With Idaho hospitals on the verge of collapse from COVID cases, the largest health district in Idaho has booted a physician supporting public health measures from its board, in favor of a Trumpy pathologist who pushes ivermectin over “needle rape” vaccines.
Idaho, boasting the second lowest vaccination rate in the U.S., activated “crisis standards of care,” i.e. rationing, in 10 northern hospitals this week, due to COVID cases. The rest of the state is on the verge of following suit.
This “unprecedented collapse of their hospital systems,” as Rachel Maddow put it, has also resulted in an active-duty U.S. Army medical team arriving to support the overrun system “which has already had to convert conference rooms and classrooms into overflow COVID wards."
But as part of what Maddow called “a mismatch” of leadership, she told us about pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole, the guy the already-rationing district, the largest in the state, chose to replace its mainstream, federal-guidelines-following physician:
He says COVID vaccines must be quote, stopped. He calls vaccines a quote, poisonous attack on our population that needs to stop now.
He has also advocated for the use of the horse-deworming medication ivermectin, which the CDC, the FDA and the drug’s own manufacturers have pleaded with the public to stop using to treat or prevent COVID since it neither treats nor prevents COVID but it's very easy to OD on it and make yourself very ill.
Maddow went on to note that despite calling COVID vaccines “needle rape,” pathologist Cole had beaten out an epidemiologist for the open spot.
It’s not a shock that Cole, who also opposes mask mandates, was a featured speaker at a July conference of the “demon sperm” wackos, a group officially known as America’s Frontline Doctors, which we now know has been funded by the right-wing extremists, the Tea Party Patriots.
The Democratic leader of the Idaho House, Ilana Rubel, called the situation in Idaho a “calamity” that feels like a “dystopian novel.” She said that despite the “five-alarm crisis,” the state's speaker of the House is considering calling the legislature into a special session to pass a ban on vaccine requirements for health care providers. With the crisis escalating, she said, Republicans’ big goal is “to reduce the number getting vaccinated and crack down on vaccine incentives.”
