The medical community’s approach to COVID broke down along partisan lines: Democrats were in favor of masks and lockdowns, claimed that no existing drugs could save COVID patients, and went all-in on vaccines. Republicans questioned masks’ efficacy, pointed out that lockdowns didn’t improve health but were destroying people’s lives, looked to affordable pre-existing drugs for treatment, and urged caution for the vaccines. Time has favored the Republicans’ views. Still, California just added a law effectively saying, “Embrace Democrat COVID views or lose your license.” Here’s the thing, though: with COVID in the rearview mirror, this is about much more than COVID itself.

In the almost three years since COVID entered America, we’ve learned that Democrats were mostly wrong about everything related to COVID and Republicans were mostly right.

1. The cloth and paper masks they imposed on everyone (especially children) are ineffective, as even the CDC concedes, although it tries to obfuscate that fact.

2. Lockdowns made no difference regarding COVID, although they did help destroy the economy and destroy hundreds of thousands of American lives. (On the flip side, shipping COVID-infected patients to vulnerable elderly communities made a huge and horrible difference.)

3. Vaccines are proving to be extremely dangerous, something the CDC has also been forced to concede.

4. The jury is a little bit out on medicines because the American medical establishment has bent itself to “proving” that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin will not treat COVID. However, it does appear that, for both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, if patients receive them early enough after a COVID diagnosis, they will make a beneficial difference. (Experiences in both India and Brazil back up these studies.)

That early intervention is key. Recall that the Democrat medical mantra was that people should do nothing about their COVID until they were at death’s door, at which point they should go to a hospital to get, first, ventilation, which damaged people’s lungs and, eventually, Remdesivir, which damaged people’s livers.

Image: Physician and patient by DC Studio.

These were all hot topics a couple of years ago. Now, though, COVID is in the rearview mirror of American life, especially because it’s done what all viruses do: Become both endemic and less virulent. Treatments and societal changes are no longer being fought in the media and the public sphere. Why, then, did California decide now to put into effect a law that will drive from practice those doctors who will prescribe early hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin treatment for COVID?

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will subject doctors to discipline and possible suspension of their licenses to practice for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic to patients, one of the most controversial pieces of pandemic legislation lawmakers sent to his desk.

AB 2098 by Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, was co-sponsored by the California Medical Association to tamp down COVID-19 misinformation, often spread through social media, promoting untested or ineffective treatments and cures and questioning the effectiveness of face masks and vaccines.

The law is obviously a joke because, as noted, even the CDC has turned on face masks and vaccines. However, the law makes sense if you realize that it has nothing to do with COVID risks for California residents. Instead, it’s a way to identify and destroy physicians who are less likely to be on board with other modern medical initiatives. These include:

1. Using hormones and mutilating surgery on the growing population of Americans (especially children) who have been brainwashed into believing that any dissatisfaction they feel with their bodies or their lives is tied to their “gender identity.”

2. Arguing that gun control is necessary for children’s health.

3. Pushing for medical care to be rationed based upon race.

4. And most importantly of all, embracing socialized medicine. The big secret of socialized medicine, of course, is that while people have “free” access to “medical care,” their actual outcomes are significantly worse than under non-socialized systems. Plus, socialized systems have a nasty habit of devolving into euthanasia, which is cheaper than treatment.

It's to be hoped that California’s new law about COVID misinformation and doctors is successfully challenged in court. Otherwise, expect it to be used aggressively to remove from practice any California doctors who aren’t on board with so-called transgenderism, gun control, race-based medicine, and socialized medicine.