A new push to promote hydroxychloroquine began yesterday. While it got kicked off in the real world by a real person with some real issues at a rally covered by Breitbart Media, that coverage was designed to move it onto social media.
This video is also trending on Twitter. It doesn't seem to be doing big numbers on YouTube, but not having sortable sitewide data makes it hard to know for sure.
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020
The video appears to have been taken down from Facebook.
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020
Copies of this video are still floating around on Facebook. One posted by Diamond and Silk 3 hours ago has racked up another 5.7 million views. I can’t remember any video that spread this quickly.
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020
Wow someone spent a lot of money today for Breitbart and Twitter botnets to push the failed Hydroxychloroquine treatment for Covid.
Trying to dump the stocks they stupidly bought at the outset of the pandemic? Trying to kill GOP voters? Just sowing chaos?
— Alex Wild (@Myrmecos) July 28, 2020
Every single issue around COVID has become politicized.
Fascinating how arbitrary the political alignment is in some cases.
Back in 2019 you might have been able to predict some things: GOP wouldn't want to limit church services and Democrats would want free health care….
— Carl T. Bergstrom (@CT_Bergstrom) July 28, 2020
The renewed HCQ hype may indeed be a push to scapegoat the medical establishment for disaster caused by Trump's disinformation and his obstruction of control measures, testing infrastructure, data collection, and more.
See e.g. this comment from my mentions which echoes Rudy. pic.twitter.com/6mdbybcxey
— Carl T. Bergstrom (@CT_Bergstrom) July 28, 2020
This is step 1 of a new influence op. It sets the conditions for step 2, which is blaming doctors who refused to prescribe it; the FDA commissioner because the FDA has removed the emergency use exemption; Dr. Fauci; the World Health Organization; governors, especially Democratic ones who didn’t want shipments of it; and Democratic officials in general and VP Biden in specific, for all the COVID-19 deaths because they wouldn’t use or endorse the use of hydrochloroquine to treat patients infected with COVID-19. Step 3 will flow from step 2, and will be the the President and his surrogates going on the offensive against all of these folks to shift the blame onto them.
Open thread!