YouTube has suspended GOP Sen. Ron Johnson from its video platform for one week after he posted videos of himself during a Senate hearing touting experimental treatments for COVID-19, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, a YouTube spokesperson told The Hill.
“We removed the video in accordance with our COVID-19 medical misinformation policies, which don’t allow content that encourages people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus,” the person said.
Johnson, of Wisconsin, slammed YouTube’s decision as representative of Big Tech power.
”YouTube’s ongoing COVID censorship proves they have accumulated too much unaccountable power,” he said in a statement.
”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. 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? Government-sanctioned censorship of ideas and speech should concern us all,” he added.
Johnson made the comments during a November hearing about controversial treatments for coronavirus, including hydroxychloroquine, which studies at the time found to be ineffective and, in some cases, dangerous for people who had the virus.
A study released Thursday, though, shows that hydroxychloroquine, also touted by former President Donald Trump, increased the survival rate of severely ill coronavirus patients.
”We found that when the cumulative doses of two drugs, HCQ and AZM, were above a certain level, patients had a survival rate 2.9 times the other patients,” a study published by medRxiv states.
Trump took hydroxychloroquine despite pushback from medical experts, including his White House coronavirus team member Dr. Anthony Fauci. Twitter last year restricted the account of Donald Trump Jr. after he posted a video of doctors praising the effectiveness of the drug.
