Theories on the origins of COVID-19, as well as treatment options, were often discarded if they didn't follow the "narrative" on the deadly virus, Dr. Ben Carson, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told Newsmax on Thursday.
"What I noticed as a member of the [White House] COVID Task Force was that any time something was brought up that didn't go along with the prescribed narrative, it was quickly pushed away," Carson told Newsmax's "John Bachman Now," while commenting on Wednesday's testimony from former Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Robert Redfield.
Redfield, in congressional testimony, added to the questions about the virus developing through nature rather than as a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, noting that there were reports of illnesses as far back as September 2019.
Carson said such pushback included "any kind of therapeutic intervention such as hydroxychloroquine."
"There was a lot of evidence that it was effective and that it was safe, because if you acknowledged that there was another treatment that was potentially beneficial, then you couldn't have an emergency use authorization," said Carson. "That was problematic. So people like Dr. Redfield, who advocated for true science and was looking at the data, were sometimes marginalized."
But there was a push from people who were behind Dr. Anthony Fauci, the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, because those on the left "are not necessarily bad or evil people. It's just that they think that they know what's best for everyone and that they should do whatever is necessary to make sure the good as they see it prevails," Carson said.
"What's really serious here is the attempt to squash anything that opposed the narrative. Those are laying the seeds for totalitarianism when you decide that your truth is the only truth and that anything else is bad and needs to be suppressed. That's the way all dictators start out, and we need to be extremely concerned about where this is leading if we don't stop it. That's not how medicine works."
Asked about a poll showing that 25% of Americans now don't trust the CDC, Carson said he thinks the number is lower.
"The people that I talked to as I travel around the country, very few people trust it anymore," he said. "It's going to take a long time to restore. We're going to have to have some real honest people who are willing to share the data and who are willing to be transparent."
Carson said the U.S. "is supposed to be by and for the people, not formed by the government and the government agencies and facilities, and it seems like they've completely forgotten about that. They think they need to rule and dominate the people. That's not who we are."
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