California passes bill to punish doctors who 'Disseminate Misinformation' on COVID

Julie Reeder

Publisher

I have a couple questions. “Do you trust your life and the life of your loved ones with Sacramento politicians or your doctor?”

“Who gets to decide what is ‘Misinformation’ or not?”

Science involves the debate and work of people with political, academic and scientific contrary ideas, and the freedom to work without government interference and censorship.

Governor Newsom just signed into law AB 2098. Assemblyman Evan Low said this bill declares that disinformation and promotion of COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation to the public as unprofessional conduct for licensed physicians and surgeons. Under this law, California Medical Boards will be given the tools necessary to bring discipline actions against a physician and surgeon related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

Again, who decides what “misinformation” is?

One of the largest deep pocket contributors to political campaigns is the pharmaceutical industry.

Our government agencies have already been proven to be corrupt. Many of the coercive tactics that were used during the pandemic have been found to be unconstitutional as people have challenged them in the courts, especially in California.

This one is hopefully next. How can the government get in between doctors and their patients and have the hubris to think they can tell doctors and scientists what to say?

A group of doctors, Physicians for Informed Consent, wrote, “In allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, we oppose AB 2098 – and deem it as the worst bill of the 2022 legislative session,” said Dr. Shira Miller, founder and president of the PIC, in a March 2022 letter to California lawmakers. “AB 2098 is anti-doctor, anti-public health, anti-science, and anti-free speech.”

They went on to say, “Without California doctors being free to speak their mind and educate the public, regarding COVID-19 or vaccination or any other controversial topic, no other public health laws will matter as legislators will not be able to obtain knowledge from a breadth of physician and surgeon opinions, and the public will not be able to obtain their doctors’ honest opinion – because doctors who think and act differently from the contemporary ‘applicable standard of care’ will fear losing their medical license.”

Remember the Great Barrington Declaration? We printed it in the Village News and Valley News when it came out. They have filed a lawsuit in the district courts in Louisiana that may seem small, but if it is successful, it will potentially make history as far as the government's ability to get involved in what they deem to be correct or incorrect information and as far as what social media companies are allowed to put out. Hopefully it will discourage censorship of opinions the government and/or tech doesn't happen to like.

Again, I ask, “who are they to decide how a doctor should counsel their patient? Especially with CDC’s recommendation reversals from two years ago, because the “science” wasn’t really settled?”

The Great Barrington Declaration was published two years ago when the lockdowns were happening. Three of our country's top epidemiologists and academics said that there should only be targeted lockdowns for those who are the most at risk, but not everyone.

Fauci, Collins, the NIH, CDC, DHS, and HHS, were all working overtime to discredit the document, despite it being signed by tens of thousands of doctors and health professionals world-wide. The universities followed suit. Professionals who signed on lost their jobs or grants. Now there is a lawsuit against the government and Fauci because of how they worked overtime with big tech to censor and silence these renowned scientists.

One of the creators and signers of the Great Barrington Declaration was Stanford Doctor of Medicine, Epidemiologist and health economist Jay Bhattacharya. He said, “The problem here is it’s impossible if you have a scientific idea that’s contrary to what some very powerful people think, to express it. That’s bad for science. My idea here is to return to an environment where active scientific work can happen. It has to be possible for people to have contrary ideas within science that then have fair discussion within it, with the government not weighing in on which side it wants to take…then the media smearing those scientists on the disfavored side. That creates an environment where science can’t happen. That’s something else. So, my goal is to use the tools that the American society has, the First Amendment, to permit science to work again, the way it ought to work.”

If you are a subscriber to Village or Valley News, you were aware of the Great Barrington Declaration two years ago. They simply stated, “As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.”

Now we know of not only the devastating economic impacts, but the social/emotional as well. Suicides are up, drug use is up, academic achievement is down and it didn’t work to slow the spread. The lockdowns were a total failure.

Did you know that almost 1 million people, mostly doctors and health professionals from all over the world signed onto The Great Barrington Declaration early in the pandemic? While the government worked overtime to discredit it, now the CDC recommends exactly what the Great Barrington Debate was recommending. These are top epidemiologists and public health scientists that were discredited. Under Newsom’s law they could have been punished for “misinformation.”They should be listened to, not censored, shunned and stripped of their medical licenses.

Newsom proudly said of AB 2098, “I am signing this bill because it is narrowly tailored to apply only to those egregious instances in which a licensee (doctor) is acting with malicious intent or clearly deviating from the required standard of care while interacting directly with a patient under their care.”

It smells like fascism to me. It’s centralized, authoritarian, top down, and controlling. Who really believes that once they can censor doctors for this, that they won’t find other things to censor them about?

And what about all the assumptions about vaccines, masks, cleaning surfaces, etc. that we now know were totally wrong? The doctors two years ago who were accused of touting “misinformation” have now been vindicated and the CDC has changed their guidance. Why does no one talk about that?

And the media is right there too. Are they doctors? No. But they self-righteously sit at the feet of the powerful politicians, like dogs lapping up their fascism and spreading it to the masses. Here is what CalMatters (nonprofit media) reported.

“Since early in the pandemic, California has dealt with its share of doctors who have made false claims about the virus.”

Ok, stop here. They provided a link and they used an example of two doctors who very early on, presented at a press conference their data and findings after treating thousands of their customers. They were defamed as purveyors of “misinformation.” But time has proven they were right. If you read Village/Valley News, you would have already known what these doctors were reporting, uncensored.

CalMatters goes on to spread their disinformation by referring to the medicine ivermectin, as “an anti-parasite drug for animals, that people took to cure COVID-19 after being persuaded by false information shared by influential people on the internet.”

If you are an avid reader of Village News or Valley News, you knew the truth two years ago. Ivermectin is not just a drug for animals, just like antibiotics are not just drugs for animals. Animals can be treated with ivermectin, but it’s literally prescribed to billions of people around the world by doctors as well, just like Hydroxychloroquine. Frontline doctors, in the middle of the pandemic were letting everyone know that we already had a cheap and effective medicine to treat COVID, but it didn’t make billions of dollars for anyone, so it had to be crushed as “misinformation.” Then it couldn’t be hidden any longer because India had amazing success with Ivermectin, which, once again, if you were reading Village or Valley News, you would have known about it long before most people.

Other poor countries who couldn’t afford the expensive experimental jabs had to use the inexpensive available medicines and had far better results than the western countries who were duped into buying (literally) billions of dollars of the experimental drugs.

This is why we don’t want politicians and media getting between a doctor and their patient. But it’s too late. Our legislature and the governor are limiting doctors’ free speech. Doctors will be hesitant to provide full informed consent because they won’t want to get in trouble with the medical board or the government. Talk to any person who came here from a communist country. They will tell you this is how it starts.

Just like when the government passes laws mandating affirmative care. If a person is seeking counseling and thinking about permanently changing their body and cutting off perfectly good parts because they are questioning their gender, the counselor is supposed to just be affirming and not provide objective counseling based on their years of experience.

The government needs to butt out and stay in their court.

I know the last two years have been so hard on most people and many have had to fight to defend their God-given inalienable rights, but my hope is that the doctors continue to fight and challenge this egregious law in the courts. Just like the mandates were unconstitutional, just like the restriction from people being able to worship in church was unconstitutional (but they could go to a strip club). Wouldn’t the restriction of free speech between doctors and their patients be illegal too?

How in the world can politicians, who are concerned with donors, lobbyists, ideologies, and what’s “politically correct,” rather than what is actually scientifically or medically correct, think they can tell doctors what to say? Doctors are in a far better position to determine what they should recommend to their patient, since it is their education, profession and they are actually on the front lines and know their patient’s history and condition.

What hubris for politicians to try and control the free speech of doctors! I hope people are more discerning when they vote for their representatives next time.