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Devastating new reporting once again has quack doctor and failed Republican congressional candidate Rich McCormick under fire for lying about COVID-19 and putting Georgians’ health in danger.
Yesterday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a blistering investigation of doctors who are “undermining efforts to curtail spread of the virus and save lives” and spreading false information that has been “confusing the public throughout the pandemic.”
One of those Georgia doctors is Rich McCormick who, throughout the course of his congressional campaigns, has donned his scrubs and “repeatedly promoted unproven drugs as COVID treatments and downplayed the severity of the virus.” As AJC reports:
“In one case, while wearing a white lab coat over hospital scrubs, McCormick told the cable channel One America News about hospital admissions plummeting and intensive care units clearing out and added, ‘My theory, based on just the evidence that we see firsthand, is that we probably do have a herd immunity.’ That was in June 2020, as President Trump was saying COVID-19 was dying out. Public health experts believed nothing of the sort, and by late June the nation was setting new records each day for infections.”
McCormick also was criticized for spreading COVID-19 misinformation at a recent school board meeting, where he claimed without evidence that masks in schools were “actually increasing the infections.” But McCormick “could not provide any evidence to the AJC to back up that claim but said he still believes contaminated masks have potential to spread the virus. CDC experts, however, have established that coronavirus spreads mostly through airborne particles, not surfaces. And study after study has shown masks curb infections in schools.”
Puzzlingly, McCormick defended his record of dangerous misinformation by insisting that the reporter print him admitting, “I have not always been 100% accurate on everything.”
“Rich McCormick is a menace to public health at a time when we need accurate medical information more than ever,” said DCCC spokesperson Monica Robinson. “McCormick donning his white medical coat to spread lies about COVID-19 on conspiracy news channels is shameful, dangerous, and completely disqualifying.”
Read more from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia’s medical board mum as doctors spread COVID-19 misinformation
October 29, 2021
By Johnny Edwards
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“The kind of false information that Barbour and some other licensed doctors promote has been confusing the public throughout the pandemic, health leaders say, hobbling the national response to the crisis.”
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“Now a growing segment of the medical community is calling for members of their own profession to be held accountable for undermining efforts to curtail spread of the virus and save lives.”
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“‘We know that disinformation is killing people,’ said Taylor Nichols, an emergency medicine physician in Sacramento, Calif., and one of the founders of No License for Disinformation, a coalition pushing licensing boards to discipline doctors who fly off the rails of accepted science. ‘When physicians, when credentialed folks, are the ones spreading the disinformation, that bad information becomes more sticky. It becomes harder to push back against.’”
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“Documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show Georgia’s medical board received a complaint last year accusing a doctor running for Congress of publicly spreading false COVID information, but the board took no action.”
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“A Peachtree Corners resident who blogs on medical fraud filed the first complaint about McCormick in October 2020, saying the Republican candidate for the U.S. House’s 7th Congressional District had repeatedly promoted unproven drugs as COVID treatments and downplayed the severity of the virus.”
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“In one case, while wearing a white lab coat over hospital scrubs, McCormick told the cable channel One America News about hospital admissions plummeting and intensive care units clearing out and added, ‘My theory, based on just the evidence that we see firsthand, is that we probably do have a herd immunity.’ That was in June 2020, as President Trump was saying COVID-19 was dying out. Public health experts believed nothing of the sort, and by late June the nation was setting new records each day for infections.”
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“‘Just like Fauci – and I want you to quote that – just like Fauci, I have not always been 100% accurate on everything,’ McCormick said, referring to President Biden’s chief medical adviser.”
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“After recounting his medical credentials, McCormick, who is still running for Congress, told the board that children don’t care for their masks properly, constantly pulling them off and on and setting them down on surfaces, which is ‘actually increasing the infections rather than decreasing the infections.’”
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“He could not provide any evidence to the AJC to back up that claim but said he still believes contaminated masks have potential to spread the virus. CDC experts, however, have established that coronavirus spreads mostly through airborne particles, not surfaces. And study after study has shown masks curb infections in schools.”
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