Anyone who tried to post information on those platforms was acutely aware of the politics involved.
Personal examples from Facebook include having posts flagged which made no assertions in re: COVID, but only posted links to two studies which had been peer reviewed, published in medical journals, and were linked to in the NIH library.
Another post, not about COVID, merely mentioned the difference in price of gasoline during the Trump Administration and the current one. That post was flagged and not permitted to be seen until I altered the post by using the word "previous" in place of "Trump" before administration. Then it was allowed.
Posts known to me to be true, or at least well within the acceptable limits of peer reviewed and published medical science from medical journals were marked routinely as "misinformation", with links to the narrative at CDC.
I know, little ol' me, not exactly a force in national medical debates, was far from the only person who had this happen to them. Other scientists, mostly of greater note and whose areas of expertise fall directly in the medical field, virology, epidemiology and who far outshine my meager understanding of ACE-II receptors and the mechanisms of viral replication doubtlessly experienced the same or worse, or platforms like Rumble, Parler, and others would not have grown to provide a place for voices not in lockstep with the mainstream to be heard.
But for the general population, the damage was done, simply because the counter arguments to what was being presented as "The Science" TM were spread over a number of platforms and web sites, diffused compared to the concentrated narrative being put out by ABCNNBCBS, cable networks, and the very organs of government which were supposed to
1: be engaged in scientific inquiry and
2: providing advice to the American people based on well constructed scientific arguments.
In that, those diverse platforms and sources worked together to provide a pre-planned narrative, in direct contravention to scientific known fact, in defiance of knowledge possessed by the very people putting the narrative out (such as the Lab origin of SARS-CoV-2, from gain-of-function research, the mechanism (be it accidental or intentional) of the lab leak, the curious restrictions on travel from Hubei Province (including Wuhan) to the rest of China but not the rest of the world, the immediate attack on well thought out treatments for early-onset COVID-19, including 'studies' which used partial regimens far too late in the course of the disease to prevent viral replication and pulmonary damage, always eliminating the vital zinc supplementation, despite studies in 2005 that showed Zinc to be effective against SARS in vitro and in vivo.)
One study even administered lethal doses of Chloroquine (not the drug in question, but a precursor that notably had the known toxicity result of lengthening the q-t interval and stopping hearts) in dosages that exceeded the LD50 (50% lethal dose) for the drug by a factor of four.
Naturally, most of the patients died, but the result was announced in the media as "the study had to be stopped because the patients were dying", not that they were poisoned by excessive dosages, which one might argue had been administered to provoke lethal (adverse) side effects for the purpose of discrediting the regimen--either that or a grievous mistake.
This was all presented to discredit the treatment regimen of Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, and Zinc supplementation, as later another human (Nobel Prize winning) antiparasitic drug was found to also act as an ionophore to get vital Zinc supplementation into the Type 1 Pneumocytes and epithelial airway cells to stop viral replication before extensive damage was done. Administered early, with a Macrolide Antibiotic or Doxycycline and zinc supplementation, this regimen, too, was found to not only be effective as an early onset treatment, but to have prophylactic value as well.
Both regimens involved known off-the-shelf drugs, with known adverse effect profiles, which had been administered in billions of doses worldwide in their on-label antiparasitic function over decades and for other purposes as well (hydroxychloroquine for Lupus and for Rheumatoid arthritis, among other uses, for years with few complications), and Ivermectin had been found to be an effective antiparasitic for veterinary uses as well, not unlike the antibiotics penicillin, tetracycline, doxycycline, and a host of others. But only Ivermectin was described in the press as "horse medicine" (incidentally in the same 0.2 milligram per kilogram of body weight as for humans, likely some thing to do with serum levels), despite its origins and primary usage as a human antiparasitic.
Other ionophores were found as well, from Quercetin to epigallocatechin-gallate, and others, some available as OTC supplements. Zinc supplements were widely available, and doses of Vitamins C and D were recommended as well..
But the damage was done.
The machine (media, social media, and the 'official' scientific sources aka: The ScienceTM were out to suppress any information about those treatment options, so severely, they enlisted the aid of the medical establishment in threatening doctors and health care workers that even now many will only confide in hushed tones (looking over their shoulders, literally) that those treatments might be or are known to be effective. That isn't science, it is oppression.
"But why?", one might ask, would doctors, the "first do no harm" cadre of Hippocrates' oath takers, suppress the possibility of effective treatment of patients long before they degraded enough to become hospitalized, often with poor prognoses and lethal outcomes?
Why did Thomas Laboratories, a well known provider of antibiotics for fish and birds, among other pets, without the need for prescriptions (after all these antibiotics were intended for veterinary use) suddenly stop producing that entire line of products?
I am sure it was no secret to those who ordered them that the product in the containers was identical in appearance and markings, indistinguishable from say, 100mg capsules of Doxycycline that a human would get at a human pharmacy, and frankly, I, and others who work in industries where getting in to see a doctor becomes problematic because of remote locations, often hundreds of miles from home, and lag times in finding medical care there, carried our own 'stash' of such antibiotics in our gear in case we got ill far from home, veterinary in nature, identical to the human antibiotics, and for years, in appropriate dosages and course lengths of treatment, effective at maintaining our health. For me, Erythromycin, Clindamycin, and Doxycycline, along with the only to be used if nothing else worked Ciprofloxacin, rounded out that part of my med bag, along with odds and ends like Claritin, Children's Benadryl elixir (diphenhydramine), Pepto Bismol, Tums, and Imodium. Everything else was for the treatment of minor cuts and scrapes, infection prevention and included basic triple antibiotic, hydrogen peroxide, isopropanol, and an assortment of bandages, large and small. Yep, one whole bag of my gear was for when things went wrong, but I was hauling it around in a 1-ton van, so that wasn't a problem, and as a former EMT who just kept reading, I had a pretty good idea how to use it all. (Somehow, in 40 years of working all over the Rockies and elsewhere, I never needed a laxative). I even carried a dental emergency kit that would make a problem tolerable at least, until I could get to a dentist. Many 'preppers' had similar med bags in their stuff, but for me, it was a question of simply remaining functional for years while working long hours in odd places, often far from town and far from home. In 40 years, I have only been out for 13 sick days (two occasions), and on one of those I ended up in the hospital (before i started packing my 'med bag'.
But back to the seminal question, that of why doctors in high places would suppress the administration of early-onset treatments, the prescription drugs involved (a relative who had been taking Hydroxychloroquine for Rheumatoid Arthritis for years could suddenly only get a 30 day supply instead of a 90 day prescription filled), and the veterinary supply of Azithromycin and Erythromycin and Doxycycline dried up overnight--all in conjunction.
Beyond the howling panic mongering in the media, something else was afoot.
This extended beyond the ordinary propaganda efforts, as medical decisions were made by politicians, and enforced by the hospitals (which, without admission privileges, a doctor will be hard pressed to make a living), and even accrediting organizations who threatened to pull licenses and essentially destroy the medical careers of anyone who defied the narrative or had the temerity to prescribe the very drugs under attack. Even now doctors will walk away from a discussion about this issue, and not always because they think those treatments ineffective. The walls have ears, and competition in that field is ingrained from pre-med school, where I knew of instances where notebooks were stolen from promising students so other students could do 'better'.
Again, I have digressed, so back to it.
It is no secret that not only were infected patients not being treated early, (by now, the risk of comorbidities was becoming well known, and the likelihood of a poor outcome for those who were so afflicted who were admitted to hospital for a treatment regimen that included drugs previously known for damaging kidneys and livers, or which amounted simply to palliative care, from the wards to the ICU, to the morgue), but there was an incentive added to the mix which had not been present before.
Before COVID, cure the patient, or at least milk their insurance, and they either went to hospice, went home cured, or were slid out the door when the bills could not be paid. A cure, naturally, was best, and the quicker, the better, because the bill would get paid.
But now the incentive wasn't so much to prevent admission as to get that patient in a bed, and collect the $17,000.00 bonus for a COVID patient, $35,000.00 if they were in the ICU.
For an inner city hospital, treating indigent patients with a wide variety of often expensive trauma remediation procedures to put them back on the streets (where they might be back in the ER next week), the fiscal incentive to rack up COVID money must have been tremendous. Stories of patients who were hit by a truck, or with multiple gunshot wounds who succumbed in the end, not to trauma, but officially COVID, abounded, but I do not recall any deep digging into the bottom lines of those struggling medical facilities as a result of the COVID boom, nor any comparisons to previous trauma death rates versus those during COVID.
But for the patient, burdened by a medical system which denied the existence of, much less access to, any treatment until the patient was degraded enough to require hospital admission, the prognosis must have indeed been bleak.
Unlike those of us used to finding what we needed (or might need) through veterinary circles, taking a chance on the purity of antibiotics or antiparasitics (supplements are often available for humans, checked for purity if nothing else), and without the suppliers known to country folk whose livestock experience granted them some access despite the products being clearly labeled 'not for human use', those in the penumbra of official medicine in urban areas often lived or died based on what they could obtain, and access to knowledge that was increasingly restricted, marked as wrong, or censored completely.
Doctors who arguably should have found wide recognition and been celebrated were pushed aside, censored, and discredited by the establishment that had crafted studies designed to show those early onset regimens as ineffective or failures, through the use of those regimens in part only ( never onceadministering the critical Zinc supplementation), and only after the patient had been admitted to hospital (when the disease had run its course enough to require admission and window for preventing viral damage was over).
One of the criteria for fast-tracking a vaccine with an Emergency Use Authorization is the absence of viable and effective treatments. Even a 50% efficacy would have been such a banner of hope for so many patients, that rather than take a shot that was relatively untested, the information from all over the planet would have made at least attempting the inexpensive (under $20) early onset treatment attractive to patients, and then, if that was ineffective, other means could be used. If effective, the patient would acquire natural immunity as a benefit of their exposure to the pathogen, and not need a vaccine. But then, in direct contravention to decades of virology, suddenly natural immunity was decreed ineffective, even though it had been part of the concept of 'herd immunity' for nearly as long as the study of virology and epidemics.
But with the treatments discredited by media and official pronouncements, and the decree that natural immunity provided no benefit, the mass marketing of the injections could proceed, first as voluntary, then as the alternative to common workplace testing, then as a requirement for (not) showing one's face in public.
This was met with no small degree of skepticism, even by a frightened and often panicked public who had been convinced somehow that wearing cloth masks with pores orders of magnitude larger than the virus were going to protect them, to the point of insistence on those masks, even in populations where effective masks would have been of questionable value--children, notably, only rarely were hospitalized from the effects of SARS CoV-2, and wearing a mask only obscured their faces inhibiting social and linguistic development.
The uselessness of the masks for preventing transmission of the virus aside, rules were put in place, political decrees backed by no sane science, and enforced, (well at least among those who were not highly placed politically), and failure to wear the facebands of the new order would get one arrested, shunned, attacked, unemployed, removed from commerce as a customer or proprietor, and even removed from school as a child.
Medically, those masks only protected from large droplets, but were of highly questionable value against something so minute as a virus.
Still, the drumbeat of panic prevailed in the media, as patients were placed in facilities with others with multiple comorbitdities (now a well-known risk factor for a terminal outcome), with no means of isolation of the infected from the uninfected and poor infection control protocols, with predictable results. Those long term care patients, often already compromised, died like flies, furthermore isolated from their loved ones, through the use of isolation protocols for facilities that could only contribute to a sense of hopelessness, the very sort of intangible thing that harms outcomes beyond explicable medical science.
And the shots went on. But it did not take long before the jungle drums of the internet were pointing out that those who got the shots, the magic bullets that were going to stop the transmission of COVID and prevent infection, were still getting infected, despite the injections of mRNA, at first blamed on those believed to have already been infected when they got the injections, later undeniably in spite of those same injections, then blamed on those who had not gotten the shots.
Instead of reevaluating those injections for their efficacy (and a growing number of reports of sudden and sometimes lethal adverse effects from the injections) the political aspects of this were more strident in their demands that people get the injections, and whether led by, or joined with by the medical establishment, the push for universal inoculation was redoubled. Employment was threatened, and despite thousands of medical professionals abandoning hard-won careers because they refused the shots (now with boosters), pilots refusing to get the injections being grounded (also losing jobs hard-won, often a vocation and not just a job), the onus was placed on the virus as causing shortages in medical personnel, in pilots and aircrews, and other professions, and not on the policy, thus attempting to deepen the panic and induce even more to get the shots.
Hospitals were not overrun because they lacked facilities, not nearly so much as because they'd fired the personnel they needed to man them because they had refused a shot of increasingly questionable value. Other facilities went unused, including field hospitals erected to handle the patients and even a hospital ship sent to help handle the patient overload that had been anticipated, while in those same areas the infected were sent to infect more especially high-risk patients in facilities not set up nor even adaptable to deal with an infectious disease outbreak.
By now, the political nature of the pandemic was becoming evident, with non-science and politics intertwined demanding compliance with rules and decrees that made no scientific or epidemiological sense, and the expansion of 'emergency powers' by the very people who had decreed deadly policy and then used the outcome to push for power far beyond that which would be tolerated by an informed and calm population which had any rational basis for comparison with deadly epidemics of the past and policy used to contain those.
In the thick of all this were the social media companies, stifling or censoring outright any scientific discussion, the dissemination of information, not even exhibiting the sort of curiosity that scientists might, but stifling all but the approved narrative and fostering an environment where the less informed would demand, not just tolerate the sort of political manipulation that leads to the abuse of power.
In effect, those social media platforms abused the power of the village square, by not allowing the participation of knowledgeable and well informed people even those exert in their fields as a scientific rebuttal to the allegations being popularized for the purpose of gaining extra-constitutional political power by no longer acting as a place of discussion, but instead as a propaganda arm of those political entities which stood to gain power or profit or both.
Threatened?
More like riding the heady wave of being the Ministers of Propaganda, one deleted post at a time.
There is no way those who abused that power did not realize what they were doing.
Not when they routinely permit more balanced discussion of the cut of some starlet's dress than matters of life or death for millions. They were not seeking nor allowing those who were in a position to discuss the issue to do so, but rather promoting a single desired outcome of what discussion was allowed, for profit or the heady stuff that is power.
