Ron Johnson Suspended by YouTube After Posting About Hydroxychloroquine
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YouTube suspended the account of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Friday for seven days after he posted a video of a speech in which he touted hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for Covid-19. The platform removed the video and prevented Johnson for uploading new videos for a week. A YouTube spokesperson told Fox News the video violated its “medical misinformation policies.”
“Big Tech and mainstream media believe they are smarter than medical doctors who have devoted their lives to science and use their skills to save lives,” Johnson said in a statement. “They have decided there is only one medical viewpoint allowed, and it is the viewpoint dictated by government agencies. How many lives will be lost as a result? How many lives could have been saved with a free exchange of medical ideas?”
In the video, Johnson said hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are “incredibly safe.”
Those two drugs were used early during the pandemic in studies to treat Covid-19, but were deemed ineffective by U.S. government health agencies. In June of 2020, the National Institutes of Health stopped a clinical trial, and concluded that hydroxychloroquine “does no harm, but provides no benefit.” The Food and Drug Administration advised against taking the drug to treat Covid-19.
In the removed video Johnson said that government health agencies “pretty well sabotaged the ability for many doctors to even consider hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, or other of these multi-drug generic repurpose drug approaches here.”
Hydroxychloroquine came into public view in March 2020 after Elon Musk suggested it could be effective against the virus. The tongue-twisting drug made big headlines when then-President Donald Trump began promoting it. In May of last year, he claimed he’d been taking the drug. “And I’m still here,” he said. A day later, a reporter noted to Trump that the FDA had warned against taking it. The president responded by calling it “a Trump enemy statement.”
