Topic: WorldNetDaily
When last we checked in on fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons-linked doc and WorldNetDaily columnist Marilyn Singleton, she was doing a lot of ranting about coronavirus-related conspiracies. Like her AAPS compadres, she stayed in conspiracy mode for her July 16 WND column, playing the Lenin card:
Vladimir Lenin recognized that the media are propagandists and their information presented should be "easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive." With COVID-19, the media create irrational fear with daily charts of deaths and case numbers without corresponding recoveries. They fail to mention that many deaths were of patients with serious underlying conditions or who were already in hospice, had weeks to live and coincidentally tested positive. The raw numbers are unaccompanied by the CDC's instruction to classify a death as COVID-19 even if merely suspected or, in some cases, with a negative test. There is no corresponding warning with blinking lights that the tests have false positives or that the daily report of "increases" includes old tests that were not previously reported.
As Lenin noted, "ideas are much more fatal than guns." Thus, where propaganda and media bias do not succeed, censorship will. Currently, a vocal physician is being silenced and investigated for questioning the motives and possible over-reporting of COVID-19 as the cause of death. Censorship is our polite version of "disappearing" dissidents.
That "vocal physician" is actually a Minnesota state senator -- who is also an anti-vaxxer -- who spread the Singleton-endorsed conspiracy theory that a state’s allocation of federal funds depended on the number of COVID-19 deaths in the state.
Singleton stayed in conspiracy mode, stating that "Censorship, corrupt scientific inquiry and media bias have no place in medicine," then asserting that "lockdowns in Western Europe had no effect on COVID-19 deaths" and that "Most reviews conclude that masks do not slow down the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus." Actually, most masks are effective at blocking the virus.
And it wouldn't be an AAPS column without an obsession over hydroxychloroquine, which Singleton delcared that "had been favorably studied during the 2003 SARS epidemic." (Earth to Singleton: COVID-19 is not the 2003 SARS virus.)She touterd how "Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital's large three-month observational study that showed a significant reduction in mortality in hospitalized patients with HCQ and validated HCQ's more-than-60-year record of safety garnered little media attention"; in fact, experts have pointed out that the Henry Ford study is flawed because it was an observational study that lacked a randomized control group.
Singleton concluded with another conspiracy theory:
These (purposefully) chaotic times are an opportunity for a movement toward government control and the suppression of individuality. Lockdowns keep us apart and stifle the free exchange of ideas and social communion. As Eric Hoffer explained in "True Believer," a mass movement deliberately makes the present "mean and miserable. … People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident." Becoming a psychological cripple is not an option.
Is this chaos a new form of plastic surgery? When the bandages (masks) are removed will you be a changed person?
In her Aug. 3 column, Singleton stayed in hydroxychloroquine conspiracy mode:
Concurrently, physicians trying to save their patients' lives are being "canceled." YouTube removed as "misinformation" videos of the physicians who advocated for the use of hydroxychloroquine for early treatment of COVID-19, based on their extensive personal as well as treatment successes. Hydroxychloroquine is an FDA-approved medication with a 65 year history of safety.
With all the garbage on Twitter, the removal of the physicians' video based on the justification that it did not comport with World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations seems extreme. Recall that WHO also did not recommend wearing masks, the new Holy Grail of COVID-19 prevention. And are we to believe the same crowd who excoriated President Trump as racist for blocking travel from China at the end of January while they were encouraging people to frolic in crowded Chinatown in late February?
The physicians she's referring to here are the ones representing a right-wing who appeared in front of the Supreme Court to make a video -- the lead person of which believes that gynecological problems are caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches and has pushed conspiracy theories that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious and that the government is run by aliens and "reptilians."
(Also: Just because hydroxychloroquine has a "65 year history of safety" doesn't mean it's safe and effective against COVID-19.)
Singleton also invoked Attorney General William Barr's grilling before a congressional committee, which caused her into again going into the Soviet version of the Godwin rule by claiming that questioning from "unfriendly lawmakers" she doesn't like "officially crosses into Stalin's henchman's 'show me the man and I'll show you his crime' territory." She then ranted:
The vitriol and disregard for fact-finding on the part of members of Congress and the dissembling on the part of the social media giants leaves one wondering: Do the people who savaged Attorney General Barr and gave Big Tech a pass want people to live in fear of living life? Do they want people to be unemployed and dependent of the government for survival? Do they want children to stay home from school and regress from normal childhood development? Do they want the country's economic boom to remain in the rear view mirror? Would they allow people to needlessly die in order to gain political power?
The "allow people to needlessly die" claim was linked to a July 27 WND column by fellow AAPSer and HCQ conspiracy-monger Elizabeth Lee Vliet, who cited the dubious Henry Ford study to assert that "we can reasonably consider that 16,000 lives could have been saved since July 1" if HCQ had been approvedby the FDA.
The italics-happy Vliet echoed Singleton by ranting that "It is appalling that so many more Americans have died, while the physician who is head of the FDA has dawdled on approving HCQ for an urgent new use in this pandemic. Dr. Hahn knows full well the 65-year track record of safety worldwide in patients of all ages, all ethnic groups, and even pregnant women and nursing mothers."
