GOP Senator Rips YouTube After It Takes Down Videos of Doctor's Senate Testimony on COVID Drugs
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has slammed Google-owned YouTube for censoring two videos from a Senate hearing because they contained expert testimony about coronavirus therapeutics that seemingly did not align with establishment views on treating the disease.
In an opinion piece published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Johnson lashed out at Big Tech’s continued stranglehold on free speech, specifically with regard to Google’s censorship of videos from an actual Senate committee hearing.
Apparently, the company deleted the content because it contained testimony from a doctor who challenged conventional thinking about the coronavirus.
“Google’s YouTube has ratcheted up censorship to a new level by removing two videos from a U.S. Senate committee. They were from a Dec. 8 Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing on early treatment of Covid-19. One was a 30-minute summary; the other was the opening statement of critical-care specialist Pierre Kory,” Johnson wrote for the outlet.
Johnson noted that Kory’s testimony at a hearing in May “helped doctors rethink treatment protocols and saved lives.”
In December, Kory again appeared before the Senate and asked the National Institutes of Health to review its guidance manuscript from August which recommended against the use of an anti-parasitic treatment for COVID-19 called ivermectin, according to Johnson.
Kory apparently had the backing of GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky in his recommendation. Paul is, of course, a doctor himself.
The NIH did change its guidance to “neutral” with regard to ivermectin on Jan. 14, but then something happened to Kory’s viral testimony about the treatment: It was banished from YouTube.
“Before being removed from YouTube and other websites, Dr. Kory’s opening statement had been viewed by more than eight million people. Unfortunately, government health agencies don’t share that interest in early treatment,” Johnson said.
“A year into the pandemic, NIH treatment guidelines for Covid patients are to go home, isolate yourself and do nothing other than monitor your illness.”
Calling the shunning of alternative views for COVID-19 treatments a “closed-minded approach [that] represents a dark chapter in the history of medicine and journalism,” Johnson ripped into YouTube.
“The censors at YouTube have decided for all of us that the American public shouldn’t be able to hear what senators heard. Apparently they are smarter than medical doctors who have devoted their lives to science and use their skills to save lives,” he said.
“They have decided there is only one medical viewpoint allowed, and it is the viewpoint dictated by government agencies. Government-sanctioned censorship of ideas and speech should frighten us all.”
Johnson later joined Fox News on Thursday to expound on his criticism of Big Tech, the corporate media and the broader censorship of doctors.
We’ve held two hearings on early treatment of #Covid_19.
The silencing of this information by @YouTube and others is a travesty.
These frontline doctors have the courage and compassion to actually treat patients vs. NIH guidelines which basically say go home, do nothing. pic.twitter.com/G8V4AlVVp3
— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) February 4, 2021
Big Tech has proven throughout this last year that its faceless human fact-checkers are not above telling government officials and accounts what they can and cannot say on Silicon Valley’s platforms. Naturally, any health information that appears to be not from approved sources is deleted as well.
We, of course, all know the extent of Big Tech’s censorship. Former President Donald Trump faced daily censorship during his final days in office before he was summarily de-platformed from all establishment social media outlets.
But before Twitter was banning the most powerful man in the world for political speech in 2020, it was banning medical talk from mainstream and credentialed physicians.
Just look at doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, the owners of urgent care facilities in and around Bakersfield, California, who had their opinions removed from social media because they weren’t popular.
Last April, the two doctors administered 5,200 COVID-19 tests in their county and opined that the coronavirus didn’t merit the Golden State’s heavy-handed lockdowns.
They shared that information at a news conference that went viral on YouTube, and influential billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk helped the video reach even more people when he tweeted it.
Docs make good points https://t.co/WeXuZpMghY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2020
Don’t bother clicking Musk’s YouTube link. The video from Erickson and Massihi is replaced by a warning that states: “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”
The videos from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing have met the same fate. YouTube’s censorship of the findings of qualified doctors has continued into a new year.
Apparently, unless your name is Anthony Fauci, your opinions will be swiftly shut down by those whose jobs are to delete content with which they apparently disagree, unless those opinions are pre-approved by whatever system Google uses to control the flow of information.
One would assume that during a public health crisis where much has yet to be learned about a novel illness, all opinions from qualified individuals would be welcome — especially in a society that thinks of itself as free.
But debate is now dead in this country, as a handful of leftist billionaires have consolidated all mediums for discourse. Those same people are working in lockstep with the Democratic Party, as you probably are aware.
The same people who don’t want some political opinions on their platforms are ensuring that other people don’t have access to more than one perspective on the illness that has made life so challenging now for almost a year for all of us.
But America is no longer run by voters or the politicians they elect. It’s becoming clear that the country is run by a handful of Democrats, unelected government health officials and the tech giants who have spent years courting favor with them.
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