Portrait of a Corrupt Pandemic: Panel Lambasts U.S. Failures of Covid Care

Sen. Ron Johnson's "Roundtable on Covid-19: A Second Opinion" reports massive corruption to suppress doctors and early treatments and sell leaky vaccines, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.

This article is part of a publishing collaboration between RESCUE and Trial Site News. The outstanding reporting by Mary Beth Pfeiffer will be simultaneously published in both outlets. Please subscribe to Rescue and Trial Site News for incisive pandemic reporting.

Sen. Ron Johnson (center) with Drs. Ryan Cole, Peter McCullough, Pierre Kory, and Robert Malone (left to right) at his Covid-19: A Second Opinion roundtable yesterday in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Teresa Banik Capuzzo)

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Corruption and malfeasance by public health agencies charged with controlling covid has allowed adoption of an ineffective, poorly tested vaccine; kept treatments beyond reach of skilled doctors and their desperately ill patients; and, moreover, led to thousands upon thousands of needless deaths.

Those were just some of the explosive revelations discussed yesterday by a panel of national experts on the monumental missteps made by the United States government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic.

The event, in a room ringed by soaring marble columns at the Russell Senate Building, was organized by U.S. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Congress’s leading critic of the government’s failure to treat covid outside of hospitals.

Indeed, Johnson, a Republican, is potentially the only U.S. legislator to question America’s response to an issue with immense consequences for the nation’s health and future. He billed the event as a “long-overdue second opinion.”

“Two years into the pandemic, the compassionless guidelines from the NIH—if you test positive—is to essentially do nothing,” Johnson said. “Go home. Isolate yourself in fear. And pray you don’t require hospitalization.”

Amid ever-shifting government advisories—on lockdowns, masks, treatments and vaccines—what quickly became clear was that dissent would not be tolerated, Johnson and many speakers said.

“As the goalposts were moving, different viewpoints were being crushed,” he said. “The Internet was used to censor discussion and vilify anyone with a different opinion.”

The speakers, assembled in a horseshoe of tables with Johnson at the head, were asked, as were attendees, if any had been censored or limited by the government’s firmly controlled covid narrative. About four-fifths raised their hands.

The five-hour hearing painted a harsh portrait of government disregard for scientific and regulatory norms. Here are some of the themes—too many to cover in one article—from what many called a ground-breaking gathering.

Vaxxed vs. Unvaxxed

Covid vaccines have failed to prevent infection and transmission of illness, while possibly—but not certainly—avoiding serious illness, speakers said. The inoculations’ failures were cast against the vaxxed-versus-unvaxxed debate that has poisoned patient care and divided the nation.

Further, data is emerging to show that the vaccinated are as likely, or more, to infection with a new variant that is far different from the one for which it was created. Additionally, hospitalization and mortality are higher in people who are vaccinated and boosted, speakers said.

Most significantly, the vaccines have been used indiscriminately and without assurance of safety, especially for children, pregnant women and those with compromised immunity. There is vast and growing evidence that they are harming many people, speakers said. Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA technology on which the vaccines are based, called the government’s review “grossly inadequate.”

Evidence abounds that the vaccines have led to myocarditis in young men and can alter women’s menstrual cycles, suggesting, Malone said, potential reproductive issues. For children, said Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist, “the risk of the vaccines are far greater than the risk of covid. “Under no circumstances, any under circumstance, should a youngster ever receive any of these vaccines.”

Pharma Rules

Clearly, the government’s emphasis on vaccines came at the expense of treatments, including ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, fluvoxamine and budesonide, that could have kept people out of hospitals, speakers said.

Pierre Kory, a pulmonologist and treatment advocate, had one word for this policy decision, which he repeated several times: Corruption.

“United States health agency structures and policies created over the last 50 years have tightly intertwined the pharmaceutical industry with public health institutions,” he said. The result: “relentless and repeated policies by those agencies that led to the repeated placing of pharmaceutical industry interests ahead of the welfare of U.S citizens.”  

Symbolic of a government beholden to pharmaceutical interests are the drugs approved so far. They are high priced patented pharma darlings, while inexpensive generics have been soundly rejected, Sen. Johnson noted. 

“This is a mass casualty event, and we cannot wait for randomized controlled trials that are not forthcoming,” Dr. McCullough said.

Early treatment doctors recounted, one after another, their care of thousands of patients, very few of whom were hospitalized or died.

Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch called hydroxychloroquine a game changer that was cast aside—eagerly by the National Institutes of Health—by virtue of studies that used the drug too late in the infection. Risch said ten properly conducted early treatment trials show the drug reduced hospitalizations by 50 percent and mortality by 75 percent.

“The media has not reported any of these studies,” he told the panel. “What I see here is essentially scientific proof.” 

“I’ve kept 2,000 people out of the hospital,” said Dr. Mary Bowden, a Houston ear, nose, and throat specialist who stepped into a huge treatment void. Typical of the problem at large, one sick patient told her: “My PCP won’t see me.”

Despite her success, including on people who were obese or had diabetes, Bowden lost her privileges at Methodist Hospital for espousing ivermectin.

Hospitals Diminished

The rigid enforcement of rigid treatment protocols in hospitals has come at the expense not only of patient health but of a long-cherished culture of sound, respectful patient attention. Speakers described hospitals as wastelands of care for the covid-infected, who are separated from their families, given drugs that are at turns minimally effective, including too low doses of dexamethasone, and harmful, like remdesivir.

Dr. Paul Marik lost his thirty-five-year job as an ICU physician because he refused to comply with hospital protocols—although his own protocols had saved many of his patients’ lives. Ironically, the hospital forbade ivermectin, which has among the safest profile of any drug, but allowed remdesivir, a drug rejected from an Ebola trial, in which its toxicity caused mortality rates to soar.

 In the U.S, “850,000 poor souls have died,” Marik said. “These have been unnecessary, needless deaths.” Marik helped found Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which is devoted to educating and promoting early treatment—an uphill struggle.

As it stands, pharmacists are routinely refusing to fill early treatment prescriptions like ivermectin, having been scared away by media coverage and government warnings. “It’s an absurdity, and obscenity and it has to stop,” Kory said.

Sen. Johnson also held hearings on early treatment of covid in May and December of 2020, featuring early treatment physicians. His latest efforts were lauded by speakers.

To see the five-hour event, click here.

Mary Beth Pfeiffer’s reporting and most recent book, LYME: The First Epidemic of Climate Change, led her to covid-19. Both diseases have been denied and mismanaged in a corrupt health care system. LYME was just released in paperback.