Science Defies Politics

Google blocked access to An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus (COVID-19) by James M. Todaro, MD, and Gregory J. Rigano, dated by March 13, 2020. This paper was widely credited (blamed by the Fake News Media) for proposing chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment against COVID-19. (This was reported by ReclaimTheNet on March 25, 2020). How can someone rationalize removing information about a possible cure, amid a global pandemic? Are there still humans in charge at Google?

Google’s YouTube also removed the Didier Raoult’s presentation of his HCQ+AZM treatment, published on YouTube on March 16, and embedded in the website of the medical institute which he heads! The video was removed by March 29 with the message “Video unavailable. This video contains content from Canal Plus, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.” It had accumulated more than 1.4 million views before that. The video is restored now. It contains no Canal Plus (a French TV company owned by Vivendi), copyright, logo, name, or anything that can be mistaken for its content. Canal Plus is a French TV company owned by Vivendi. Even if it had any rights in it and submitted a take down notice (neither is likely), displaying it was fair use.

Google took it down in bad faith. It seems there were attempts to remove it since March 23 by other means before the copyright excuse. YouTube removed not only the video, but the text and the link to the presentation GENERAL ASSEMBLY AP-HM CARE AND DIAGNOSIS. Monday March 16, 2020, hosted on the Institute’s website. It shows nearly 100% effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin treatment in eliminating SARS-COV-2 coronavirus. The link to the paper was removed, too.

The video page before the suspension.

The video page after the suspension.

It feels like somebody messed with archives after the first publication.

On March 22, a video about Dr. Zelenko and his HCQ+AZM+Zn treatment for COVID-19 was posted on YouTube. It was removed within a couple of weeks “for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.” YouTube removed other videos about Hydroxychloroquine based COVID-19 treatment.

The Effective Treatment for Coronavirus paper (as updated by March 18) cited the successful use of chloroquine in China and hydroxychloroquine in South Korea for COVID-19 patients, in vitro experiments by Didier Raoult’s IHU, and CDC publications.

Google blocked access to and/or deleted this paper on March 20, 2020 – the day after President Trump mentioned chloroquine as potentially effective drug against COVID-19. When Trump spoke, at least one significant clinical trial of HCQ+AZ for COVID-19 was completed. The reporting article (Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID-19: results of an open-label non-randomized clinical trial  by Philippe Gautret et al., Didier Raoult’s IHU) has been peer reviewed and accepted by the prestigious International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents. Trump or his advisors probably knew about this paper. 

Health care professionals and the public were given the impression that there was no scientific evidence supporting these drugs’ efficiency against COVID-19. Google also blocked access to the Spanish translation of this paper. Google blocked access to Effective Treatment for Coronavirus just hours after the French paper reporting the successful clinical trial of HCQ+AZ was published online.

By that time, there were already many references to Effective Treatment for Coronavirus on the web. An example is Elon Musk’s March 16 tweet “Maybe worth considering chloroquine for C19” with a link to the paper. However, starting late on March 20, clicking any of these links would only lead to Google’s page “GOOGLE DOCS We’re sorry. You can’t access this item because it is in violation of our Terms of Service.” It is remarkable that proposing a cure for a pandemic be violation of Google’s Terms of Service.

This is escalation of the COVFEFE ‘trick’ – Google removed this word from Google Translate after Trump used it in a tweet. This time, Google misconduct might have caused tens of thousands of deaths.

It is important to note that this scientific paper was on a private Google Drive, not on YouTube or a Google-hosted blog. Google messed with a person’s private computer – Google Drive is usually mirrored on one or more computers or phones. It is unknown whether Google only blocked external access, or deleted this paper, or deleted all the documents on that particular Google Drive account.

Effective Treatment for Coronavirus contained a short review of the existing science and recommendations for medical professionals and public officials. It was not formatted as a scholarly paper and it used the term white paper. It was not written as marketing or self-medication advice, and could not be confused as such. Restricting access to it could not have been done by Google in good faith. Good faith is the necessary condition for Section 230 protection against civil liability. This action demonstrated sheer malice.

Notice that Google have not only deleted or blocked access to the paper. Even more importantly, Google also defamed it in its “We are sorry” page. I can easily imagine how even top doctors could be convinced by Google that HCQ for COVID-19 is a hoax. An example of the people’s reaction:

There are some questions about the legitimacy of this paper. Google docs have banned its posting. We leave it up with this warning, please do more research than just reading this article.

Twitter

But Google was not the only culprit. Effective Treatment for Coronavirus was widely discussed on Twitter. Twitter, too, defamed and and interfered with the access to this paper, independently of Google. A user, clicking the link to this paper, Twitter showed the page: “Warning: this link may be unsafe“. Only after selecting a tiny “Continue” link on this warning page, the user would be allowed to navigate to the intended URL, and to see “We are sorry” from Google. Double defamation.

YouTube deleted videos about HCQ treatment

Dr. Zelenko is a pioneer in HCQ+AZM+Zn treatment of COVID-19. He underscored the need to start the treatment early. Dr. Zelenko published his treatment protocol on March 22-23, and a video referring to it was uploaded to YouTube: Dr Vladmir Zelenko, MD, finds cure for Coronavirus. The video has been linked to from The Right Scoop on March 24, in the article New York doctor says Trump was RIGHT, touts fantastic results with Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin on 350 coronavirus patients. By March 25, this video has been viewed more than 100,000 times. Then YouTube removed it “for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines” (archived April 13 snapshot). As of July 2, it remains removed.

Just out of a half a dozen of videos, linked from the Vladimir Zelenko article in Conservapedia, YouTube has deleted at least three ones:

Interview with Dr. Vladimir Zelenko and Gregory Rigano – snapshot from April 24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4DYMfjFEMk – removed before the web archive made a snapshot, April 18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeaPHoTbWLc – removed before the web archive made a snapshot, May 7

Surgisphere Fraud

But it keeps channels of the dangerous COVID-19 fraud Surgisphere (S), its owner Sapan Desai, and QuartzClinical. It also keeps its videos promoting its fake “COVID-19 Decision Support Tools” – http://archive.is/aHKbZ, http://archive.is/jNlvy, http://archive.is/PxMTL

and

Archived on May 25 when they were public. Now the owner made them private.

More Screenshots

Twitter’s warning

Google Docs’ Access Denied

May 14, 2020: Google continues the war on Hydroxychloroquine. This search was conducted in Texas using a browser in clean configuration. Notice that Google panel on the right incorrectly calls Hydroxychloroquine “Immunosuppressive drug and Anti-parasite“.  Hydroxychloroquine is classified as antirheumatic and antimalarial.

May 27, 2020: Google continues the war on Hydroxychloroquine. This search was conducted in Texas using a browser in clean configuration.

Published on May 14. Updated on June 5 & 21, July 2; then April 25, 2021; then July-August and December 2022.