Let’s check in on WorldNetDaily’s dubious doctors and other types to see how they’re dealing with the coronavirus pandemic in terms of questionable cures and bad takes.
Andy Schlafly — who is a lawyer, not a doctor — devoted his June 30 column to praising the dubious benefits of hydroxychloroquine and denouncing its allegedly limited availability to coronavirus patients as a Deep State conspiracy:
As the media sound alarm bells about a possible second wave of COVID, we should firmly reject another nationwide economic shutdown enforced by stay-home orders and mandatory masks. Republicans need an approach that gets Americans back to attending church, Trump rallies and in-person voting at local polling places.
Forcing everyone to wear a mask, even while jogging or boating, will do nothing to conquer the virus or restore public confidence. Sending the expensive new intravenous drug Remdesivir to hospitals, for COVID patients on their deathbed, will do nothing to calm public fears.
President Trump should turn instead to the approach liberals fear and oppose the most: making hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) widely available to the American people. Trump may not realize that the medication he took in May to successfully protect himself against COVID-19 is still inaccessible to most Americans.
[…]Indeed, most world leaders have taken HCQ as a prophylaxis to protect against COVID-19, according to the president of El Salvador as quoted by CNN. And millions of ordinary folks in many foreign countries now have early access to this medication, which is helping conquer the virus outside of the United States.
[…]Peter Navarro observed how the Deep State has been sabotaging Trump’s reelection by blocking HCQ. He told the New York Times that this “is a Deep State blindside by bureaucrats who hate the administration they work for more than they’re concerned about saving American lives.”
It’s time for others in the Trump administration to admit that Navarro was right, and make HCQ available immediately to all the American people, not just the well-connected few. Allowing a climate of fear to continue whereby Americans will not even attend church, let alone vote, is unhealthy for our country and unfair to Trump.
WND’s chief dubious doc, Jane Orient, was still hyping hydroxychloroquine in her July 6 column, conspiratorially suggesting that randomized controlled trials on the effectiveness of the drug were deliberately sabotaged: “They can be designed to fail, as by giving treatment too late or in an overdose that increases death or adverse effects, or they can fabricate data. Studies that had to be retracted were used to stop further research and treatment with HCQ.”
Orient also tried to fearmonger about a possible vaccine, as she is wont to do: “Trials race on, but they are tainted with ethical questions. For example, demonstrators in South Africa carried signs saying ‘We are NOT guinea pigs’ and ‘Gates, we are not your lab rats.’ The African Centre for Biodiversity raised many concerns about the vaccine trial, such as withholding crucial safety information. The controversial Louis Farrakhan warns against taking the vaccine pushed by white multibillionaire Bill Gates. Do the lives of black African Africans matter if we badly need research results?”
Elizabeth Lee Vliet — like Orient, linked to the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons — gushed with an overactive italic function in her July 13 column: “Stunning positive news on hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was released in early July, potentially opening up medical freedom at the time of America’s celebration of our Declaration of Independence from British tyranny 244 years ago. During the first six days of July, SIX positive clinical studies of HCQ were released. … All six studies showed that HCQ given early in COVID-19, alone or with zinc and azithromycin, reduces hospitalizations and deaths, with no serious heart or other adverse events.”
Being a WND columnist and AAPS member, Vliet couldn’t help but get conspiratorial:
Americans urgently need to see this new and encouraging information to help relieve anxiety and fear about coronavirus. The mainstream media is still suppressing such information, which can both save lives and help America reopen safely.
[…]The U.S. situation is out of control, with people dying and businesses shut down because of FDA roadblocks and governors’ restrictive orders illegally overriding normal FDA regulations that allow physicians to prescribe any >FDA-approved medication (including HCQ) however they deem medically appropriate. Physicians in many states also face threats of investigation by their state medical boards for prescribing HCQ for COVID-19, and state pharmacy boards direct pharmacists to refuse to dispense HCQ for COVID patients. Such political interference with doctors’ ability to treat patients has never happened before in my medical career.
At some point, the Trump administration has to take charge of this interference with effective medical treatment that is costing lives, and rein in the FDA and the state-by-state bureaucratic HCQ restrictions.
Schlafly — again, not a doctor — followed up on July 14 with a demand that hydroxychloroquine be made over-the-counter:
It is time to take the bull by the horns to conquer the Wuhan virus. Drastic action is necessary, like on Dec. 8, 1941, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
President Trump should order immediate public access to hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) by making the medication available over-the-counter (OTC). Liberals have interfered with public access to this medication for COVID-19 through the old-fashioned route of requiring a prescription and then having a pharmacist fill or reject the prescription.
[…]No one credibly doubts that HCQ is safe, and safer than many medications currently available OTC. No one credibly doubts the dozens of studies showing that early use of HCQ, pre-exposure and immediately after exposure to COVID, has helped many overcome this dreaded disease.
He too went conspiratorial: “Every state board of pharmacy or medicine is controlled by left-leaning government workers who, by and large, despise President Trump and hope he loses in November. They are accomplishing their dream by choking off public access to HCQ.”