COVID-19 can cause a fever, but nothing like the fever of hysteria gripping broadcast and social media over hydroxychloroquine, a potential treatment for the Wuhan flu. Ever since President Trump mentioned hydroxy as a possible therapeutic, the media have castigated it as worse than rat poison. They've criticized any use of it in a constant barrage of fear porn, telling everyone that this 60-year-old drug would kill anyone who dared take it.

When Trump mentioned he was taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative, Fox News crank Neil Cavuto had a seizure, telling his audience, “I cannot stress enough. This will kill you.” Tell that to those Americans taking hydroxy to the tune of five million prescriptions written each year.

Hydroxy was FDA-approved in 1955 and is taken for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. FDA approval means the approved drug is both efficacious and safe. All of a sudden, after 60 years, the FDA decided hydroxy is no longer safe because of, “serious heart rhythm problems and other safety issues, including blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries, and liver problems and failure.” If it is so unsafe, why did the FDA not rescind its 60-year-old approval?

It is worth noting that diseases treated by hydroxy for the past half century can cause these problems as well. As can COVID, which if severe, can also cause death. So, the FDA deems it safe to treat those sick with lupus and autoimmune diseases with hydroxy but not those sick or hospitalized with COVID.

That makes much sense as blaming both heat and cold, blizzards and droughts, on global warming. But that’s what happens when medicine is practiced by bureaucrats beholden not to science but to politics.

Several days ago, a group of physicians called “America’s Frontline Doctors held a press conference in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building discussing the Chinese coronavirus and hydroxychloroquine. One physician in particular, Dr Stella Immanuel, gave an impassioned shout-out for hydroxy:

I’m here because I have personally treated over 350 patients with COVID. Patients that have diabetes, patients that have high blood pressure, patients that have asthma, old people … I think my oldest patient is 92 … 87-year old. And the result has been the same. I put them on hydroxychloroquine, I put them on zinc, I put them on Zithromax, and they’re all well.

All of you doctors that are waiting for data, if six months down the line you actually found out that this data shows that this medication works, how about your patients that have died? You want a double-blinded study where people are dying? It’s unethical. So guys, we don’t need to die. There is a cure for COVID.

From the media’s reaction, you might have thought she was recommending bloodletting or exorcism as a cure for cancer and heart disease. The video of this press conference was promptly removed from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Those tweeting or retweeting the video found their accounts suspended, including Donald Trump, Jr.

Screen grab from shareable Breitbart video

Even President Trump’s retweet of the viral press conference video was removed. But the video was noticed by more than conservatives. Liberal Madonna tweeted the video featuring Dr. Immanuel and Instagram removed her post, calling it “false information” or a “conspiracy theory”.

Yet with a straight face, the media to this day claim that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, despite a two-year special counsel investigation, and no one else for that matter, producing one iota of evidence to back that claim. But this “conspiracy theory” and “false information” is broadcast daily on CNN and MSNBC.

Not content with censorship, the media attacked the messenger, Dr. Immanuel, slamming her religious views and some supposed previous comments on alien DNA. Before CNN makes fun of alien DNA ,they should investigate further, “The Pentagon has reportedly found off-world vehicles not made on this Earth.”

It is also rich that the media is attacking Dr. Immanuel, an immigrant woman of color, three pillars of the holy grail of intersectionality that the left bows down to. It seems the Democrat media machine just exposed their underbelly of racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Dr. Immanuel holds a Texas medical license in good standing with no disciplinary or malpractice actions against her, yet to the media she is a fraud.

Twitter has no problem promoting endless disproven claims of Russian collusion. Or medical claims of living forever as this Twitter ad implies for a wellness drink. Yet a potential treatment for the worst viral pandemic in a century is considered a conspiracy?

Some studies say hydroxy doesn’t work, like giving hydroxy to patients too sick to benefit, already on a ventilator, as in the VA study. Other studies found safety concerns and were published in prestigious medical journals like The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, only to be discovered to be bogus and retracted. Still other studies, as from the Henry Ford Health System noted that hydroxy cut the death rate in half.

This chart from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons shows a much lower case fatality rate in countries where hydroxy is allowed and encouraged rather than banned or discouraged.

Credit: AAPS Online, fair use

The baseball pitcher, “Dr. Fauci says all the ‘valid’ scientific data shows hydroxychloroquine isn’t effective in treating coronavirus.” Perhaps he missed the Henry Ford study. Or conveniently forgot last March when asked if he would prescribe hydroxy he said, “Yeah, of course, particularly if people have no other option.” What other options are there? A ventilator? The morgue?

The science isn’t settled as science rarely is. Coffee caused cancer until it was found beneficial in prolonging life. Butter was a killer until it became healthy. In the big scheme of risk versus benefit, hydroxy, in the opinion of this physician, falls on the benefit side. Ultimately, it’s about choice, that of the patient and their doctor.

Why then all the hysteria about hydroxy? One reason is that President Trump touted it. That’s enough reason to be against it. Other potential treatments have been suggested for COVID, including Remdesivir, statins, and antacids. These were promoted by prominent institutions including Columbia University and Massachusetts General Hospital, but none of them have panned out as a successful treatment. And all have side effects, some serious.

Were proponents castigated and cancelled? Were Fox News anchors telling viewers that statins will kill you? Would these potential but failed treatments have been maligned by the media if Trump had suggested them rather than simply ignoring them when they didn’t pan out?

The other reason is that the Democrat media complex doesn’t want a successful treatment. They are quite happy pushing fear porn of rising positive cases while ignoring falling hospitalizations and deaths. They prefer the population cowering in fear, distancing, wearing masks and soon face shields,  banned from church but encouraged to protest, loot and riot. They want businesses and schools closed, making Americans as miserable as possible ahead of the November election.

How many deaths can be laid at the feet of the media and Democrat officials, stopping a potential treatment as a means of influencing an upcoming election? These people are sick and hopefully there will be a reckoning for those complicit in needless death by suppressing a possible therapeutic. Was it ever about the virus or just about the election?

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a Denver-based physician and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in American Thinker, Daily Caller, Rasmussen Reports, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn, Twitter, Parler, and QuodVerum.