Homeland Security Governmental Affairs Committee Hearing: Social Media’s Impact On Homeland Security
Date: September 14, 2022
Time: 10:00am
Location: Senate Dirksen Building
Hearing Website
Senator Ron Johnson: Mr. Cox, just a quick little housekeeping here. Are you aware of a letter Senator Grassley and I sent to Mr. Zuckerberg on August 29th that we did get a reply on September 12th from Mr. Kevin Martin just saying they’re going to respond. Are you aware of that letter asking for information, contact between yourself, FBI, Department of Justice, documents, names, that type of thing.
Chris Cox (Chief Product Officer Meta): Senator, yes I am aware of that letter and I know the team is working on following up as quickly as they can.
Senator Ron Johnson: You’ll commit to full response on that.
Chris Cox: I know the team is committed to a response, yes.
Senator Ron Johnson: Okay. Let’s put up my first chart here. Back in November of 2021, CDC Director Rochelle Wilensky stated in front of the health committee, “We have the most robust, safe, vaccine safe safety system we’ve ever had in this country.
In October of 2020, before the vaccine was approved CDC’s Doctor Tom Tom Shimabukuro stated in a web seminar, said that VAERS, VAERS was obviously something Ms. Lewinsky was talking about. VAERS traditionally has provided the initial data on the safety profile of new vaccines when they are introduced. For COVID, vaccine reports will be processed within one to five days, depending on the seriousness. CDC and FDA receive updated data sets daily and data mining runs are planned to be conducted one every one to two weeks. So this is an example of the timeliness and responsiveness of VAERS going back to H1N1.
So, kind of sounds like they’re going to really rely on VAERS, right? I remember part of that discussion there, they say listen we’re going to take vaccine safety so seriously. If we get a report of a couple days of loss time because of an injury, and we’re going to be calling that individual up and were going to be checking on it. So it really sound like they have this all covered, right?
Let’s see the what they actually did. I produced this chart because I took VAERS [CDC and FDA Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS)] and FAERS [FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS)] seriously and I started tracking this, and I started putting together this chart, and I want a quick describe what this is.
The first 5 lines, the first 5 drugs, four of them are in the FAERS system, FDA adverse event safety system describe what this is the first five lines of the first five drugs four of them are in the FAERS system the FDA adverse event safety system. Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, Dexamethasone, and Tylenol. You have the flu vaccines in there, that comes off of VAERS system. You have Remdesivir, which comes off of FAERS, and COVID Vaccine that comes off the VAERS system.
Now, I can see why the government really didn’t like the way I put their data. This is their data. I didn’t make these numbers up. This is off the FAERS and VAERS system. But for whatever reason Twitter censored this chart. Now just quick and I’ll show you the current version, but the one you censored, it showed that Ivermectin on average over 26 years, on average, had 15 deaths reported on the FAERS system. Hydroxychloroquine had 69 deaths. Flu vaccines had 77. Dexamethasone had 618. Tylenol had over a 1000. Remdesivir, since it was approved, had 1,612. And the vaccines at 21,000 deaths. Okay, these are just the facts and Twitter censored it. Do you have any idea why?
Jay Sullivan (General Manager of Bluebird Twitter): Senator, I wasn’t at the company at the time, but what I can tell you is that we want robust discussion on the platform of any issue. A COVID misinformation policy was developed that seemed to me, and again I don’t develop it, but it seems quite narrow to me. It seemed about . . .
Senator Ron Johnson: You censored, okay, I’m not going to get into that. You censored government information. Here’s the current numbers by the way. Over 30,000 deaths reported worldwide, 27% of those, by the way, have occurred on days zero, one or two. You didn’t always censor this chart, you censored, for example, radio shows that interviewed me talking about FDA-CDC data.
YouTube took down a video of this Committee’s hearing of eminently qualified critical care specialist who saved thousands of lives treating people using, what seems to me pretty safe drugs, okay. After 8 million views YouTube pulled that video down. What would be the justification for YouTube pulling down a hearing of the United States Senate with a highly qualified doctor just giving a second opinion on how to save lives during COVID. Why would YouTube do that, on what authority? Who’s authority are you censoring that information so the American public could not receive a second opinion and access drugs it might have saved their lives. Why would YouTube do that?
Neal Mohan (YouTube CEO): Senator, respectfully, as I was mentioning earlier, we, we didn’t decide those policies on our own. We worked with a third party health authorities in this, in this country, that did include the CDC, the FDA…
Senator Ron Johnson: Well I will be sending you a letter and I want to know who those health authorities were and I want to see the communications between them. Will you commit to providing me that information for transparency sake?
Neal Mohan: Senator, I’m happy to follow up on your request on how we developed that policy.
Senator Ron Johnson: In July of 2021, talk about misinformation. This should have been the 2021 lie of the year. President Biden said, you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccines. If you’re vaccinated you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in an ICU unit, and you’re not going to die. That’s the President United States.
Well, it just so happens we couldn’t rely on the CDC and the FDA because they weren’t honest, they weren’t transparent, they weren’t giving us data, so we had to go to Public Health England. This is a chart published from their technical briefing number 23. It covered the period from February 1 to September 12, 2021. 593 cases, mainly Delta, 2,542 deaths, 1,613 deaths occurred with the fully vaccinated.
So obviously, this is just, this is published, and they were publishing other similar information during that time period when President Biden lied to the American public that this was a pandemic of the unvaxxed, and if you got vaccinated your not going to get, your not going to go to the hospital, your not going to be in ICU, and your not going to die.
Well 63.5% of people fully vaccinated we’re dying in England at the exact same time. Why didn’t you pull this? Have you ever labeled the President of the United States comment as misinformation? Have you ever done that? Any of you? I’ll take that as a no.
So again, I just wonder who are the authorities? Who do you think you are? To censor information from eminently qualified doctors who had courage and compassion to treat COVID patients when the NIH guideline was basically, if you get, if you test positive for COVID, go home, be afraid, isolate yourself, don’t do anything until you’re so sick, we’ll send you to the hospital, we’ll give you Remdesivir, where we have 1600 deaths so far, we’ll but you on a vent and we’ll watch you die. You guys bear a fair amount of responsibility for hundreds and thousands of people not being treated, and I would say probably dying, that didn’t have to die. Hope you’re proud of yourselves.
Watch Full Social Media’s Impact On Homeland Security Hearing
Sen. Johnson Demands YouTube Explain COVID-19 Censorship Policies
