Newsmax's 'Non-Clinician' Blues

Newsmax has felt compelled to make sure readers know that several columns -- mostly making dubious claims about the coronavirus pandemic -- were written by a "non-clinician."

By Terry Krepel
Posted 6/27/2021

Over the past several months, Newsmax has added a note to several columns on the general subject of coronavirus stating, in one variation or another, that "the author is a non-clinician." That could be easily interpreted as Newsmax-speak for "the writer doesn't know what he's talking about," though the "non-clinician" tag has been added to other subjects as well.

The earliest example we could find of Newsmax's disclaimer was a Sept. 17 column by George Noory pushing the unproven idea that "the age-old spice turmeric" could help prevent COVID-19, adding, "I have been taking turmeric for years (daily) no flu and no COVID-19, knock on wood!" That was followed by a non-coronavirus-related example in a Sept. 21 column by Jared Whitley complaining about a government panel's recommendation to reduce alcohol consumption, insisting it was "the strictest the government has ever gotten with booze since Prohibition" -- even though the recommendations have no legal force and nobody is prohibiting anything.

In a Sept. 28 column, Noory hyped "confusion" over whether masks can help stop the spread of coronavirus, adding, "We may never know if face coverings will prevent the spread of COVID-19. I think people need to build an immunity." Actually, numerous experts agree that masks help prevent coronavirus spread.

That was followed by a Oct. 9 column by Bruce Abramson, who labored to downplay the effect of the pandemic even among the most susceptible to catching COVID-19:

While we still don’t know about lingering or long-term effects, we knew almost immediately that only the elderly, immunocompromised, or otherwise unhealthy faced an elevated risk of death.

Even there, the threat has been exaggerated greatly.

Data shows that even for those living in nursing homes — by far the most vulnerable segment of the population — recovery rates are around 84%. For Americans 70 and over — including those living in nursing homes — recovery rates are around 95%.

That means that among older Americans living independently, recovery rates are not far below the 99+% characterizing the population as a whole.

Andy Bloom served up a rare non-coronavirus-related example in an Oct. 30 column, a malicious pre-election attack on Joe Biden's mental health in which Bloom did admit, to his credit, that he's not a doctor:

To be clear, I have no formal medical training. I am not a doctor. I have not even seen Joe Biden close-up. However, I have watched my maternal grandmother go through a long battle with dementia and my father's suffering for nearly a decade before succumbing to Alzheimer's. It is a horrible disease that I would not wish on my worst enemy. I encourage readers to donate to the Alzheimer's Association to find a cure for this devastating illness.

What follows are observations from somebody who has lost a parent and grandparent to Alzheimer's and recognizes a few similarities Joe Biden exhibits. I have also referenced some of the latest research that confirms what I believe.

[...]

Tuesday is Election Day. The media should have investigated Joe Biden's mental capacity. They failed to do so, but it's something voters should consider as they step into the voting booth.

Things on the non-clinician front were quiet in November, but they fired up again in December. A Dec. 1 column by Rayne Guest went on a tirade against disinfectants:

While most disinfectants are regulated by the EPA as Antimicrobial Pesticides, some doctors refer to them as being like a modern day asbestos: initially thought to be wholly beneficial and relatively harmless, extended exposure resulted in dangerous health risks.

Similarly, it has been shown that people who use disinfectants without proper PPE are at risk for long term and even immediate health threats including eye irritation, headaches, neurologic symptoms, skin problems, and respiratory issues.

Ironically, having respiratory issues makes a person more vulnerable to COVID-19.

A Dec. 2 column by Seth Denson discussed storage and distribution issues regarding the COVID vaccines and was not terribly controversial. On Dec. 10 came another non-COVID example from Larry Alton, who wrote about sleep issues. In a Dec. 16 column, Brad Blakeman effusively praised President Trump for "inventing coronavirus vaccines in record time"; that's not what happened, but it's a political argument perhaps not necessarily deserving of the disclaimer.

But one columnist was eager to make up for that.

Mark Schulte

One of the most frequent recipients of the "non-clinician" tag is Mark Schulte, a retired math teacher. In his Dec. 7 column, he played a dishonest blame game on the pandemic, ranting that "a group of Democratic mayors and governors, who are responsible for a grossly disproportionate percentage of COVID deaths this year, have repeatedly demonstrated their total lack of public health "competence and expertise" in battling this epidemic." In fact, numerous Republican-run states are also among the states with the highest death rate.

On Dec. 22, Schulte started slinging statistics around to cast doubt on Centers for Disease Control numbers showing nearly 300,000 "excess deaths" in the U.S. due to the pandemic, desperate to blame "incompetent Democratic governors" and claiming that even in  Republican-led states, deaths "have disproportionately occurred in Democratic-run cities and their surrounding suburbs." Schulte offered no evidence that he checked the voting records of every single person who died of COVID-19. That was followed by a Dec. 28 column in which Schulte again attacked "false COVID epidemiology that 'over 320,000' Americans died from the SARS-CoV-2 virus" that was being repeated by "crooked, scientifically-illiterate Joe Biden" and once more insisting that Democratic governors were to blame.

Schulte spent his Jan. 12 "non-clinician" column trying to manufacture a conspiracy theory about coronavirus death counts. After highlighting that 4,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported on Jan. 8 and noting that the average death count was much lower in the first four days of January than the next four days, he immediately went into conspiracy mode:

Therefore, the average daily increase in deaths, between Jan. 5 and 8, is 3,812, compared to an average of 1,999 between Jan 1 and 4.

This extraordinarily suspicious 91% average increase could have resulted from the departments of health, in Democratic-controlled cities and states, unscrupulously underreporting their death tolls in the first four days of 2021, and then overreporting their totals in the second four days.

Indeed, my first Newsmax article about the COVID epidemic, on April 16, 2020, extensively documented that the departments of health of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Andrew Cuomo, were repeatedly “fudging” their overlapping deaths totals.

Or, you know, it's because the first four days of January took place over a holiday weekend, when reporting might be less than complete because people who were normally reporting numbers were off work.

In his Jan. 28 column (which was not tagged), Schulte complained that President Biden noted that coronavirus death toll reached the number of Americans killed in World War II, howling that was a "heinous" comparison because those dead from coronavirus were a smaller proportion of Americans than during World War II and are mostly elderly with a much lower "productive years of life lost" than the mostly young men killed during the way.

Schulte struck again in his tagged Feb. 4 column:

President Joe Biden, during his first full day in the White House on Jan. 21, released a 100-plus-page report detailing a "National Strategy for COVID-19."

Biden's introductory letter promised his "fellow Americans" that "our national strategy will be driven by scientists and public health experts," and that his administration "will always be honest and transparent with you about both the good news and the bad."

Eleven days later, on Monday, Feb. 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the latest "Provisional Death Counts" for COVID-19, which are published daily Mondays through Fridays, and which totally discredit Biden's promise of honesty and transparency.

On Friday, Jan. 29, 2021 the CDC issued these fatality totals:

• 369,453 COVID deaths
• 3,446,816 deaths from all causes

(since Dec. 28, 2019)

On morning of Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, these deaths tolls were published on the CDC's website:

• 413,196 COVID deaths
• In three days, the COVID death toll skyrocketed by a stupendous 43,743, or 12%. Deaths from all causes jumped by just 59,875, or 2%.

COVID deaths account for a highly anomalous 73% of deaths from all causes added during these three days.

[...]

In conclusion, while I have written a number of articles in Newsmax since April 2020, documenting the "Fake COVID Epidemiology" disseminated by leading Democrats, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, New Gov. Phil Murphy and Joe Biden, the mind-boggling increase of 43,743 COVID deaths, reported by the CDC between Jan. 29 and Feb. 1, is the most brazenly dishonest and invalid.

Of course, these were provisional numbers likely to change due to errors and other anomalies -- and that's exactly what happened in the days after Schulte rushed his conspiracy theory to publication. Here are the number of deaths listed by the CDC a few weeks later for those days:

• Jan. 29: 3,543
• Jan. 30: 2,873
• Jan. 31: 1,949
• Feb. 1: 1,696

That's a total of 8,311 over that four-day period, and more in line with the trends of that time. If only Schulte had bothered to wait until all the numbers were fully analyzed -- but then, he wouldn't have a column.

Schulte, by the way, has not corrected his column as of this writing or admitted that he rushed to judgment.

More tags

The "non-clinician" tag continued to be applied to other columnists as well. Guest returned on Jan. 22 with another disinfectant-obsessed column: "We are compelled to comply with the CDC's recommendations to wear masks and practice social distancing. Shouldn't we heed its advice and steer clear of disinfectants requiring a 10-minute contact time?" Denson returned on Feb. 8 to complain about government help to restart the economy after the pandemic:

Lives, jobs, wealth, and opportunity have all been destroyed in the wake of this terrible disease and government action in response to it. 

But increasing the minimum wage and bailing out poorly run cities and states due to their pre-COVID decisions, does not seem like justification for adding more debt to future generations.

On Feb. 9, Michael Reagan earned the disclaimer for ranting that "An unholy coalition of power-mad Democratic representatives and teacher unions have united to keep children out of school to meet a 'threat' that apparently doesn't even harm children," adding that "teacher unions want the schools to stay closed, and union money cancels science."

A tagged Feb. 10 column by Rand Fishbein pushed the claim that the coronavirus was deliberately created by China, complete with ranting that the U.S. allegedly funded "gain of function" research at the virology laboratory in Wuhan, China.

Bill Robinson's tagged March 9 column is little more than a screed against Anthony Fauci:

I never liked Dr. Fauci, his diminutive stature, gravelly voice or Napoleonic, tough guy attitude. He seemed to me the consummate phony. His actions have all but confirmed this to be true.

When the pandemic first began in earnest, Fauci was packaged up and sold to the president and worried American populace as "the foremost epidemiologist in America" and innumerable other permutations of this outright falsehood.

Based on the past year, Anthony Fauci is nothing of the sort; he’s not even close to the "foremost," "most prominent" or "most respected" epidemiologist this country has.

Those titles would go to Dr. Ian Lipkin at Columbia University, who traveled to China to investigate the Wuhan virus in February of 2019 when Dr. Fauci was still calling cable media outlets scheduling his countless appearances.

Or, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, whose been questioning and shattering Fauci’s flip-flopping and dangerous advice to Americans from the beginning. Dr. Bhattacharya is also a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration which is a foundational document laying out precisely how the cure was worse than the virus and why we have been taken to the cleaners in listening to those only wanting to keep us inside, masked up and economically decimated.

Ah, yes, the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued against lockdowns and in favor of promoting herd immunity against coronavirus -- even though nobody can predict exactly who would die from what would essentially be a global chicken pox party. But never mind that, Robinson has more anti-Fauci hate to spew:

Whether intentional or not, Fauci has been a willing and intentional pawn of the Marxist Left in this country. Regardless of his intent, he’s been a failure in every respect.

And of course, he still had false adulation ladled on him by our mainstream media like a well-basted Thanksgiving turkey throughout all his decades of quiet fiascoes.

Yet, in spite of it all, Fauci is the highest paid government employee in the country—more than the president—and his lightning-quick conversion to "chief medical advisor to President Biden," shows not only his utter lack of any loyalty but that his previous decrees were highly suspect.

As Fauci’s reign of blundering and misinformation comes to an end, there’s little doubt that all Americans have a tough lesson to be learned from all this chicanery.

Don’t automatically trust or assign any credibility whatsoever to a doctor or politician. Is this case, Fauci was both.

Dunning never really explains what coronavirus has to do with the "Marxist left."

Steve Levy used his tagged April 21 column to allege that "There is increasing evidence that the liberal channels were purposely hyping COVID-19 dangers for political and economic reasons," but he also claimed regarding the hesitancy of conservatives to get the vaccine that "It's entirely possible, and even probable, that the reason relates to conservative media pushback, and often legitimate skepticism, of proclamations issued by health officials considered to be products of the deep state."

Judd Dunning

A May 3 column by Judd Dunning ranted that Democrats have turned the COVID vaccine into, yes, a "weapon of hate," a form of "bigotry" alongside exploiting racism and hating Donald Trump:

This brings the third leftist weapon of hate — the vaccine. “The jab” is the new other and the new leftist keystone of the power to polarize. The jab is the hottest hate they have left to create the separation that keeps them in power.

The New York Times stated: “Anti-vaxxers are most concentrated in the counties that Trump won in 2020. In fact, Republicans to date are eight times more likely than Democrats to say they will likely never get vaccinated. According to a recent Monmouth poll, that`s 43 percent of Republicans.”

[...]

The left has elevated vax-shaming from cancel culture to the even more dangerous consequence culture.

Avoid being “the other.” Sidestep those without valid grounds and disengage. Take Buddhist teacher Chris Niebaurer’s philosophy of “No self, no problem” and adapt it to “No other, no problem.”

COVID vaccines are not federally required by law. They remain in the FDA experimental period until 2023. Yet to complete the rush to market under Operation Warp Speed, pharmaceutical companies were given limited liability for future vaccine problems.

Eighteen percent of Americans got vaccinated for a disease with an approximately 99% survival rate. There have been 60,000 vaccine injuries and 3,000 vaccine deaths. Avoid the Big Brother jab bandwagon and blind trust in Big Pharma and Big Government.

What to put in one’s body is no light decision. Don’t take the hate bait or pressure. Vaccination remains your private and personal choice.

In the midterm elections we can choose to vote against those who tried to force medical tyranny on America’s free-thinking right.

Dunning is lying about "3,000 vaccine deaths" -- there is no proof that the vaccines have directly killed anyone. But what else would you expect from a non-clinician?

Dunning apparently wasn't too happy about Newsmax putting the "non-clinician" tag on his column. He saved his editors the trouble by beginning his June 2 column with this snit: "I, Judd Dunning, am not a clinician. I am an educated citizen. Individual citizens are the vital cog in America’s political system. Liberal elitists labeling half of America irredeemable and deplorable disagree." Of course, declaring himself an "educated citizen" didn't keep him from spending the rest of his column mindlessly reciting right-wing talking points against the vaccine, huffing that "Smears of racism, Trumpism and vaxism must be dealt with." Smears of the medical community, however, are perfectly acceptable for Dunning.