Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.
Right Wing Health Care Providers Making Millions Off Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin
Over the past few weeks on Nina-Bytes, we've briefly touched on various forms of pandemic profiteering and its fallout; a problem that clearly goes well beyond price gouging and speaks to the fundamental neofeudalist transformation our society is undergoing as we speak. Today I thought I'd stay on theme by examining recent news that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis is launching an investigation into two right wing propaganda groups for pushing bunk Covid treatments. Amazingly enough, this investigation is primarily the result of journalism published in Time Magazine, and facts revealed in this September 28th, 2021 story by Micah Lee, over on The Intercept.
In that article, Lee details how two (extremely) right wing-aligned organizations, America’s Frontline Doctors and telemedicine provider SpeakWithAnMD.com, raked in millions of dollars shucking ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and bogus online consultations. Delving into the politics of these organizations, Lee adds:
"America’s Frontline Doctors, which debuted in the summer of 2020, has close ties to a network of right-wing efforts to undermine public health during the pandemic, including the Tea Party Patriots. AFLDS’s founder, physician Simone Gold, was arrested and charged after the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. She and other doctors have appeared in widely shared videos arguing that the drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin — which are primarily used to treat malaria in humans and parasitic worms in livestock, respectively — are effective treatments for Covid-19, despite warnings from the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention against using them.
The extremely partisan group also misleads people about Covid-19 vaccines, which they refer to as “experimental biological agents,” and against public health measures like vaccine mandates, masking, social distancing, and restrictions on businesses. In a video titled “The Truth About Covid-19 Vaccines,” which has received over 1.3 million views, Gold falsely argues that Covid-19 is not very deadly and that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus itself. Over 690,000 Americans so far have died from the virus, and unvaccinated people now make up 99 percent of recent Covid-19 deaths."
Frankly I could quote the entire article, but the short story here is that the whole bloody thing is a scam to sell bunk medicine to sick people; and it's a scam with reactionary political overtones at that. In fact, when it comes to ivermectin in particular, this isn't even a new scam; Trump himself ran this same game with hydroxychloroquine all the way back in 2020.
Now maybe that doesn't surprise you; it probably shouldn't, given the popularity of vaccine fearmongering and ivermectin on the openly fascist Fox News network. Unfortunately as anyone in the online left who hasn't been living in a cave for the past year can tell you, this news will come as a shock to a lot of people who really should have known better. Lead by faux-left pied piper reactionaries, online leftism has developed a massive anti-vax crank problem; one that doesn't appear to be vanishing even as the anti-vax movement itself disintegrates.
The mainstream media doesn't seem very interested in this story, and I don't have a lot of faith in the power of Congress to stop fascist culture war tactics at this point. As a member of the online left however, I need to ask the people around me if they're paying attention as this whole grift unravels? I don't know, and frankly I don't care why folks who think they're leftists signed up for reactionary anti-vax nonsense, but surely at the point you're following guys who hawk horse deworming paste alongside some of the worst nazis on the internet, it's time to reconsider your position, isn't it?
If it isn't, maybe it's time you stopped calling yourself a leftist and just got on with your new life campaigning for "populists" like Josh Hawley.
- nina illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog
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