Posted on 07/29/2020 7:33:00 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Millions of people have seen a viral video of doctors making false and misleading claims about the coronavirus pandemic.
The physicians in the video are associated with a group called America’s Frontline Doctors, which advocates against official narratives of the coronavirus pandemic.
All of the physicians we fact-checked have a history of making unproven, conspiratorial or bizarre medical claims.
Despite social media platforms’ efforts to remove it, millions of people have seen a viral video of doctors making false and misleading claims about the coronavirus pandemic.
Breitbart, a conservative news outlet, published the 40-plus-minute-long video on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on July 27. It’s a live stream of a Washington, D.C., press conference organized by the Tea Party Patriots, a conservative group backed by Republican donors. Rep. Ralph Norman. R-S.C., attended the event.
The video went viral after it was widely shared in Facebook groups for anti-vaxxers and people against face masks. Other groups dedicated to conspiracy theories like QAnon further amplified the video. Eventually, public figures like President Donald Trump and Madonna shared it with millions of social media followers.
RELATED: Fact-checking a video of doctors talking about coronavirus, hydroxychloroquine
"There was a group of doctors yesterday, a large group that were put on the internet. For some reason, the internet wanted to take them down and took them off," Trump said during a July 28 press conference. "I don’t know why. I think they’re very respected doctors."
Social media platforms removed the video because it contains several claims that run counter to official recommendations from public health officials. But who are the doctors who made them? PolitiFact investigated.
The physicians in the video are associated with a group called America’s Frontline Doctors, which advocates against official narratives of the coronavirus pandemic. The group, whose now-defunct website was registered on July 16, was in Washington for a "White Coat Summit," after which some of the doctors met with Vice President Mike Pence.
All of the physicians we fact-checked have a history of making unproven, conspiratorial or bizarre medical claims.
(Screenshot from Facebook)
Dr. Stella Immanuel is a Houston-based primary care physician and minister. In the video, she claimed that the coronavirus "has a cure."
"It is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax," Immanuel said. "I know you people want to talk about a mask. Hello? You don’t need a mask. There is a cure."
We rated that False — and Immanuel has a track record of making unproven medical claims, such as believing in alien DNA.
Immanuel has a Texas medical license with specialties in pediatrics and emergency medicine. She says she has been practicing medicine in the United States or Canada for 24 years. She received her medical degree in Nigeria.
Immanuel operates a clinic in a strip mall next to her church, Firepower Ministries. In sermons published on YouTube and articles on the church’s now-defunct website, first unearthed by the Daily Beast, Immanuel makes several outlandish medical claims.
Among them: Medical problems like cysts are caused by sex with "spirit husbands" and "spirit wives," DNA from aliens is being used in medicine and scientists are developing vaccines to prevent people from being religious.
More recently, Immanuel has doubled down on hydroxychloroquine, which is not a proven treatment (or cure) for COVID-19.
"If you have taken hydroxychloroquine and you have been cured, it’s time to speak up," she said in a July 28 Facebook video.
We reached out to Immanuel for a comment, but we haven’t heard back.
(Screenshot from Facebook)
Dr. Dan Erickson is a California-based osteopath who co-owns an urgent care clinic. In the video, he claimed that state lockdowns have little effect on the coronavirus fatality rate.
"So this measured approach I’m talking about isn’t made up. It’s going on in Sweden, and their deaths are about 564 per million. UK, full lockdown, 600 deaths per million," he said. "So we’re seeing that the lockdowns aren’t decreasing significantly the number of deaths per million."
We found that those numbers are in the ballpark, but they’re cherry-picked. And Erickson has a history of making misleading and unproven claims about the coronavirus.
Erickson co-owns an urgent care clinic in the Bakersfield, Calif., area. He is a former emergency room physician and has a medical license through the Osteopathic Medical Board of California.
In May, Erickson appeared with Dr. Artin Massihi, co-owner of Accelerated Urgent Care, in another viral video called "Plandemic," which is filled with conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic. In it, they claimed that stay-at-home orders and face masks are not necessary because they weaken your immune system. The doctors made similar assertions in an April press conference and on Fox News.
In a joint statement, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine condemned Erickson and Massihi’s claims, saying that they "strongly advise against using any statements of Drs. Erickson and Massihi as a basis for policy and decision making."
We reached you to Accelerated Urgent Care for a comment, but we haven’t heard back.
(Screenshot from Facebook)
Dr. Simone Gold is the founder of America’s Frontline Doctors and a Los Angeles-based physician. In the video, she made misleading claims about hydroxychloroquine prescriptions and coronavirus case numbers.
"We’re here because we feel as though the American people have not heard from all of the expertise that’s out there all across our country," Gold said at the start of the press conference.
According to the Medical Board of California, Gold holds an active medical license. She specializes in emergency medicine and general practice. She graduated from Rosalind Franklin University’s Chicago Medical School in 1989.
For the past few months, Gold has been involved in a drive aimed at mobilizing doctors that believe states should reopen faster. The Save Our Country Coalition, which seeks to raise millions of dollars, is backed by advocates linked to several conservative organizations, including the FreedomWorks Foundation and the Tea Party Patriots, according to the Guardian.
As part of that effort, hundreds of physicians sent an open letter to Trump in late May that called state shutdowns "a mass casualty incident" — despite evidence that suggests stay-at-home orders prevented new coronavirus cases and deaths. Gold was the first signature on the letter.
Gold has also appeared on conservative talk radio and podcast programs, during which she has advocated for the use of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 patients. She has donated to several Republican causes in the past, including Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
Gold told the Associated Press that she started to speak out about the pandemic because there is "no scientific basis that the average American should be concerned" about COVID-19. (Public health experts say otherwise.)
We reached out to Gold for a comment, but we haven’t heard back.
Politifact | Daniel Funke
The author makes simple mistakes and cannot be trusted. For example, the author concludes that “conspiracy theories” include how “face masks are not necessary because they weaken your immune system.” On the contrary, trustworthy experts show how face masks are not necessary, since face masks cannot block smoke or paint particles which are bigger than viruses.
Yes. Here is the cure for Covid-19, which is the same for previous Covids:
Azithromycin 500 mg once a day for five days
Hydoxychloroquine 200 mg once a day for five days
Zinc sulfate 220 mg once a day for 5 days.
Azithromycin alone should be enough to wipe out Covid-19.
All are practicing physicians and have treated patients with CoVid successfully
That’s good enough. That’s better than Fauci the Fraud who has spent his career as an administrator in research
I’d like to know about Funke’s medical degrees and experience.
I tell my friends, like Bones to Kirk, “Jim, I’m a journalist, not a doctor, but I listen to all sides on an issue”.
[”In space, there is no COVID-19. Species 7943, perhaps, but not COVID”].
Saw about 5-6 doctors on the first pic, but the article only addresses three, if I read it right.
Also, the accusations sound like gossip mostly, and don’t address the professional qualifications and abilities of the doctors.
Might appeal to people who can’t think for themselves, but that’s kinda how we got here in the first place.
Daniel Funke is using the typical Leftist political tactic of personal destruction rather than argue the merits of the argument.
Daniel Funke (born 23 July 1981)[1] is a German journalist. Since 2019 he is the head of the Berlin office for the German publishing house Hubert Burda Media and its chief lobbyist.
From 2002 to 2009, Daniel Funke studied Germanistik and history at Humboldt-Universität Berlin. Between 2004 and 2007, he also worked at the private TV channel Sat 1 and the magazine “Blitz” (”Flash”). In 2007, he became an editor at the yellow press magazine Bunte, and in 2012, the head of their Berlin office.
Funke is married to the German politician Jens Spahn (CDU) since 2017.[2] Funke caused controversy for a story in the Bunte about the then new US-ambassador Richard Grenell. At the time of publication, it was concealed that Funke-Spahn couple were friends with Grenell and his partner.[3][4]
Yet the ones holding the opposite positions cannot point to real research to back up their claims.
Mask mandates = spike in cases = spike in deaths?
Actually, free, Dr. Risch’s peer-reviewed scientific paper on it was published on May 27, 2020, in the American Journal of Epidemiology, Oxford University Press. Dr. Risch has over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles published. He’s no lightweight "kook."
Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic CrisisHarvey A Risch
American Journal of Epidemiology, kwaa093,
Paper Source, Oxford University Press
Published: 27 May 2020Abstract More than 1.6 million Americans have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and >10 times that number carry antibodies to it. High-risk patients presenting with progressing symptomatic disease have only hospitalization treatment with its high mortality. An outpatient treatment that prevents hospitalization is desperately needed. Two candidate medications have been widely discussed: remdesivir, and hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin. Remdesivir has shown mild effectiveness in hospitalized inpatients, but no trials have been registered in outpatients. Hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin has been widely misrepresented in both clinical reports and public media, and outpatient trials results are not expected until September. Early outpatient illness is very different than later hospitalized florid disease and the treatments differ. Evidence about use of hydroxychloroquine alone, or of hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin in inpatients, is irrelevant concerning efficacy of the pair in early high-risk outpatient disease. Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy. Hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin has been used as standard-of-care in more than 300,000 older adults with multicomorbidities, with estimated proportion diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmias attributable to the medications 47/100,000 users, of which estimated mortality is <20%, 9/100,000 users, compared to the 10,000 Americans now dying each week. These medications need to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe.
Azithromycin, Covid-19, Doxycycline, Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir, SARS-CoV-2, Zinc
Topic: cardiac arrhythmia doxycycline azithromycin hydroxychloroquine ambulatory care services inpatients outpatients terminally ill antibodies mortality zinc older adult pandemics standard of care remdesivir sars-cov-2 covid-19
Issue Section: Special article
One of the things about double blind experiments that is very annoying to the experimenters is the God effect of ANY treatment. Just the faith and power of positive thinking cures people. Many times the sugar pill has a greater cure rate than the real drug they are testing. So whether the very inexpensive HCL-zinc-zpac works or not, in the words of President Trump: "What have you got to lose?" At a minimum these doctors are giving hope and optimism during a time of madness. And there is more hard scientific evidence HCL works than there is for face masks and 6 foot distancing.
I listen to George Noory on the radio many mornings while making breakfast. (waiting for the news-talk host to come on) Does that disqualify me for everything?
The rest of their “fact-checking” is not more than supplying an alternative opinion. Because their opinion is the “fact”, dontchaknow.
They’ve gone for the progressive, leftist, Liberal “guilt by association” fallacy too. This is a Reverse Galileo Gambit.
A Blue Herring is just as red as any other false claim herring they try, waving their fallacy flags frantically trying to point anywhere, saying "No, look over there, not here!". . . anywhere but at the truth right in front of them they don’t want people to see!
Unproven, bizarre, or conspiratorial claims? Sounds like Fauci.
The people treated with hydroxichloroquine are coming forward saying this is untrue. This is a proven drug that politicians have told pharmacists they can’t dipense. This should be between you and you doctor.
Meanwhile people are dying while politicians and the media are making your medical choices.
If you think that, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Azithromycin is a broad-spectrum antibiotic. It works on bacteria. Bacteria ONLY. It has zero ability to kill or inactivate viruses. no antibiotic does.
In actual fact, viruses are not really living things. They are not alive by the definition we use to define living. They don’t eat, excrete, or respirate. They process no energy. Near as we can tell, they don’t respond to stimuli. There’s nothing to kill. A virus can be disrupted, broken, but is that killed? The one thing a virus does that makes it appear living is it reproduces. But they’re copy machines.
Viruses are free wandering pieces, strands, of RNA or DNA unchained to an organism. If the virus breeches a cell wall, that RNA or DNA does as its chemically intended to do. It makes duplicates.
There’s a lot of argument about whether or not a virus can truthfully be called "life", or are they chemical reaction engines, following fairly easily understood rules. It seems more the latter.
Thank you for the excellent, in-depth summary of covid, cure/prevention.
Everybody should send this to their family members and friends to ease their fears caused by the lies/spins/misinformation by the lamestream media and dr. fraud and the RATS!!
I also emailed the video from the Frontline doctors and they are well-received - people told me it reassures them.
We really need to wage a huge counter campaign against the liars/cheaters about covid, in order to help counter tyrannies from the corrupt governors/health officials, and, re-elect Pres Trump.
Please keep on spreading the truth about covid by exposing the lies about covid. We must do everything possible to relieve people of their unfounded fears, to regain our freedom and to re-elect Pres Trump.
Another thing about using azithromycin or any antibiotic is that the bacteria eventually become resistant to them if not used properly. You wouldn’t want to take azithromycin as a prophylactic, especially when a virus is what you want to target.
How convenient.
Politifact only did smear bio’s on three of the more than 20 doctors who gave presentations.
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