Watching as their readers die
Joel Davidson’s fans are dying to read him.
The chief shepherd of Alaska’s most fiendish blog has now seen two of his sheep die very sad and very public deaths on his watch. Davidson’s body count will surely go higher, as his (now widely read) shitpost factory continues to crank out dangerous and illogical anti-science Covid propaganda fresh for the gobbling by the Ivermectin-mad masses.
The latest to fall victim to Davidson’s con was a 78-year-old Anchorage man named Neil Kitamura, who died of Covid earlier this month at Providence Hospital in Anchorage. According to Davidson’s account in his Alaska Watchman blog (which Davidson co-owns with partner Jake Libbey), Kitamura died “after hospital refuses repeated requests for Ivermectin.”
Davidson goes on to explain to his readers that Kitamura was actually taking Ivermectin before going to the hospital, but still died. But rather than focusing on the fact that Covid is an unrelenting killer — primarily now of those who refuse a vaccine — this is how those events are described:
“Kitamura checked into the hospital on Oct. 5. He had already taken an initial dose of Ivermectin which he received from his doctor the day before. According to his son Kris Kitamura, the hospital refused to let Neil take any more of his Ivermectin pills. Instead, he was placed on oxygen, given steroids, remdesivir and sedated with morphine.
“Nine days later he was dead.”
Davidson’s obvious implication here (he’s not shy about sharing his opinions) is that the hospital itself killed Kitamura through its mistreatment. He’s written countless stories extolling the benefits of Ivermectin, which remains an unproven and discredited treatment for Covid, and numerous others citing the supposed dangers of vaccines. A quick perusal of Watchman headlines shows an unrelenting pattern of misinformation and scare tactics designed to steer people away from vaccines and toward treatments such as Ivermectin:
“Sen. Reinbold calls on JBER commander to rescind ‘oppressive’ COVID policies”
“Mat-Su to hold ‘Medical Freedom’ rallies for troops facing vax mandate”
“Alaska woman denied life-sustaining treatment for declining the COVID jab”
“Vax mandate presents excruciating decision for Alaska military family”
And so on, and so on...
To be clear, I don’t know that Kitamura was a Watchman reader — and no one can say where he got the idea that he needed to take Ivermectin. But there is no doubt hundreds if not thousands of people have been influenced by the blog, whose stories Davidson shares religiously throughout Alaska’s robust community of right-leaning Facebook groups.
Kitamura’s death came on the heels of that of another Anchorage resident, William Topel. Topel too refused all conventional Covid treatments in favor of the freedom to remain unvaxed and free from the shackles of modern medicine. Like Kitamura, he died gasping for breath while his death quickly became another headline for Davidson to capitalize on.
Davidson’s blog does most of its damage on Facebook, where the discourse around Covid denialism has gone from “it’s a hoax” to “we should ignore it” to “vaccines are experimental” to “you can’t make me get a vaccine” to “does anyone know where to get Ivermectin pills I’m dying.”
That’s not hyperbole. In one Facebook group I belong to (at least at the time of this writing), one man from Wasilla recently logged on to beg for someone to bring him black market Ivermectin pills.
“Where in Wasilla prescribes Ivermectin?” one man asked in desperation. “Does anyone have some pills in hand they would be willing to sell? Seriously name your price if you could drop them off on my door step (off of Fern). On day six, it has been pure hell.”
To be sure it’s far from the Alaska Watchman that’s responsible for this wave of insanity, but aside from the “Save Anchorage” Facebook group, the blog has been the state’s most visible and vocal source of anti-vaccine “news” during the pandemic. It has even eclipsed the relentlessly cynical Must Read Alaska, which deserves its own special place in hell for hawking products like “Fake Masks” (I’m not kidding) and “unvaccinated lives matter” T-shirts during a pandemic.
The vast majority of those now becoming seriously ill or dying are unvaccinated, and there is scant to no evidence that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for Covid. And yet day in, day out, the Alaska Watchman continues to gain readership by pushing its false narrative of “freedom” from mandates.
Those behind the Watchman would have us believe that the government has no right to mandate masks in a public health crisis, that private employers shouldn’t be able to force their employees to receive vaccines or that schools can’t do the same. This flies in the face of more than 100 years of legal precedent that says the government can, indeed, do these kinds of things. In fact, the government’s sole job is to lay out and enforce rules that promote the greater good, and vaccine requirements are in fact nothing new in this country.
The brand of religious-based “freedom” espoused by the Watchman (the blog claims to write from a “broadly Judeo-Christian” perspective) seems to argue that people should only be subject to the rules set forth by society that they believe work for them. Those they don’t they think they can simply claim a “health” or “religious” exemption from; in effect, they’re like auto racing fans who believe their devotion to NASCAR exempts them from having to follow the speed limit.
Freedom doesn’t mean getting to do whatever the hell you want; in fact, the government has rather broad latitude to restrict what people can do in public — we literally have lights on streets that tell people when they can and can’t walk. Requiring masks in public spaces or mandating vaccines for public employees is absolutely reasonable and perfectly constitutional as is the Watchman’s right to publish whatever stupid shit that pops into Davidson’s head, for that matter.
But when the pandemic is over, all of us will have to answer for how we conducted ourselves and what we contributed (or didn’t) to the greater good. And those of us who have relentlessly fought against public health measures, who have tirelessly worked to push unproven medical treatments, who have profited off of deception and have capitalized on fear will have to eventually face the consequences of those actions.
My hope for the readers of the Alaska Watchman is that they eventually see the truth of what’s going on here and turn against Davidson and his lies. The vast majority of those now dying from Covid are people who have continually taken advice from outlets like the Watchman who have been consistently and glaringly wrong every step of the way. Hopefully there are a few readers out there who understand how this cynical propaganda is working against their own interests and getting them sick — or worse.
This column is the opinion of Matt Tunseth, a freelance writer from Anchorage, Alaska. He is a former print journalist who has previously worked as the managing editor of the Chugiak-Eagle River Star, Anchorage Press, and Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman; and as a reporter for the (Kenai) Peninsula Clarion, Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News.
