If you don't want to read the post linked above, here's a quick summary: Laura Ingraham interviewed Attorney General Bill Barr. In addition to calling the Russia hoax “one of the greatest travesties in American history”, Barr touched on COVID-19.
One thing Barr found bizarre was how the media ignored informing Americans in favor of discrediting President Trump. Barr specifically noted the media’s response to Trump’s hope that hydroxychloroquine might stop the Wuhan virus’s malignancy. Hydroxychloroquine has been approved for decades as a treatment for malaria, lupus, and arthritis. The media, though, isn't giving Americans objective information about the drug. Instead, Barr said (accurately), “the media’s been on a jihad to discredit the drug.”
Immediately after Barr’s interview, NPR’s Vanessa Romo wrote about Robin Armstrong, a Houston doctor, who was treating nursing home patients with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc. Romo implied that, because the doctor is a Republican (even scarier for Democrats, he’s a blackRepublican) and used his political connections to get hydroxychloroquine, that meant he was a veritable Dr. Mengele, the Nazi who experimented on prisoners in Auschwitz. Her article, entitled, COVID-19 Patients Given Unproven Drug In Texas Nursing Home In 'Disconcerting' Move, painted the treatment in dire terms:
Concern is mounting after a doctor at a Texas nursing home started giving the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to dozens of elderly patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and tracking the outcomes in what he's calling an "observational study."
Use of the drug to treat coronavirus infections has set up a heated debate between the Trump administration and leading health experts over its efficacy against COVID-19.
Romo even implied that Armstrong was experimenting on patients without proper authorization. Then, almost reluctantly, she acknowledged that most patients did give their permission. In any event, because the drug is FDA approved and because the FDA authorized using hydroxychloroquine off-label, Armstrong didn’t need the patient’s explicit permission.
The Houston Chronicle (which endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016), wrote in the same apocalyptic tones and directly accused Dr. Armstrong of unethical behavior:
The problem is that Armstrong disregarded proper protocol and administered the drug without permission from family members. While this unprecedented pandemic may call for urgent action, it doesn’t condone irresponsible acts.
Hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug often used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, is not a proven miracle drug — no matter what President Donald Trump says.
NPR and the Houston Chronicle weren't the only outlets making (or implying) that Armstrong is an evil Republican doctor, even though his behavior was entirely within the bounds of law and ethics. All those outlets should be eating crow now. Despite being a vulnerable cohort for COVID-19 mortality (since they’re all elderly), Armstrong's patients are recovering:
What happened at a Galveston County nursing home over the last week was one of the first big tests of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients in Texas.
“I thought the risk of seeing 15% of that nursing home die was just not an acceptable,” said Dr. Robin Armstrong, MD, medical director at The Resort at Texas City.
Fifty-six residents at this senior facility in Galveston County contracted the novel coronavirus. Dr. Robin Armstrong said 39 of them gave him permission to treat them with hydroxychloroquine pills.
“Most of the patients have done well. And, you know, and I think that that is suggestive that the medication is helpful,” Armstrong told WFAA.
[snip]
“Well, I would say I would say all the patients have done well,” Armstrong added.
On Sunday, those 39 patients finished five days of treatment with hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Armstrong said no one experienced any side effects.
“We've got one patient now that kind of goes back and forth,” said Dr. Armstrong, “He's an older gentleman, but we're kind of nursing him through the process, but he's getting better.
Two patients receiving hydroxychloroquine have had to go to hospital for unrelated conditions, Armstrong disclosed; a woman had a fall and a man got dehydrated in his room because he was not eating and drinking.
But for the first time since this treatment began, many of those who have recovered from the virus have been able to go outside and get some fresh air over the last 48 hours, Armstrong said.
What Dr. Armstrong did doesn’t sound like Dr. Mengele to me. It sounds like a doctor who stayed well within the law and, ignoring the media’s politically-motivated jihad against hydroxychloroquine, saved people’s lives.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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