Tag: covid-19

A Case of “Intellectual Capture?” On YouTube’s Demonetization Of Bret Weinstein

Just under three years ago, Infowars anchor Alex Jones was tossed off Facebook, Apple, YouTube, and Spotify, marking the unofficial launch of the “content moderation” era. The censorship envelope has since widened dramatically via a series of high-profile incidents: Facebook and Twitter suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, Donald Trump’s social media suspension, Apple and Amazon’s kneecapping of Parler, the removal of real raw footage from the January 6th riots, and others.

This week’s decision by YouTube to demonetize podcaster Bret Weinstein belongs on that list, and has a case to be to be put at or near the top, representing a different and perhaps more unnerving speech conundrum than those other episodes.

Profiled in this space two weeks ago, Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying — both biologists — host the podcast DarkHorse, which by any measure is among the more successful independent media operations in the country. They have two YouTube channels, a main channel featuring whole episodes and livestreams, and a “clips” channel featuring excerpts from those shows.

Between the two channels, they’ve been flagged 11 times in the last month or so. Specifically, YouTube has honed in on two areas of discussion it believes promote “medical misinformation.” The first is the potential efficacy of the repurposed drug ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment. The second is the third rail of third rails, i.e. the possible shortcomings of the mRNA vaccines produced by companies like Moderna and Pfizer.

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Sudden Shift in COVID-19 Lab Leak Narrative ‘Mysterious’: Evolutionary Biologist

The sudden shift in narrative over the possibility that COVID-19 could have emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China, is mysterious and contingent to “just how corrupt our system has become,” according to evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein.

Weinstein, biologist and co-host of the DarkHorse Podcast, has since last year explored the possibility that COVID-19 could have emerged from a laboratory. He told Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program (episode premiering on Sat. July 3) that the fact that the hypothesis is now receiving widespread recognition from the international community is “completely mysterious.”

“My channel was very early on this topic, and it was quite clear to many of us, starting with the tremendous coincidence of this virus having emerged first in Wuhan, where there is a biosafety level four lab studying these very viruses and enhancing them,” said Weinstein. “It was quite clear that there was at least a viable hypothesis that needed to be discussed.

Weinstein, a visiting fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton University, said that before the narrative surrounding the COVID-19 lab leak theory gained traction, those who did discuss it were stigmatized, demonized and “portrayed as everything from racist to reactionary.”

“All we were doing was following the evidence,” Weinstein continued. “The change in that story was, I have to say, completely mysterious.”

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YouTube censors video of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Satoshi Ōmura discussing ivermectin

Before the coronavirus pandemic, ivermectin was described as a “wonder” drug by the medical community. And in 2015, Dr. Satoshi Ōmura and Dr. William C. Campbell were awarded half the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work that led to the development of ivermectin.

“The importance of Ivermectin for improving the health and wellbeing of millions of individuals with River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis, primarily in the poorest regions of the world, is immeasurable,” the Nobel Assembly stated in its press release for the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

But after the pandemic began, the tech giants have gone all out to purge content that recommends ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.

And today, these Big Tech policies against ivermectin resulted in one of Ōmura’s speeches where he discussed ivermectin being struck down for “violating YouTube’s community guidelines.”

“When the fascists at YouTube censor the Noble Prize winner Dr. Satoshi Omura, a man whose discoveries have saved a hundred million + from blindness, the world has entered a very, very dark place,” Australian Member of Parliament Craig Kelly tweeted. “I cannot express in words how angry & sad this makes me & fearful for the future.”

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Biden to deploy COVID ‘response teams’ to low-vaccination towns nationwide amid Delta variant concerns

President Joe Biden’s administration is sending COVID-19 “response teams” to locations across the United States amid growing concerns surrounding the new highly transmittable Delta variant of the virus, according to a White House official, CNN reported.

Comprised of officials from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the teams will focus on communities with low vaccination rates and a prominent presence of the latest strain.

A White House official said the administration has sent out similar teams before, but none that focused specifically on the Delta variant. The teams, led by the White House coronavirus team, will be tasked with conducting a sharp increase in testing, providing therapeutics, and deploying federal workers to ramp up vaccination distribution.

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Franklin County Judge Including Mandatory Coronavirus Vaccine in Terms of Probation

Common Pleas Judge Richard Frye of Ohio’s Franklin County has been including mandatory coronavirus vaccines in the terms of defendants’ respective probations, attaching the stipulation to three of his recent cases.

“It occurred to me that at least some of these folks need to be encouraged not to procrastinate,” Frye said, according to the Columbus Dispatch, which said the judge openly discussed vaccination statuses with the defendants.

According to reports, none of the defendants cited religious, moral, or medical reasons for not yet getting the vaccine.

“I think it’s a reasonable condition when we’re telling people to get employed and be out in the community,” Frye added.

One of the defendants who received the condition, Cameron Stringer, “entered a guilty plea for one charge of improperly handling firearms in a motor vehicle, for which he was sentenced to two years of probation,” per the Dispatch. A coronavirus shot is one of several conditions of his probation, court documents show.

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