Biden-Harris Administration Defends Big Tech Censorship Pressure Following Zuckerberg’s Admission
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 28, 2024
The Biden-Harris White House looks determined to justify and normalize the practice of the government colluding with private companies, in this instance Big Tech, to censor speech.
After Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, admitting that his company came under pressure from the current administration to conduct censorship and that he “believes” that was wrong – the White House doubled down on the controversial, and quite possibly, unconstitutional, policy.
In his letter, Zuckerberg chose to focus on Meta censoring content related to COVID-19, and in response, a White House spokesman revealed the government does not share Zuckerberg’s stance that the policy of pressure was wrong.
“Encouragement” is how that’s phrased. “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” stated the White House spokesman to media requests.
He further justified the actions described by Zuckerberg as needed because the White House believes private companies, including those from the tech industry, “should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people.”
And with the stage set in this way – the spokesman concluded that these companies are then free to make “independent choices about the information they present.”
But Zuckerberg’s letter to the Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan does a pretty good job of explaining how these “independent choices” get made. Senior figures from the Biden administration, Zuckerberg stated, in 2021 “repeatedly pressured our (Facebook, Instagram) teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.”
The decision on content removal, and introduction of new rules into platform policies to facilitate censorship, Zuckerberg concedes, was “ultimately ours” – but made under pressure.
If Meta tried to defy these “suggestions” – the administration showed “a lot of frustration.”
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” the letter, sent in response to the Committee’s subpoena first issued in early 2023, reads.
The Committee has been investigating how the government may have colluded with private companies to suppress speech it disapproves of, and whether those actions constitute First Amendment violations.
Even before the current Biden-Harris administration came to power, Facebook was being steered in a desired direction, one example being the notorious case of the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop news story, the Zuckerberg letter reveals.
The FBI contacted the social media giant with a “warning” that there could be an anti-Biden family “Russian disinformation” campaign – and Facebook heeded it by “fact-checking and temporarily demoting (links to the article).”
Mark Zuckerberg confirms Biden regime pressured Facebook on censorship, admits to throttling Hunter Biden story
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 26, 2024
In a revealing letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has addressed significant controversies surrounding the platform’s content censorship practices, especially concerning actions taken during the 2020 presidential election cycle and the COVID-19 pandemic.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
Zuckerberg confirmed that senior officials from the Biden Administration exerted “pressure” on Facebook to censor specific content related to COVID-19, criticizing the administration’s approach. Despite the external pressures, Zuckerberg emphasized that the final decisions on content moderation lay with Facebook, admitting regret over some of the decisions made under this pressure.
“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration… repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” Zuckerberg stated, reflecting on the administration’s actions which he now believes were “wrong.” He expressed regret that Meta was not more outspoken against this pressure at the time: “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions.”
In a separate disclosure, Zuckerberg detailed interactions with the FBI, which had warned the company of a potential Russian disinformation campaign targeting the Biden family and their association with Burisma ahead of the 2020 elections. This led to the suppression of a New York Post story involving corruption allegations against Joe Biden’s family, which was later determined not to be Russian disinformation. Zuckerberg expressed regret over this decision as well, noting significant changes in Meta’s policy to avoid such actions in the future.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg conceded, alleging a policy shift to prevent future such occurrences: “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Additionally, Zuckerberg addressed his contributions through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to support electoral infrastructure during the pandemic, aiming to assist local election jurisdictions. He defended these contributions as non-partisan, though acknowledged public skepticism about the impartiality of such support.
“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another,” he affirmed, signaling a withdrawal from similar contributions in future electoral cycles.
Australian Government blocks Covid inquiry ‘with teeth’
Once again, Labor characterised its foes as ‘conspiracy theorists’, ‘cranks,’ ‘kooks’ and ‘far right extremists’ rather than engaging in rational debate
By Rebekah Barnett | Dystopian Down Under | August 22, 2024
The Australian Government has voted down a bill to establish a Covid Commission of Inquiry, which would have essentially the same powers and independence as a Royal Commission.
The bill was supported by a small coalition of senators from minor parties and the Opposition (conservative), but was rejected by the Labor Party(left-wing) in a vote today.
To date, Australia has had plenty of Covid inquiries, but none with teeth.
The siloing of inquiries to deal only with states and territory and federal governments on an individual basis has allowed for a lot of finger pointing with very limited accountability.
The scope of the federal Covid Inquiry excludes the policies of state and territory governments, which enacted vaccine mandates, lockdowns and inter-state border restrictions, leading politicians and media to call it “toothless.”
In turn, states and territories have focused on how well they implemented policies heavily influenced by the Federal Government and national advisory bodies without actually considering whether the policies were any good.
The patchwork nature of these inquiries allows the Federal Government to blame states and territories for implementing the harshest measures, and the states and territory governments pass the buck to the federal agencies and departments for influencing them to do so.
More holistic independent reviews like the Fault Lines report have resulted in talk of ‘lessons learned’ about “ill-conceived policies, politically driven health orders and excessive use of lockdowns,” but no meaningful attempts to hold anyone to account or guarantees that the lessons will inform future pandemic policy making.
Another problem with inquiries to date is that federal, state and territory governments have played hide the ball with important documentation and data required to properly assess their performance. As yet, no Australian government has released the health advice that draconian measures were based upon.
A Royal Commission or similar, taking the entire Covid response – at federal, state and territory levels – and with aggressive powers to command access to information that governments don’t want to release, would be required for real accountability.
The only ways to bring this about are for the executive to call a Royal Commission, or for the Senate to call a Commission of Inquiry.
However, despite the recommendation of the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 in 2022 that a Royal Commission into Australia’s Covid response be established, the Labor Government has resisted calls to do so.
The Committee, led by senior Labor Party member Katy Gallagher (now Minister for Finance, for Women and for the Public Service) criticised the then Liberal Government’s lack of transparency and accountability around pandemic decision making by the National Cabinet.
Emergency law making had “challenged the Australian Parliament’s capacity to provide meaningful scrutiny of proposed laws, particularly in identifying and addressing the impact of emergency powers on the rights of individuals,” the Committee stated in its recommendations.
Leader of the Opposition at the time, Anthony Albanese, sort of promised a Covid Royal Commission. But after being elected to government in May 2022, Prime Minister Albanese has resolutely dodged the issue, throwing his support behind the limited federal inquiry instead.
Hence, a group of concerned senators tabled the COVID-19 Response Commission of Inquiry Bill 2024 in a bid to open up option B, an inquiry initiated by the Senate.
The bill, prepared by Senator Matt Canavan (Liberal), was co-sponsored by Senators Malcolm Roberts (One Nation), Alex Antic (Liberal), Gerard Rennick (Liberal), Ralph Babet (United Australia Party) and Matt O’Sullivan (Liberal), all of whom have been vocal critics of Australia’s pandemic response.
Source: Senator Alex Antic on X
During speaking time, senators who sponsored the bill argued that a Covid Commission of Inquiry is needed so that Australia can finally move on from Covid with a good plan in place for future pandemics. A proper inquiry would get to the bottom of what went wrong (and what went right) to restore trust in public health, they said.
Senator Roberts also said that in light of the fact that multiple U.S. states are now suing Pfizer for misleading about its Covid vaccine, if an inquiry found that Pfizer was indeed guilty of fraudulent behaviour, this could shift the financial burden of injuries and deaths associated with Pfizer’s product from Australian tax payers to the pharmaceutical giant.
Australian tax payers have coughed up more than $20 million on compensation for Covid vaccine injuries, but they will have to pay a lot more if a Covid vaccine injury class action is successful. The action, which was filed in the Federal Court last year, has enrolled over 1,500 injured Australians (or families of the deceased).
However, only ten senators supported the bill when it went to a vote in Parliament today. The bill was supported by the above mentioned senators (with the exception of Senator Antic, who is on leave), some members of the Coalition, One Nation, and independent Senator David Pocock.
Despite Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John stating that his party supports the establishment of a “frank” and “transparent” inquiry with the powers of a Royal Commission, the Greens abstained from the vote. Labor voted against the bill.
Source: Dynamic Red, 22 August 2024
I am told by the office of one of the senators who sponsored this bill that they have no intention of dropping the matter.
Previously, Senator Babet brought five separate motions to establish the world’s first government Excess Mortality Inquiry, which is now in progress thanks to Senator Babet’s persistence.
An inquiry into proposed terms of reference for a Covid Royal Commission has already been conducted, which will prove helpful in the event that either a Royal Commission or a Commission of Inquiry into Australia’s Covid response are eventually established.
Nonetheless, such efforts will face stiff opposition from the Albanese Government, if Labor Senator Tim Ayres’ speech in Parliament today is representative of his party’s position.
In speaking time before the vote, Senator Ayres said that the Government did not support the bill because “there’s already a public inquiry,” before launching into an astonishing diatribe of ad hominem attacks on the senators who proposed the bill.
Senator Ayres used the term ‘conspiracy theories’ or ‘conspiracy theorist’ more than twenty times, likened the efforts of senators to bring about a thorough Covid inquiry to movements motivated by “anti-semitism,” and called these same senators “cranks,” and the “nastiest, extreme, kooky elements of politics.”
Senator Ayres referred to ‘conspiracy theorists/theories’ more than 20 times in Parliament, 22 August 2024. Source: Australian Parliament House Streaming Portal, YouTube.
Senator Rennick called Senator Ayres’ speech “disgusting,” stating, “all we’re recommending today and supporting is that we have a thorough inquiry.”
In a statement after the vote, Senator Canavan said that more disheartening than Australia’s damaging pandemic response was “the response to the response.”
“Those Australians hurt during Covid deserve to have the accountability of proper public hearings, the publication of all the health advice and an open, transparent attempt to recognise mistakes as well as put in processes to prevent such things ever happening again.
“Why can’t the Government accept that if it is given immense power to lock people in their homes and force people out of work, that there should be an equal and corresponding obligation for them to be accountable to the people hurt by their decisions?”
Senator Babet took to X to express his dissatisfaction with the outcome, calling the decision of the Senate “weak.”
“Is it too much for Australians to ask for governments and the bureaucrats advising them to be held to account for the advice and actions they took during the pandemic?”
Apparently, yes.
The American Board of Internal Medicine Revoked All 3 Of My Board Certifications
Although I can still practice medicine, the ABIM’s actions against me and Paul Marik threaten the sanctity and autonomy of the physician-patient relationship.
Pierre Kory’s Medical Musings | August 17, 2024
I will just start by saying that I believe that the ABIM’s decision was 100% predetermined even before we first received their accusation in June 2022. There was no way they were going to declare us innocent of misinformation, even though a good portion of this country knows how effective and accurate our deeply evidence-based Covid treatment guidance was (and still is).
One of the reasons why they were never gonna let us off is that, if they declared us “innocent,” (i.e. accurate) that action would have immediately imperiled the decisions by medical boards across the country who persecuted hundreds of doctors for using ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or for recommending against Covid-19 mRNA gene therapy products. More importantly, it could potentially launch hundreds of thousands of lawsuits by the families of patients who died due to lack of early treatments offerred by clinics and hospitals or filled by pharmacies.
The above examples which led to the deaths of so many shows the sheer power of mega-corporations that put their financial interests ahead of our health and our lives. Through their overwhelming influence over nearly every institution of society and Science (media, journals, health agencies, politicians, medical schools, physicians etc), they literally succeeded in depriving a whole country (and world) of the most effective, inexpensive, safe, and widely available treatments for Covid. My biggest worry is that this crime against humanity may never enter the history books and thus will be eventually erased from memory. Which is looking probable.
The massive financial opportunities that Covid immediately presented to Big Pharma were threatened by the “inconvenient truths” Paul and I put out there. This ABIM action is one way in which Big Pharma punishes those who are foolish enough to do so. Foolish is not quite the right word in our case as I would argue we were simply naive to the consequences of advocating publicly for the use of off-patent medicines for an immensely profitable disease. It wasn’t heroism as some think, but rather extreme naivete.
I really never thought I would have to lose/leave three jobs and now three Board certifications for speaking truths. Recall that I was very well known in my specialty prior to Covid and was about to become Full Professor when I resigned as Chief of the Critical Care Service at the University of Wisconsin (where I was also the Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center). Reading the Washington Post article “Doctors Accused of Spreading Misinformation Lose Certification” was a pretty sobering reminder of how far I have supposedly “fallen” (Not so fun fact: they completely overstated my salary as the money I received in 2022 included retroactive pay for 2021).
But I am still standing folks. I am happily practicing medicine at my Leading Edge Clinic with my amazing partner Scott Marsland. As many know, we specialize in treating vaccine injury syndromes and Long Covid, and I believe we are soon closing in on having treated our 1,400th patient.
Thank God I managed to build a private, fee-based practice two and half years ago. At the time I suspected this was coming while also already aware that I was “unemployable” by the system. I got fired by my last hospital for a 100% made up complaint, despite the fact they desperately needed me. I was an independent contractor at the time and my ICU partners and all the nurses really liked me. But my partners were telling me that they were under increasing pressure by the Chief Medical Officer to “get rid of Kory.” Although they initially resisted, my stance on vaccines started to cause even more problems for them. When the ICU Director, who was both a friend and a colleague, called to fire me, his last words were, “Pierre, I know there is a war going on and unfortunately you are a casualty.” Truer words were never spoken.
Just know that Board certification is not a license to practice medicine (that comes from state medical licensing Boards of which I have more than a few still). But this ABIM action now puts a definitive end to any hope of me returning to an academic or “system” position (not that I have that hope anymore). Why is that? Well, because Board Certification was originally just a badge of distinction that doctors could use to impress each other and their patients. But they have since weaponized and monetized Board Certification in that currently you cannot obtain a faculty appointment at an academic medical center without one. Nor can you work for most hospitals without one. Even worse, insurance plans will not put you on their provider panels without it. So, although I have been fully excommunicated from “the system,” I cannot be happier about it.
Understand that what happened to me this week was a devastating censorship action, plain and simple. It was done for two reasons; the first was to destroy my reputation and credibility so that my voice will no longer carry (essentially silencing me) and the other was to send a message to doctors that if they stray from consensus, no matter how scientifically absurd (e.g. mRNA vaccines for a coronavirus), dangerous (e.g. remdesivir, mRNA jabs), or ineffective (Paxlovid), they will be punished.
The damage that will result to patients again, is incalculable. No longer will “system” doctors be able to practice medicine with the autonomy they require to arrive at the best decision for each individual patient. Nearly everything they do will be protocolized with society guideline recommended treatments (i.e. consensus manufactured by Pharma). No longer will they be able to “think out of the box” or use treatments which although known effective, do not have the blessing of those in control of that system. I am as terrified as ever of needing a hospital.
Not to overstate the importance of their actions, but Medicine as I knew it, or thought I knew it, is even more dead if that is possible. If you can’t have a differing scientific opinion without losing your career over it, then how is that Medicine or Science? In fact, in our repeated written defenses, we challenged the ABIM, asking them where “the line” is between legitimate scientific debate driven by a differing emphasis on or interpretation of data and outright misinformation.
Misnformation, as I understand it, is defined as “incorrect or misleading” information. For us to be misinformationists, in my mind, would mean that all the data from trials and studies that exist for therapeutics in Covid;
- the overwhelming preponderance of data for the efficacy and safety of ivermectin in Covid shows it to be ineffective and dangerous
- the overwhelming preponderance of data for the vaccines show they are safe and effective
Basically, it comes down to how you interpret the body of evidence which currently exists. Paul and I adhered rigidly to a “totality of the evidence” approach, drawing from in-vitro, in-vivo, clinical and epidemiologic data. All of it lined up in a truly magnificent, inspiring, and unprecedented way. Well, except for the “Big 7 RCT’s” which manipulated the design, conduct and analyses to conclude ivermectin was ineffective. I spent literally hundreds of hours (along with others like Alexandros Marinos), publishing critiques which exposed the most absurd scientific misconduct I had ever witnessed. If interested, here are just some of those critiques, e.g. Oxfords’ PRINCIPLE trial, the TOGETHER trial (three parts, here, here, and here, and the NIH ACTIV-6 trial )
We also evolved with the data, unlike the agencies who had quickly determined in December of 2020 that the vaccines were safe and effective and never, ever veered from that stance up until this day. In contrast, the founding members of the FLCCC, for quite a long time, differed in respect to the efficacy, safety, and need for the mRNA vaccines. I was the first and most vocal against the mRNA vaccines (starting in April 2021) which actually almost led to the breakup of the FLCCC or at least the membership of the original 5.
Prior to April 2021 I was simply neutral/skeptical. That skepticisim was due to what I thought might be folly in trying to vaccinate against a coronavirus (I knew that historically coronavirus vaccines had failed because the vaccinated animals developed antibody dependent enhancement and also that coronaviruses mutate rapidly). Then I did my first deep dive on VAERS and the epidemiologic data showing massive spikes in mortality and hospitalizations timed with the rollout of the jabs across dozens of countries. Voila, I was now “anti-vaxx.”
I continued to track and analyze the ever-emerging data and the horrors they revealed. This work ultimately led the FLCCC to reach an internal “consensus” that the vaccines should be avoided at all costs (literally at all costs as none of the costs incurred by taking the jab were worth someones life). Anyway, I just wanted to show that we evolved with the data, always questioning and reviewing as new data emerged.
I will end by reminding all of how dangerous the ABIM’s actions will be to all of our lives because it will further erode and/or literally destroy the patient-physician relationship. As I wrote in a previous Op-ED in the Daily Caller on January 31, 2023, “A War Is Still Being Waged Against Doctors Who Question Covid Orthodoxy:”
By virtue of their professional training, doctors must advise patients on available treatments and known risks of any treatment or procedure. By threatening doctors who might provide information different than their preferred worldview, ABIM is disrupting the doctor-patient relationship.
When allowed to practice their craft freely, physicians can prevent societal disaster by focusing on individual patients, informed by clinical experience.
Groups like the ABIM, and public medical officials like Fauci, should support and encourage evidence-based debate and patient-centered care.
Instead, they have suppressed both that debate and treatment approach by persecuting its proponents. This campaign must be stopped, its origins and evolution must be thoroughly documented, and it must never be allowed to recur. Physician autonomy must be restored lest all patients suffer.
Walz’s 2020 Covid Snitch Hotline Sparks Debate Amid VP Bid
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 8, 2024
In 2020, as the reaction to the Covid pandemic tightened its global grip, the administration of Minnesota’s Democratic Governor, Tim Walz, controversially initiated a hotline encouraging citizens to report non-compliant neighbors, opening a Pandora’s box of surveillance reminiscent of dystopian literature.
This move has once again sparked discussion about Walz, following his newly-minted status as the running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris in the imminent 2024 presidential election.
Serving a dual purpose, the hotline — referred to by critics as the Covid snitch line — enabled thousands of Minnesotans to both voice their concerns about perceived health risks and expose those allegedly flouting the restrictive coronavirus-sensitive rules revolving around gatherings and social activities.
Referred to by some as “the Office of Public Safety Stay At Home Hotline,” the service became a platform for callers to report everything from religious congregation activities to outdoor sports events.
The line even reportedly recorded concerns about a local church’s activities potentially violating the mandated rules.
Complaints received via the hotline were varied in nature. Anything from unmasked shopping for nonessential items to unsanctioned social gatherings was fair game, echoing mistrust amongst friends and neighbors in the wake of the controversial crackdown.
Judges Back Meta in Vaccine “Misinformation” Battle, Free Speech Advocates Vow to Fight On
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 10, 2024
The 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled this week in favor of Meta, Facebook’s parent company. The case was brought forward by the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) over allegations that the social media giant violated free speech rights.
The lawsuit, initiated in August 2020 and later updated in December, claimed that Facebook, along with its CEO Mark Zuckerberg and two fact-checking entities, Science Feedback, and the Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact site, was complicit in an unconstitutional act of privately exercising governmental censorship. CHD alleges that Facebook, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal institutions, is censoring content and discussions that the government is barred from suppressing under the First Amendment.
We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.
The plaintiff specifically accused these sides of working in tandem to unfairly stifle valid attempts to discuss vaccine safety on Facebook, often through indirect yet sensorial measures like the use of warning labels. According to CHD, this type of arrangement between public entities and private corporations represents a breach of the First Amendment due to its perceived status as “state action.”
Despite these arguments, the 9th Circuit court concluded that CHD was not successful in meeting the initial requirement for state action, as the censorship inflicted was more a result of Meta’s content moderation policies and not any directive under federal law. Further, the court also asserted that CHD did not present any evidence of a binding agreement requiring Facebook to execute any particular action in response to misinformation about vaccines.
Although all judges did not share the same opinion, Circuit Judge Daniel P. Collins presented a partially dissenting viewpoint. He opined that the interactions between Meta and the Government involving the suppression of specific types of vaccine-related speech were substantial enough to evoke First Amendment considerations.
Expressing disappointment and worry, CHD CEO Mary Holland stated, “If we cannot stop the government’s joint action with Big Tech to censor unwanted information, our First Amendment is a pyrrhic victory — it means almost nothing in our real world of social media.” While she was pleased with the non-unanimous nature of the decision, Holland hinted at the possibility of appealing to the US Supreme Court after further review.
At the heart of the court battle, ongoing for almost four years, were claims, primarily leveled by CHD’s then-Chairman and Chief Executive Counsel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that tactics employed by the US Government to pressure Facebook into censoring vaccine “misinformation” were existential threats.
‘They Have to Be Stopped’: Woman Says COVID Hospital Protocols Caused Husband’s Death
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 8, 2024
In June 2021, 61-year-old Jeffrey R. Smith was healthy, active and enjoying his 42nd year of marriage to Sharon Smith. That same month, they both came down with COVID-19, but their symptoms were mild and there was little cause for concern.
When Jeffrey’s symptoms lingered just a bit longer than those of his wife, he visited an urgent care center.
That visit marked the beginning of a 39-day ordeal that resulted in his hospitalization, a loss of 47 pounds, and, ultimately, his death, on Aug. 11, 2021, at Mease Countryside Hospital in Safety Harbor, Florida.
Jeffrey’s cause of death was officially listed as COVID-19. But when Sharon examined his approximately 6,000 pages of medical records, she discovered he had sustained kidney damage, likely due to repeated doses of medications including remdesivir, a drug known to stop kidney function in patients.
Sharon also discovered that doctors at the hospital did not treat her husband’s pulmonary embolism — or blood clot — which he developed during his hospitalization. Instead, she alleges doctors insisted she allow him to be placed on a ventilator and that she sign a do not resuscitate (DNR) order for him.
In an interview with The Defender, Sharon said the treatment her husband received at the hospital was incentivized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) COVID-19 hospital protocols — and by the fact that neither she nor her husband had received a COVID-19 vaccine.
Sharon shared extensive documentation with The Defender to corroborate her story.
‘He didn’t give his consent to anything’
On July 4, 2021, Sharon said she “just didn’t think my husband was breathing as deep as I was.” Out of concern, she recommended they visit a local urgent care center for a chest X-ray.
“When we went to urgent care and they checked his blood pressure, everything was normal,” Sharon said. However, the couple was sent to Mease Countryside Hospital for X-rays.
Sharon recalled that she could not stay at the hospital due to COVID-19 restrictions, but was told she could return in two hours to pick up her husband. However, about 30 minutes later, her husband called and said the hospital was going to keep him overnight.
“I said, why?” Sharon recalled. “He wasn’t struggling to breathe. … Blood pressure was good, temperature was good.” Despite this, Sharon was told that her husband was going to be kept “on a little oxygen.”
“What we didn’t know at the time was that they had given him two doses of remdesivir, and he didn’t give his consent to anything,” Sharon said. Doctors administered the two doses within three hours of admitting Jeffrey to the hospital.
He had a D-dimer test for pulmonary embolisms, and it was normal, Sharon said. “Everything was normal. He was so healthy going in. He took no medications, had no health issues at all. He walked three to six miles a week. We just had our checkup at the doctor. So, there was nothing there.”
Later that evening, Sharon said someone from the hospital called “in a panic, in the middle of the night … that they had to move Jeff up to the COVID ICU [intensive care unit] to just observe him a little bit more.”
The following day, Sharon said a doctor told Jeffrey that he was “probably going to have to go on the ventilator.” According to Sharon, when he asked why he had to be ventilated when he had come to the hospital for a chest X-ray — and mentioned that his wife would not agree to this — he was told “Well, your wife is going to have to like this or you’re going to die.”
“I said, ‘Oh my goodness, you’re not going to die.’ First of all, because we trusted the doctors, we trusted the hospital. We never in our wildest imaginations thought that you would go in for anything and they would try to harm you, but that’s exactly what they did,” Sharon told The Defender.
As time went on, the doctors gave him more and more oxygen, and more and more drugs, Sharon said, although she wasn’t informed about it. She only learned about the medications when she reviewed Jeffrey’s medical records after his death.
“The drugs that they were giving him … Precedex, propofol, fentanyl, midazolam … these are the drugs that they use to euthanize people,” Sharon said.
‘They stopped feeding him, giving him any kind of water, cleaning him’
Sharon said there were other examples of the hospital mistreating her husband.
“They stopped feeding him, giving him any kind of water, cleaning him,” she said, recalling that during a FaceTime conversation, he looked “awful.”
“I said, ‘Have you had a shower? Have they washed?’ He goes, ‘No, they haven’t.’ He looks awful. His hair’s a mess. He’s unshaven and he hasn’t had his bedding changed in a week. He hasn’t got any different clothes on,” Sharon recalled.
Her husband urged her not to make an issue of it, according to Sharon.
“When I would say something to the nurses, Jeff would say, ‘Sharon, don’t make waves, because they’re taking it out on me.’ And at the time, I didn’t understand. I didn’t think they were doing bad things, purposely doing bad things to him. I thought they were just being neglectful,” she said.
Sharon said it was difficult to speak to a doctor or to get authorization to visit Jeffrey.
“Every day I would say, I want the doctor to call me. The doctor would call me. Sometimes they were rude to me, sometimes they were short with me, some were OK.” She had to “plead” with a hospital administrator in one instance to be allowed a 15-minute visit.
“I got up there to see Jeff, and he was just a mess. I mean, they weren’t getting him out of the bed. He was just deteriorating in front of my eyes,” Sharon recalled.
On another occasion, Sharon said she was allowed a visit for “17 minutes, exactly” and was told she would soon be permitted daily visits. Later that day, Sharon called to check on Jeffrey and was told he was “relaxed and had some ice cream.”
A half-hour later, “I get a call from the hospital and it’s a panic … they said, ‘We’re going to put Jeff on the ventilator right now. He had a panic attack and his oxygen level dropped and he can’t get it back up, so we have to put him on the ventilator.’”
Sharon said she was offered the opportunity to speak with Jeffrey via FaceTime. “I got 20 seconds to see my husband’s face, and when I think back now, he wasn’t gasping for air or anything like that. He just looked scared.”
According to Sharon, she was told Jeffrey would be ventilated for three days “just to give his lungs a break.” Yet, “he was on the ventilator for 20 days after that” — until the day he died.
‘They yelled and screamed at me’
According to Sharon, the doctors repeatedly told her that as long as his kidneys weren’t involved, he would be OK. Yet, “as soon as he got on the ventilator, that’s when they said, ‘Oh, his kidneys are struggling.’ And that’s what remdesivir does.”
Jeffrey was placed on CRRT (continuous renal replacement therapy), a slow dialysis machine. This continued until Aug. 11, 2021, when Sharon remembered a doctor called her and said Jeffrey was “tolerating the CRRT really well” and that he would “try a couple different things” and call back.
“He called me back a couple hours later and said, ‘Jeff’s going to code out today,’” Sharon recalled. “I’m like, ‘a couple hours ago he was doing OK.’”
Sharon says she insisted on visiting her husband, but the doctor “fought” her on it, before relenting. When she did visit, hospital staff told her to “look through the glass” at her husband, before finally being allowed into the room “for two minutes.”
“When I came out, they started to pressure me to put a DNR on him, and I said, ‘I’m not putting a DNR on him.’ They kept pressuring me. I said, ‘my son and I are going to talk about it. We’ll call you back.’ We called them back and I said, ‘we’ve decided that we are not going to do that because if we do it then there is no hope,’” she said.
“They yelled and screamed at me on the phone, but I stuck to my guns,” Sharon recalled. “And a couple hours later, they called and said that Jeff had died.”
Blood clot, kidney troubles began after remdesivir administered
Sharon observed several abnormalities during her husband’s hospitalization and also when she reviewed his medical records.
“What I know now is that his D-dimer levels — and I have all the records to back this up — the evidence is that everything was in the normal range.”
She added:
“After the two doses of remdesivir in the hospital in the ER [emergency room], within three hours of being in the ER, that’s when he developed the blood clot. And they noted it. They were aware of it a couple of times. They noted it, but they didn’t do anything about it.
“The day after he had two doses of remdesivir … doctors noted that his D-dimer is now very elevated, which means you have a pulmonary embolism.”
“They did not treat it for two weeks, and they tested five times within that two-week period,” Sharon said, noting that Jeffrey “ended up having six doses of remdesivir.”
Sharon said Jeffrey was also administered a monoclonal antibody, “one dose to the tune of $27,000,” even though “it was already too late for that — you need to have that in the beginning. This was already 10 days in.”
Ultimately though, for Sharon, her husband’s fate rested on the lack of treatment for his blood clot.
“That’s where it started,” she said. “If they would have treated that blood clot on day one — because people have blood clots all the time — it’s something that you can fix … and send him home. But they didn’t choose to do that. It was like they had him and he was a cash cow for them,” she said, referring to the COVID-19 hospital protocols.
The protocols, prescribed by the CDC, are the subject of a white paper, “Follow the Money: Blood Money in U.S. Healthcare,” which found that the U.S. government incentivized hospitals under the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) to administer treatments such as remdesivir to COVID-19 patients.
According to the report, the average per-person incentive in the U.S. for a “complex COVID inpatient” is $292,566. Hospitals received money for each COVID-19 admission, for the use of remdesivir and for placing patients on ventilators.
‘They were making an example’ of the unvaccinated
Sharon said she believes that Jeffrey’s treatment at the hospital was connected to his unvaccinated status.
“The first day that Jeff was there … the doctor called me and the first question she asked [was], ‘Why weren’t you guys vaccinated?’” Sharon recalled. “I said, ‘Well, because we chose not to be. We are healthy. And this vaccine came out awful fast and we didn’t have a good feeling about it.’”
“That is noted in Jeff’s records over and over and over, that he was not vaccinated or I wasn’t. And at the time that he was in the hospital, it was really when the vaccine was really being pushed out. Basically, they were making an example of the people that came in there that were not vaccinated,” Sharon said.
Sharon also noted that, at Mease Countryside Hospital, patients were being admitted with either an “unvaccinated” or “unknown” vaccination status, perhaps to conceal the number of COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated.
“I know that from a number of nurses that are whistleblowers, that have come out and said that there wasn’t a place to put if you were vaccinated,” Sharon said.
Sharon has since become involved with activist groups who have spoken out on behalf of hospital protocol victims, including the FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation and the COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal Memory Project (CHBMP), which developed a list of the 25 commonalities shared by most hospital protocol victims.
According to Sharon, “Of those 25, I think there’s two that didn’t happen” to Jeffrey, noting that her requests that ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and vitamin D were refused, while vitamin C was administered only on the day of Jeffrey’s death.
“When you look through the drug list, you’ll see that that increased intensely as we got right to the end. He didn’t have a fighting chance,” Sharon said.
Sharon encouraged others who have lost a loved one at a hospital to a COVID-19 diagnosis to carefully check their medical records.
“People need to look at the death certificate. If it says ‘COVID,’ you need to get your medical records and have a doctor, have somebody that’s qualified to look at those records and go through them, just like I did. And they’re going to find that it’s probably not what they think. It’s much worse,” Sharon said.
She also encouraged victims and their families to speak out, noting that even a mere conversation with others can make a difference.
“There’s been many people that once you start to talk about it, then they go, ‘wait a minute.’ So, they start to connect the dots that this could have happened to their person,” Sharon said.
She added:
“There’s a couple of reasons why I fight this so much. One, because they took my husband away from me, and he wasn’t sick and he should never have died. But I’m thinking ahead for my children and my grandchildren. If we don’t stand up and fight for this right now and stop this, it’s going to continue, and we can’t have that. They have to be stopped.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Evidence presented to the Scottish Inquiry
Tragic testimonies ignored by mainstream media
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | July 30, 2024
The Scottish Inquiry has heard repeated testimonies on a wide range of topics, but what has been said in relation to what happened in care homes during lockdown is particularly striking. The stories are those of neglect, abuse, denial of healthcare and repeated misuse of end of life medication resulting in deaths. Witness after witness has given concurring evidence.
These stories have only really reached our attention thanks to the work of an independent citizen journalist (“Dave”) on Twitter and Substack. Neil Oliver has been the only mainstream journalist to have reported on these stories on his show in GB News, including interviews with our two co-chairs, Dr Clare Craig and Dr Jonathan Engler.
Here we publish a summary of the evidence from one woman which manages to encompass almost every aspect of the harm caused in care homes. It is the story of her grandmother who was admitted to a care home for mild dementia in autumn 2020.
“My gran was a very mischievous little old lady who was great fun and very talkative. She used to be a very active person when she was younger and tried to keep that up when she was older but, in her later years, she was less active due to widespread pain, and she was unsteady on her feet.”
After a fall “Social Services then intervened and said that they felt my gran should be in a more regimented type setting.”
“I actually took her to the home and that was very difficult as I just had to hand her over to a care home staff member and leave her as I was not allowed in.”
The staff called her by the wrong name but she didn’t know because she depended on lip reading and they were all masked.
~1st Nov 2020:
Positive test result for covid they called to say “my gran had tested positive but that she was fine and that they would keep us updated.”
2nd Nov 2020:
Granddaughter asked to authorise Do Not Resuscitate:
“My answer first of all was, ‘Well, why are you asking me that, as you said she only had mild Covid?’. My second point was that this was not a decision I would make at the moment as my grandmother was lucid, still talking and it would be a discussion to have with her.”
Despite this, a DNR was put in place without proper authorization.
3rd Nov 2020:
They proposed giving her a “mild sedative” to keep her from removing her nasal cannula. The family agreed, not realising it was Midazolam, which can suppress respiratory function.
“On the 3rd November 2020, about 3 o’clock in the afternoon the care home contacted my mother to explain that her (grandmother’s) oxygen saturation had dropped but that it was generally due to the fact that she had a nasal cannula and that every time she went to the toilet she kept forgetting to put it back in.”
“At this point my grandmother was eating and drinking by herself, moving to the toilet herself, that there was only mild symptoms and that they were giving her the nasal oxygen just as a precaution as her stats were a little low but, with the cannula in, she was fine. Her stats had actually improved from the previous day according to her medical records.”
“I later found out my grandmother was on a full end of life protocol put on place by the doctor “just in case”. I don’t understand why this was administered as we were at no point informed that she was end of life and if we had been then why had we not been called to be with her? The way I look at it is that I think they have looked at her notes and seen the medication from the earlier shift and thought that she was “end of life”. My mum was never told it was Midazolam when the home asked if they could give my gran a mild sedative.”
4th Nov 2020:
Granddaughter received a call at 4:11 am saying her grandmother had deteriorated. When she arrived at 4:30 am, she was told her grandmother had died at 4:20 am and went in.
“there were only three staff members, including one nurse, caring for 26 residents”
“She was stone cold and, in my opinion, she had been dead a lot longer than twenty minutes.”
“There was no cannula or oxygen tank in the room.”
“The funeral was also difficult because of the numbers that were allowed. I think a lot more would have been there in normal times. The people there had masks and there was no singing. My gran had loved music and she liked singing. Years before, my gran had given me full instructions for her funeral and I could only follow some of them. When you can’t fulfil somebody’s dying wishes because of rules, it’s hard. To go there and not be able to hug your mum or your dad or your brother is really difficult.”
It’s shocking to imagine one person experiencing all these horrific events. Now consider the reality: each of these horrors has actually happened to countless individuals. This widespread suffering is even more disturbing.
Shocking testimony regarding Remdesivir
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | July 30, 2024
Some rather shocking testimony has emerged from the USA.
An American doctor working in Everett, Washington (just north of Seattle) called James Miller, recently published an attestation which can be downloaded from here.
This was written to be filed as evidence with some attorneys who are petitioning state Attorney Generals to investigate hospital administrations and others responsible for what some regard as homicides. More about that can be read here.
The whole statement is worth reading, but in our view the following in particular stands:
From just that small extract, the following can be surmised:
- treatment was entirely protocol-driven — this person was well enough to be in a car and her “covid-19” was incidental; there were, however, recommendations in place that notwithstanding that, she should receive remdesivir just because a protocol said so
- usually these protocols were followed, regardless of clinical need, but just because a person had a positive test
- the protocols, however, could be flexibly applied and in this case a doctor decided that a valid criterion for making a decision was how “nice” the patient was
- a treatment was actively avoided here “because she was nice” — indicating that the doctors knew that per-protocol they ought to be giving treatments which they themselves knew to be harmful
The core departure from medical norms on display here from which this fortunate patient escaped — the rigid application of “protocols” by compliant unquestioning doctors resulting in harmful treatment being given — is an extremely disturbing phenomenon. It would be naive to think this only happened in the USA, and was seen only in association with the particular treatment — remdesivir — mentioned here.
It’s worth noting that the tenacious Jessica Hockett has written this article in which she suggests a series of further questions she’d like to ask Dr Miller.
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Book Review
On Herd Mentality
By Jeb Smith | April 14, 2026
I no longer trust “we the people,” because of the powers influencing them. Media and government schooling form their general ideas on reality and governance. Therefore, it’s not a case of the voter choosing the politicians. Instead, the system is conditioning and conforming the voter to the authorities’ desires.
In democracies, the people are kept occupied working and paying taxes, too busy to acquire information outside the approved sources. You will find they know and care far more about the next iPhone than political philosophy. Of those who hold some interest, 95% just toe the party line, holding the same opinion as the primary media source they listen to. They lack both the desire and time to expand their horizons.
Media’s purpose is to conform people’s thought to a preferred goal, which is why Republican and Democratic voters both firmly hold their parties’ general stances, reciting the same talking points. The people do not originate ideas; their thoughts are fed to them by the media so they can consume, digest, and parrot back whatever they are served. When it comes to politics, we rarely think for ourselves. We are told what to think.
Watch PBS, MSNBC and read your local newspaper for six months, and you will receive a particular view and understanding of the world. Then listen to The Mike Church Show, The Blaze, and The Daily Wire, and you will get not just another perspective but a whole different world of facts and events. The world people believe they live in can be entirely different depending on their news sources.
We enjoy seeing the enemy humiliated, which describes why those engulfed in politics love their preferred media sources; they keep returning for more like a drug addict. Networks ensure their “experts” align with the worldview they and their audience desire. The people who watch PBS, BBC, and so forth expect a specific perspective to be presented. Fox News watchers demand the same. In doing this, we both encourage and assure we are misled.
In their book Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, professors Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels argue, based on substantial research, that voters do not decide the party platform and agenda. Instead, the parties control the “ideologies” of the voters. When the party the voter identifies with changes its position, the individuals also change theirs. They discovered the individual would quickly adopt the views of their group; they will ignore or change their own opinions over time to fit in with the collective they identify with. Achen and Bartels wrote “group memberships largely drove policy views, not vice versa.” … continue
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