Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
ORLANDO – Dr. Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, drew a raucous reaction Friday when he told the crowd at CPAC that he believed the Left’s policies were causing undo, potentially irreparable, harm to American children.
Carson, who shared the CPAC stage with Conservative talk show host and podcaster Ben Ferguson, brought a capacity crowd to its feet with his appraisal of life for children in the United States.
“Imagine what it must be like to be a little kid,” Carson said. “You have to wear a mask. You don’t get to see facial expressions. Then you’re told you might be harboring some deadly disease. You may not be sick, but you may give it to your grandmother, and she may die. Well, grandmothers do get older, and they do die. Now you’re feeling guilty about that.
“If you’re white, you’re told you’re an oppressor. You’re the cause of all minorities’ problems. If you’re a minority, you’re told that you’re a victim. All of this is happening while you’re trying to develop your self-image. And then if that’s not bad enough, you may not be a girl or a boy. Can you imagine? It’s child abuse.”
When Ferguson asked if prescribing hormone blockers or performing gender reassignment surgery on minors was also child abuse, Carson replied, “Of course it’s child abuse, but I don’t want people to get off that easily by just calling it child abuse. We all have spheres of influence, and we all have to stand up against this. We have to be aware of what’s being taught to our children.”
Carson also defended parents who have refused to allow their children to be vaccinated against COVID and who pushed back against mask mandates.
“It makes you a very good parent,” Carson told Ferguson. “It makes you someone who is really concerned. That’s why God gave children parents.”
Carson twice alluded to the intercession of God during his presentation. The other occurrence came when he and Ferguson accused the Left of attempting to draw out the COVID crisis.
“The Good Lord has a way of taking care of things,” Carson said. “So, he says since they don’t seem to have the ability to understand what’s going on and they just want to manipulate everything, I’ll just make this thing get weaker and weaker, and more contagious. Pretty soon, everybody will have it. It will be endemic, and it will be gone, and they won’t be able to make it last until November.”
Another key theme in Carson’s presentation was his and Ferguson’s criticisms of public health officials, key among them Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden.
Ferguson, who said America needed a top doctor who could “speak in a non-political-dictator type way,” said Fauci and other officials within the public health sphere had eroded public trust, a premise with which Carson agreed.
“There’s a tremendous loss of confidence in our government and our government medical facilities – the CDC, the NIH – because they’ve allowed themselves to be manipulated and controlled by other forces,” Carson said.
At a different point in his presentation, Carson remarked, “I must admit that I am surprised at the level to which medicine has sunk because [of] not following science. Claiming to follow science but being completely unscientific. [Scientists] will actually ask questions about benefits versus risks. They will actually look at collateral effects of things.”
Carson hypothesized that much of the government and public health community’s resistance to alternative treatments to COVID – drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin – was driven by a desire to expedite the rolling out of vaccines.
“[They] needed to get an emergency use authorization, an EUA,” Carson said. “We have a silly rule in place that says you can’t get the EUA if there are other effective treatments, and that’s why they denigrated hydroxychloroquine …”
Ferguson interjected at that moment to warn Carson that hydroxychloroquine is a “four-letter word” in American politics.
“Well, it’s a very good four-letter word,” Carson retorted. “If you go to Western Africa, you go to places like Nigeria, there is almost no COVID throughout this whole thing. Why? Because they take hydroxychloroquine as an anti-malaria [treatment].”
According to Worldometer.info, there have been just under 255,000 COVID-19 cases and 3,142 COVID deaths in Nigeria since 2020. Nigeria has a population of 206.1 million, meaning 1-in-808 Nigerians have contracted the disease with 0.012 percent of those cases leading to death.
By comparison, Worldometer.info states that in Australia, where COVID response has been particularly strict, there have been just over 3.17 million COVID cases and 5,131 deaths. With an Australian population of 25.69 million, that means that about 1-in-8 Australians have contracted the disease, with 0.001% of those cases proving fatal.
“If we were truly interested in science, that would have piqued our interest,” Carson said.