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Local leaders have criticized Dr. Vladimir Zelenko for spreading false data about infection rates in the town where he tested his treatment. “Things happened,” the doctor said.
(JTA) – His rise was meteoric and his fall just as sudden.
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, an Orthodox Jewish doctor who rose to prominence in March selling a cocktail of drugs that he said had effectively treated the coronavirus, adding one that President Donald Trump said Monday he was taking. – himself, despite the drug’s potentially harmful side effects – announced that he was leaving the Jewish network where he has practiced medicine for decades.
In a video shared by the Orthodox news site Yeshiva World News, Zelenko announced he would leave Kiryas Joel, the town north of New York City where, until the coronavirus pandemic, he was known as a beloved community doctor.
“Things happened,” he said, speaking directly to the camera. “It was time to move on. I still don’t know what I’m going to do.
The announcement comes after Zelenko was accused by community leaders of spreading disinformation about the rate of coronavirus infection in Kiryas Joel, leading to discrimination against residents of the village. Zelenko is also being investigated by a federal prosecutor over his claim that a study of the drugs he promoted had won approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
Leaders of the Kiryas Joel network publicly denounced Zelenko in an open letter in March.
“We the undersigned institutions strongly believe that the predictions presented by Dr. Zelenko have been proven false and are not supported by the overall medical establishment, specifically in his wild conclusions as to the spread of the virus in our community,” the village’s office of emergency management, a partnership of several community organizations and government agencies formed to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, wrote in an open letter.
The letter was written to contradict Zelenko’s claims, which he promoted in videos posted to YouTube, that 90% of the Kiryas Joel community would be infected with COVID-19.
“These measures have allowed, thanks to the Almighty, to achieve a healthy population rate of 90%, contrary to Dr. Zelenko’s scandalous prediction of a 90% infection rate,” they write, referring to the closure. of the community synagogues. schools and other buildings.
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