Yesterday Twitter partially suspended the account of Donald Trump Jr. for sharing a video touting the benefits of hydroxychloroquine, and they’re not the only tech company blacking out information.
The science on hydroxychloroquine isn’t settled (as you’d expect from a drug only recently being researched in treating a new virus), but a number of recent studies have indeed found it effective – and a number of those finding it ineffective had to be retracted.
The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine both published highly publicized studies that discredited the efficacy of the drug in fighting coronavirus – which were both retracted not-longafter in June after questions were raised about the research, and both refused to provide the underlying data for an audit.
A month after those retractions, a study from the Henry Ford Health System of 2,541 patients hospitalized from March 10-May 2 across six hospitals found that 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died compared to 26.4% treated without it. The study was published today in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, and notably didn’t received anywhere near as much media coverage as the aforementioned retracted studies.
Last week, Dr. Harvey Risch, an epidemiology professor at Yale School of Public Health, said that he thinks hydroxychloroquine could save 75,000 to 100,000 lives if the drug is widely used to treat coronavirus.
But in a world where the left is now politicizing medicine, they’d rather fight what they consider misinformation with censorship instead of good information. Following Twitter’s lead, Google-owned YouTube censored a video from commentator Matt Christiensen, who made a video talking about the recent doctor’s press conference in D.C.
Much like the video of the press conference (which was banned from Facebook), his video talking about it was also banned.
YouTube has banned my video this morning for talking about the doctor press conference in DC. Unreal. pic.twitter.com/XNjBxwJG1a
— Matt Christiansen (@MLChristiansen) July 29, 2020
He was able to repost the video – by blurring out the faces of the doctors and bleeping the word “hydroxychloroquine.”
YouTube banned my video this morning simply for talking about the wrongthink doctor press conference, so I blurred their faces and censored 'hydr*x*chl*roq**ne.' 🙄
Full video here: https://t.co/k5D6lJP1jz
Uncensored on BitChute: https://t.co/nrBO2uOeFw pic.twitter.com/0Ojbu1aHmk
— Matt Christiansen (@MLChristiansen) July 29, 2020
As Matt pointed out to me, YouTube will allow people to post the death of George Floyd uncensored, but will censor videos about a potential treatment simply because it’s touted by President Trump. Matt included footage of the recent Sunday Austin shooting in a video and that didn’t trigger any censorship from YouTube.
It’s an odd and arbitrary place for YouTube to draw the line, and it makes no sense except in the context of tech companies trying to censor information for political purposes.
You can watch his full video by clicking *here.*
