CNN has never been the “facts first” news network they claimed to be and their politicized doctor, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, demonstrated that fact during Monday’s Cuomo PrimeTime. Without a shred of evidence, he floated a tinfoil-hat-level conspiracy theory claiming President Trump and the Coronavirus Task Force were intentionally withholding COVID testing capabilities. Of course, Chris “Fredo” Cuomo bought into it and just nodded along.
Conveniently ignoring the fact that the United States had rapid coronavirus tests that got results in 15 minutes, Cuomo was outraged that we didn’t have the U.K. tests that take 90 minutes. “How do they get these rapid tests,” Cuomo asked Gupta. “Is the U.K. so much better than us? Is there some science that’s proprietary? I mean, couldn't we be buying up those kinds of tests right now, Doc?”
It was that tee up that gave Gupta the room to spread his harmful conspiracy theory. “And you talked about this early on, there was a strategic, I think, method to minimizing this by not testing. Sad to say, but I think that's the truth now,” he declared.
Giving credit to Fredo for being the one to introduce him to the conspiracy, Gupta knocked himself for not seeing it sooner: “I mean, you sort of suggested that early on and I thought, maybe we're just behind. But I think it was deliberate now at this point to not test, because it would make things look bad.”
Obviously, the conspiracy theory was unfounded. Multiple Task Force members, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, have gone on the record and said they had never received an order to scale back or pump the breaks on testing.
And as if the U.S. hadn’t had breakthroughs in testing (like say, the multiple organizations developing COVID breathalyzer-style tests), Gupta complained that “we should have had significant breakthroughs in antigen testing by now.”
Gupta then demanded that the U.S. should have Orwellian-style COVID tracking on our phones:
It should be easy to know what your day is going to be like for the coronavirus as it would be looking at your phone for the weather. Do I have it? Do the people around me have it? What’s the weather look like? What’s the coronavirus look like?
Back in April, Gupta was put off by that kind of technology when CNN boasted about China forcing it on their people. While Anderson Cooper was giddy over the “incredibly detailed and personal and invasive” phone app, Gupta initially said the app “could not exist’ in America.
Clearly, he has had a change of heart.
Just before floating his unfounded conspiracy theory, Gupta also suggested that Trump talking about the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine meant that somehow resources were being taken away from developing vaccines and other treatments:
I don't know what the motivation is here still, but we're wasting a lot of time, we’re wasting a lot of money, we’re wasting a lot of resources. You're wasting your air time talking about this. This doesn’t do anything to help the American people. We're in the middle of the worst public health crisis of our lifetime, we're talking about something that doesn't work. There could be things that do work, that we're missing out on as a result.
“I would hate to ascribe a motivation, because that would assign some logic to it, and there is none,” he lashed out.
Dr. Gupta’s tinfoil-hat conspiracy was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from L’Oreal, Wayfair, and Humira. Their contact information is linked if you want to tell them about what they’re funding.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN’s Cuomo PrimeTime
August 3, 2020
9:09:17 p.m. Eastern(…)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA: I don't know what the motivation is here still, but we're wasting a lot of time, we’re wasting a lot of money, we’re wasting a lot of resources. You're wasting your air time talking about this. This doesn’t do anything to help the American people. We're in the middle of the worst public health crisis of our lifetime, we're talking about something that doesn't work. There could be things that do work, that we're missing out on as a result. So, there’s no log-- I would hate to ascribe a motivation, because that would assign some logic to it, and there is none.
CUOMO: Look, I mean, I think the play is pretty obvious, when you don't want to deal with reality, you create a surreality, you create a distraction. That's what the drug is.
(…)
9:12:25 p.m. Eastern
CUOMO: Look at the U.K.? We'll discuss it more later in the show. (…) How do they get these rapid tests? How do they get it done in 90 minutes? Is the U.K. so much better than us? Is there some science that’s proprietary? I mean, couldn't we be buying up those kinds of tests right now, Doc?
GUPTA: We should have been developing this ourselves, Chris. And you talked about this early on, there was a strategic, I think, method to minimizing this by not testing. Sad to say, but I think that's the truth now. I mean, you sort of suggested that early on and I thought, maybe we're just behind. But I think it was deliberate now at this point to not test, because it would make things look bad.
We should have had significant breakthroughs in antigen testing by now. It should be easy to know what your day is going to be like for the coronavirus as it would be looking at your phone for the weather. Do I have it? Do the people around me have it? What’s the weather look like? What’s the coronavirus look like?
CUOMO: But do we have it even create it, Doc? I mean, can't we get it from somewhere else? Where did the U.K. get it?
GUPTA: Yeah, I mean – So, that's another thing, the initial test that was available that we did not use was a World Health Organization test. And there was this idea that we will create our own test. So--
CUOMO: Good thing we pulled out of that.
(…)
