I tested positive for COVID-19

I tested Covid 19 positive last Tuesday, after 10 days of symptoms. This despite the fact that my family completely isolated ourselves more than a month, since early March. Yet all five of us had similar symptoms, and both of us who got tested are certified sickos. Thus, the experts assume we all have it.

I’m most at risk– enlarged heart, AFib, and a history of blood clots in both lungs… right in the coronavirus crosshairs. As such, I read every Covid article available for weeks, and became convinced that Hydroxichloroquine, while not proven, was my best chance of beating this. Thankfully, a good friend (a tax client) who is an innovative doctor, immediately prescribed HDCQ for me in combo with Doxycycline. I could not take HDCQ with the preferred combo drug Azithromycin because Azith has risky side effects for folks with heart problems.

Despite biased daily CNN anti-Trumpian warnings that Hydroxichloroquine was unproven and not as safe as dying, I started taking it Wednesday, saw reversal of my downward spiral within a day, and today almost symptom free but for a slight cough. Contrary to alarmist media warnings of HDCQ side effects; both of us noticed positive side effects, including relief from chronic joint pain. HDCQ in combo with Azith seems to work quicker, while my alternative Doxycycline combo is taking a few days longer. I make no claims that these treatments are proven — only that they’re working for us.

CNN and mainstream media push borderline medical malpractice by letting political bias taint their reporting on both the virus and the potential cures. They incessantly push respirators (because Trump didn’t produce enough quickly) even though many doctors now believe respirators are exactly the wrong treatment. 80-86% of Covid ventilator patients are dying while respirator-pushing CNN screams daily that HDCQ is unsafe. Ridiculous. This isn’t a lung disease which taints the blood; it’s a blood disease which taints the lungs. Like malaria, it attacks red blood cells, preventing them from absorbing oxygen. Inflating dying people’s lungs like party balloons isn’t the answer. And precisely because it resembles malaria, this is why malaria drug HDCQ perhaps IS the answer.

Mainstream media also fans the flames of public and government overreaction by sensationalistic overreporting of Covid deaths. Mindlessly marking all deaths in hospitals with Covid patients as “Covid deaths” is patently false, as is claiming that all people who had Covid at death died because of Covid. While reported Covid deaths have sky-rocketed; flu, pneumonia, and heart disease deaths have plummeted. Did COVID-19 miraculously cure all other diseases?

But panicking the populace plays into liberal media bias…. The greater the crisis, the easier to control the masses. Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel infamously argued, “Let no good crisis go to waste.” He explained plainly that government officials could get away with doing things during crises that they couldn’t get away with otherwise. So civil, religious, constitutional and economic liberties are mindlessly trampled upon in the name of health crisis management; and anyone who questions the wisdom of increased regulation, increased government fiat spending, and decreased freedom is easily labeled an extremist.

Perhaps because I’ve no future political aspirations, or perhaps because I’m already staring into death’s eye at a range far closer than proper social distancing; I will defiantly maintain my drumbeat that this crisis is being grossly exaggerated, and that more people will die because of the collateral damage of destroying worldwide economies, and more people will die because we’re destroying proper medical care of other health crises. In Montana, at least, it’s total nonsense claiming we need mass house arrest to avoid overburdening hospitals, when the Kalispell hospital is laying off 600 people today. Pardon the pun, I’m a Covid certified sicko, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in a hospital right now. As my family proves, worldwide house arrest won’t stop this pandemic anyway. Pro-Trump or no, government is not God, folks; and can’t cure every societal ill with more regulations or spending. And, yes, often the government cure is worse than the illness.

I mourn people dying daily from COVID-19 in the “blue state” centers of this pandemic … where their biased liberal media and blind political leaders are leading them away from potential working cures (HDCQ, etc.) and mass marching them to ventilator internment camps. Good Lord let the politicians’ life and death dictatorial decisions at least be properly “socially distanced” from their political bias.

I may not survive this virus; but I pray to God my grandchildren’s heritage of freedom, prosperous free enterprise, and free thought survives this current cesspool of tainted political air.

I’m Joe Balyeat… and I have COVID-19.

Joe Balyeat is a former Republican state senator from Bozeman. He is a CPA and National Merit Scholar.