A fascinating five-hour hearing, convened on Capitol Hill last week by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis, featured some of the country’s leading physicians and scientists discussing the benefits and risks of Covid-19 vaccines; the government’s response to the pandemic; vaccine mandates; censorship of dissenting views; and alternative treatments for the disease.
Sen. Johnson, a critic of the government’s failure to treat Covid-19 outside of hospitals, billed the event as a “long-overdue second opinion.”
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Johnson in his opening remarks noted some startling facts. Despite lockdowns, masking and vaccine mandates, there have thus far been 889,000 Covid deaths in the United States. “That means the United States ranks 22nd in the world in deaths per million, at 2,575,” he said. By comparison, Sweden—castigated by the world press for not locking down—ranks 63rd in deaths per million, with 1,514.
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In addition, speaker after speaker called out public health leaders for keeping effective treatments beyond the reach of skilled doctors and their ill patients, leading to thousands dying for lack of treatment. Even the government distribution of FDA-approved monoclonal antibody infusion, universally regarded as the most effective frontline treatment, has currently been discontinued.
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Renowned cardiologist and internist Dr. Peter McCullough, author of 500 peer-reviewed articles in leading medical journals, elaborated on the theme of serious side effects experienced by some recipients of the vaccine. He became emotional when he cited papers presented to FDA vaccine advisory boards indicating that for young people, particularly boys, the risk of getting myocarditis from the vaccines is far greater than the risks from Covid-19.
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Dr. McCullough asked if anyone on the panel and in the audience “had personally witnessed censorship, intimidation or professional reprisal as a result of your advocacy for patients.”
A broad show of hands was his answer. “About 80 percent. I want this to be recorded,” Dr. McCullough said of his informal poll.
He himself has suffered an extreme form of retaliation by the medical establishment for challenging the official narrative. He was fired from his position as department head in a prestigious hospital and from his post as editor of an international medical journal. “I was stripped of almost every professional title I had,” he said.
McCullough, as well as many of the doctors and scientists on the panel said they have had their privileges suspended at the hospitals where they treat Covid patients. Almost all have been threatened with having their licenses revoked for prescribing ivermectin and allegedly “spreading misinformation” about the pandemic. Some are fighting lawsuits over charges of malpractice for their use of the drug.
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Dr. Risch, one of two Orthodox Jewish doctors on the panel, told the hearing that HCQ was cast aside by the FDA, which cited irrelevant studies of hospitalized patients who are past the early treatment stage. Dr. Risch had the FDA’s website information blown up on a chart for participants to see. The website made it clear that its statements advising that HCQ is not effective were based on studies that used the drug for later-stage Covid.
“Early Covid and later-stage Covid are two distinct diseases—the first is a flu, the second is pulmonary pneumonia,” said Dr. Risch. “They call for very different treatments and by now everyone knows this. Yet two years into the pandemic, the FDA’s advisories remain exactly the same.
Their information is “outright fraudulent,” Dr. Risch said, noting that “ten solid early treatment trials show HCQ reduced hospitalizations by 50 percent, and mortality by 75 percent—scientific proof of its efficacy.”
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“The question is why. Why have cheap, safe, and effective drugs been ignored in favor of those that don’t help?” he asked. “Why won’t they let doctors be doctors?” He described painful moments in the ICU when he was no longer permitted to practice medicine as his judgment and experience dictated, as he had done all his life. Barred from using medications that could save his patients’ lives, he could only watch as they struggled and began to decline.
“I was forced to stand by idly and watch them die,” he said, his voice breaking.
Dr. Marik has co-founded, with NY-based Dr. Pierre Kory and Dr. Fred Wagshul of Ohio, the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which is devoted to educating and promoting early treatment.
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Sen. Johnson elaborated on Dr. Kory’s point. “Symbolic of a government beholden to pharmaceutical interests are the drugs approved so far in this pandemic. As anyone can see, they are all new and high-priced, while inexpensive generics have been soundly rejected.”
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Pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole, CEO and medical director of Cole Diagnostics of Garden City, Idaho, said vaccinated people are not only getting the Omicron variant, but are getting it at a higher rate than the unvaccinated, especially if they received two or three shots.
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Dr. Bowden said her experience is that “a lot of hospitals won’t treat Covid patients, they won’t give them oxygen treatments, they won’t give steroids, won’t even give vitamins that can strengthen the patient’s system. People have become terrified of going to the hospital for good reason.”
“So I’ve kind of become the ER,” Dr. Bowden told the panel. “I’m giving high-dose IV steroids, I’m giving IV vitamin C…The bottom line is I am keeping people out of the hospital. I’ve kept 2000 people from being hospitalized and if you look at current statistics, twenty of those people should be dead—and they’re not.”
Despite her success, Bowden lost her privileges at Houston’s Methodist Hospital for espousing ivermectin.
(The article also touches on “Regulatory Capture“.)
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