Twitter Thread: Healthcare network led by Simone Gold and America's Frontline Doctors making millions off hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin
Background: This is an archived Twitter thread. For more information, read: Elon banned me from Twitter for doing journalism. Good riddance.
Original URL of Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/micahflee/status/1442969576719847425
A network of right-wing healthcare providers, lead by @drsimonegold and America's Frontline Doctors, is making millions of dollars off of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, data provided to The Intercept by an anonymous hacker reveals https://theintercept.com/2021/09/28/covid-telehealth-hydroxychloroquine-ivermectin-hacked/
Posted 2:48 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 2,553 Retweets, 4,284 Likes
AFLDS, founded to promote pro-Trump doctors, has been spreading Covid misinformation since 2020. It refers its followers to its telemedicine partner SpeakWithAnMD where they pay $90 for a phone consultation
Posted 2:48 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 216 Retweets, 663 Likes
An "AFLDS-trained" physician calls the patient and then prescribes them hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, or similar drugs. The drugs are then filled by the online pharmacy @Ravkoo3, which forwards the prescription to a local pharmacy to mail to the patient
Posted 2:48 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 140 Retweets, 511 Likes
That is, assuming patients get a phone consultation at all. Many customers complained that they paid the $90 and never got a call back https://time.com/6092368/americas-frontline-doctors-covid-19-misinformation/
Posted 2:48 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 159 Retweets, 558 Likes
A hacker sent me 281k patient records from Cadence Health (provides SpeakWithAnMD's tech platform) from July 16 to Sept 12.
72k of the AFLDS patient had consultations, so they must have paid the $90, sometimes more than once.
That's $6,700,000 for consultations alone!
Posted 2:48 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 158 Retweets, 583 Likes
The hacker also sent me 340k prescription records hacked from Ravkoo, from Nov 2020 to Sept 11, 2021. The VAST majority of them are for bogus Covid drugs pushed by AFLDS. In fact, only 13% of the Rx's are for other drugs. According to pricing data, these sold for $8.5 million
Posted 2:48 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 155 Retweets, 469 Likes
@drsimonegold refers to Covid-19 vaccines as "experimental biological agents", argues that Covid-19 isn't very deadly (it's killed 690k Americans so far), and that the vaccine is more dangerous than the virus itself
Posted 2:48 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 87 Retweets, 401 Likes
"Misinformation can be really powerful to swindle people into buying products," @KolinaKoltai, who studies vaccine misinformation at @uwcip, says. "America’s Frontline Doctors are able to scale this up massively."
Posted 2:48 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 94 Retweets, 406 Likes
Cadence Health's CEO, Roque Espinal, says he had no idea. After we spoke yesterday, he terminated service with SpeakForAnMD, and the telehealth platform is currently down.
"I don’t want to be associated with any crap like that. None of that quackery that’s going on," he said
Posted 2:49 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 114 Retweets, 505 Likes
Ravkoo's CEO, Alpesh Patel, claims that they dropped AFLDS in late August because "the volume over there went up crazy, and we didn’t feel comfortable. And we don’t have that much capacity to fill that many prescriptions."
Posted 2:49 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 66 Retweets, 364 Likes
Yesterday, after reaching out to the companies, SpeakWithAnMD and AFLDS had an emergency Zoom meeting full of 16 lawyers, according to Espinal. In the meeting, he told them he was terminating service, and then left
Posted 2:49 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 71 Retweets, 395 Likes
And needless to say, the drugs AFLDS pushes are ineffective at preventing or treating Covid. If you don't want to get sick or die, get fully vaccinated and wear a mask when indoors in public
You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it. https://t.co/TWb75xYEY4
— U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) August 21, 2021
Posted 2:49 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 89 Retweets, 468 Likes
AFLDS spreads Covid lies and dupes people into forking over 💵💵💵 using @drsimonegold's 340k followers on twitter, 112k on facebook, 184k on telegram, among other places.
Anti-vax plugs for AFLDS also show up religious email newsletters, like this one
Posted 2:49 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 91 Retweets, 376 Likes
People in ALL 50 states and DC sought quack medicine from AFLDS. 8.6k in California, 8k in Florida, and 7.4k in Texas. Over 1k people in 21 states. Here's an interactive map of cities that patients live in, for cities with at least 10 patients https://api.mapbox.com/styles/v1/micahflee/cktt2k7972k3r18mrhqdz9ji8.html?title=view&access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoibWljYWhmbGVlIiwiYSI6ImNrcm1qMHRlMDBqd2gyb21vMjN1MXA5cmkifQ.dFhnF3fZkg2iy6KBKQdybw&zoomwheel=true&fresh=true#4.14/34.59/-97.68/0/12
Posted 2:49 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 69 Retweets, 361 Likes
The hacker says the Cadence and Ravkoo were "hilariously easy" to hack.
Any user could ask Cadence's API for any patient data, and it gave it. The hacker simply asked for all the data.
Ravkoo's site had "a hidden admin panel that every user can log in to and view all the data"
Posted 2:49 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 76 Retweets, 406 Likes
Read the article for more details on the people who figured out how to make massive amounts of 💵💵💵 off the Covid-19 pandemic https://theintercept.com/2021/09/28/covid-telehealth-hydroxychloroquine-ivermectin-hacked/
Posted 2:49 PM · Sep 28, 2021, 121 Retweets, 392 Likes
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