OPINION:
CNN host Anderson Cooper, in one of those snarky “I’m from CNN so I’m smarter than everyone in the world” TV moments, blasted guest MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell as a “snake oil salesman” for publicly pushing the benefits of a coronavirus therapy that could financially benefit him.
But where’s the similar treatment for Anthony Fauci? For Bill Gates?
Here’s what happened: Lindell on CNN spoke of oleandrin as a possible COVID-19 therapeutic treatment. Coincidentally, Lindell was also named to the board of Phoenix Biotechnology just a week or so ago — a company that makes oleandrin. And of course, any rational person would want to question the idea of Lindell serving as an unbiased spokesperson for a product he could also financially benefit from, right? Valid question.
Cooper went classless, though.
“You really are a snake oil salesman,” he said to Lindell, The Hill reported. “I mean, you could be in the Old West standing on a box telling people to drink your amazing elixir that there’s no proof [of].”
The bigger picture, though, is the media’s selective watchdogging.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been one of the leading voices for a coronavirus vaccine, even to the point of scorning, publicly, for all to hear and read, the benefits of hydroxychloroquine.
In late July he said all the “valid” science shows hydroxychloroquine is ineffective at treating COVID-19; he admonished the public to “follow the science.” That, even as numerous other researchers and medical professionals have claimed successes with the treatment.
“Treatment with Hydroxychloroquine Cut Death Rate Significantly in COVID-19 Patients, Henry Ford Health System Study Shows,” Henry Ford reported, in early July.
“Researchers say hydroxychloroquine could still prevent COVID-19,” Pharma Times reported in August.
Gates, meanwhile — whose background is in philanthropy and technology, not medicine — has been on a $350 million hunt for a coronavirus vaccine for months, similarly disdaining hydroxychloroquine as a subpar treatment. There’s an investment for ya.
And here’s an interesting tie: Both these guys serve on the Decade of Vaccines campaign, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plan of action to “increase coordination across the international vaccine community” — that is, “national governments, multilateral organizations, civil society, the private sector and philanthropic organizations” — in order to “identify critical policy, resource and other gaps that that must be addressed to realize the life-saving potential of vaccines.”
It’s a massive marketing scheme to ramp up vaccines for the world — and also reform the policies and politics that go into ensuring citizens get-slash-take those vaccines.
It’s Gates’ action plan.
It’s funded to the tune of billions of dollars by Gates. And others.
And Fauci serves on its Leadership Council.
In other words: Gates and Fauci have vested interests in seeing a coronavirus vaccine is not only developed, but widely administered.
In other words: Gates and Fauci, with their anti-alternative coronavirus treatment, pro-vaccine views, could very well be labeled snake oil salesman, too.
The difference? Lindell is a staunch Trump supporter.
But it’s obvious: If Lindell has a conflict of interest, so, too, Gates and Fauci. And Gates and Fauci should be given the same bulldog, watchdog, attack pit bull media treatment. Anything less is hypocritical and biased.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.
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