Social media giants want China to have a say in American health care

YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook deleted video of a press conference in which the group America's Frontline Doctors challenged Dr. Fauci's viewpoint.  Most notably, group members asserted that hydroxychloroquine cures the Wuhan virus and may act as a preventative.  What's concerning about the social media giants' response is that they justify their censorship by insisting that the World Health Organization's pronouncements are the only acceptable standard.

Monica Showalter discussed in detail how YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook removed the press conference showing America's Frontline Doctors.  Leftists have also challenged the doctors involved, claiming they are crackpots who cannot be relied upon for scientific conclusions.  (For example, the most prominent speaker, Stella Immanuel, embraces both science and non-science.) 

This post isn't about whether the doctors at the press conference were pure and perfect, or even correct. Instead, it's about the standard that social media outlets are using — that is, the fact that they've decided that only information that conforms to pronouncements from the World Health Organization (WHO) may be promulgated:

This screen shot from Breitbart reflects the WHO standard, which it used to justify locking down Breitbart's and Donald Trump, Jr. accounts:

In April, YouTube stated that it would remove any content that contradicted WHO:

"Anything that is medically unsubstantiated, so people saying, like, 'Take Vitamin C… take turmeric, those cure you,' those are examples of things that would be a violation of our policy. Um, anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy," [YouTube CEO Susan] Wojcicki said.

Since March, Facebook has been using WHO and the United Nations as standards for what constitutes acceptable information about the Wuhan virus:

In January, we started showing educational pop-ups connecting people to information from the WHO, the CDC and regional health authorities toward the top of News Feed in countries with reported person-to-person transmissions and in all countries when people search for COVID-19 related information. We show similar pop-ups at the top of Instagram Feed in the hardest hit countries and when anyone taps on a COVID-19 related hashtag.

Last week, we launched the COVID-19 Information Center, which is now featured at the top of News Feed on Facebook in several countries and includes real-time updates from national health authorities and global organizations, such as the WHO.

Think about this: the largest platforms in America for ordinary citizens who want to share and learn information have made it clear that no one can talk about Wuhan virus issues if the WHO has not preapproved the data.  Frankly, it's a terrible idea to have the WHO as the gatekeeper.

The Wuhan virus began in China.  It may have been accidental, or, as even the most level-headed people are wondering, it might not have been.  Regardless, China consistently lied about it, either to hide its mistakes or to spread the virus and damage the world economy.

The WHO actively aided China's deceit.  Katie Pavlich summed up the evidence, showing that the WHO had information in December that there was a dangerous virus on the loose but that it continued to report Chinese propaganda as fact, even after it was apparent that China was lying.  Mike Pompeo asserts that U.S. intelligence shows that China paid to install WHO's current head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. (Tedros denies this charge.)

We may never know whether the WHO is a stooge or a shill, but we know it's consistently wrong.  By March, even a Trump-hating outlet such as The Atlantic was questioning the WHO's errors.  In June, there were more errors: the WHO announced that people with the virus who showed no symptoms were not contagious.  It had to retract that claim.

The WHO hates Trump because he's withdrawing American funds.  It's no wonder, then, that the WHO is as hostile to HDQ as Democrats are.  Neither can afford to have Trump proven correct that HDQ can help defeat the virus. So it was that, in May, the WHO leaped on a study purporting to show that HDQ was fatal.  The article was bogus and had to be retracted.

Indeed, in its battle against Trump, the WHO drops and restarts HDQ with the clumsiness of a drunk juggler.  Meanwhile, data are adding up that HDQ, when used with azithromycin and zinc, works.  And keep in mind that, up until Trump praised it, doctors routinely prescribed the medicine without a second thought to Americans traveling to malarial destinations.

What's happening here is that, in the war against Trump, the social media giants are opting to deprive Americans of useful (or even ridiculous) information.  The people have a right to know what's out there.  The way to defeat bad ideas is to push back with good ones, not to engage in one-sided censorship.  (See Scott Adams on the importance of looking beyond a single expert for anything.)  There's nothing good about the nation's self-appointed gatekeepers allowing information from only an organization that shills for China, is frequently incorrect, and has an open bias against the one drug that seems to work.

Image: Created using publicly available images from Wikipedia (FacebookTwitterYouTubeWHO).

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