Senator Calls out “COVID Cartel”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Aug. 8, 2022) — Last Wednesday Hillsdale College and The American Conservative held an event in the nation’s capital on the global response to COVID-19 at which U.S. Sen. from Wisconsin Ron Johnson claimed a “COVID Cartel” is “largely responsible” for the deaths of “hundreds of thousands of Americans” who died from coronavirus.

The deaths, Johnson said, stem from a dearth of early treatment originating in social-media and mainstream-media “censorship.”

He further decried mandates for masking schoolchildren in the purported interest of preventing spread of the virus. “We knew up-front masks would never work on children,” he said, “…and yet today, we have school systems about ready to open up and probably going to impose masking on our children because the pandemic isn’t over.”

Johnson, who is facing re-election in November, previously held three roundtable discussions on Capitol Hill to hear from those reporting COVID-19 vaccine injuries as well as attorneys, physicians, scientists and other interested parties cautioning that the federal government’s approach to handling the virus was incorrect and deadly.

The “COVID Cartel,” Johnson said, encompassing “the Biden administration, the federal health agencies, Big Pharma, the legacy corporate mainstream media, and the Big-Tech social-media giants,” has done great damage to the American people.

“They are the ones that sabotaged early treatment. They are the ones that have done the censoring, that have limited freedom of speech. They are the ones…because of that sabotage, I would hold largely responsible for the deaths of…how many hundreds of thousands of Americans that died because of lack of early treatment?”

On July 27, America First Legal (AFL), founded by Trump-administration immigration advisor Stephen Miller, published 286 pages of documentation it received from the CDC through a FOIA request and subsequent lawsuit demonstrating that the agency coordinated with Facebook and Twitter to promote the government’s narrative on COVID-19 vaccines and to flag posts contesting the narrative as “misinformation.”

Facebook also extended a $15 million “advertising” credit to the CDC, an issue AFL has asked HHS Inspector General Christi A. Grimm and Congress to investigate.

“The problem we have with the COVID Cartel is at this point, with a body count that high, they can’t afford to be proven wrong,” Johnson continued, adding, however, that “they have the power to make it almost impossible to prove them wrong.”

Drs. Robert W. Malone, Pierre Kory and Peter A. McCullough were in attendance, to whom Johnson looked during his remarks as sources of medical information, comparing them to current White House COVID advisor Dr. Ashish Jha.

He said that although in the “early days of the pandemic, there was reason to be concerned” about the virus’s replication and effects, early treatments such as hydroxychloroquine were quashed by then-HHS “vaccine expert” Dr. Rick Bright.

Even during “Operation Warp Speed,” commissioned by the Trump administration to produce a vaccine for the virus in record time, Johnson reminded his audience that he asked questions about “data” purportedly showing that “only six people died” during clinical trials.

He said the CDC’s pledge to investigate all reported side effects and deaths from COVID-19 injections amounted to “all BS.”

He began issuing “weekly updates” using visual aids, Johnson reminded his audience, consisting of “their data,” which were censored by the media. “I organized it in a way that they don’t like to see,” he said, referring to the source as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), established in 1990 for the reporting of side effects believed to have a causal relationship with any vaccine.

It is believed that only a very small percentage of possible vaccine-related injuries and deaths are reported to VAERS.

“What they hated about this chart are the drugs they sabotaged that these heroic doctors used to save lives,” Johnson continued. “Remember ivermectin — ‘Come on, y’all, you’re not a cow; you’re not a horse,'” Johnson said, referring to an FDA campaign to discourage the use of the decades-old drug which many physicians have reported as effective against COVID-19, particularly if administered early.

The FDA’s position was misleading in that while there is an ivermectin preparation for animals, it has been used in humans to treat parasitic infections and river blindness as an agency-approved drug.

In contrast to the position taken by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Kory has reported dozens of clinical trials showing ivermectin’s efficacy against COVID-19.

The remainder of Johnson’s remarks can be viewed here.