrating and intimidating, we must all be relentless in our
pursuit and sharing of the truth, and we must relentlessly demand our
elected representatives stand up for freedom of speech and other
Constitutional rights, including, and especially, the rights of medical
doctors to express their medical opinions.