Facts, India, Ivermectin, And US Media Misinformation.
All things truly wicked start from innocence
There’s been a lot of misinformation published on just about every topic of any importance and some topics of little importance. Addressing all the misinformation that’s been published is beyond what little talent I have, so I’ll limit this to addressing misinformation published by the MSM involving Ivermectin.
‘Misinformation’ is a word often used but seldom defined, to avoid confusion I define ‘misinformation’ as:
Information that is not merely incorrect (we all make mistakes) but information a person puts out knowing it is incorrect and/or misleading, or would have known it is incorrect and/or misleading if they took the time to do some basic research.
Many, if not most MSM organizations have attempted to shut down discussion of using Ivermectin to combat COVID. The tactics of choice are to brand the drug a “horse dewormer” (or a variation of this phrase) and/or claim there’s no scientific evidence that it’s effective against COVID.1 Both are false. To be clear, one version of Ivermectin is used as a horse dewormer, and I highly recommend that no one use this to treat COVID. However, as discussed below, that is not the version of Ivermectin people are advocating for as a treatment for COVID.
Though not as well thought out as many, this Fox News article is the perfect example of misinformation the MSM publishes about Ivermectin. It’s headlined “Doctors grow frustrated over COVID-19 denial, misinformation” with the subtitle “Doctors are aggravated at the constant requests to be prescribed the veterinary parasite drug Ivermectin.” (emphasis mine). As an initial matter, no one goes to a doctor to request a prescription for the “veterinary parasite drug Ivermectin.” If that’s what they want, they can buy it at a feed store or through Amazon - no prescription required. What I suspect they are requesting is Ivermectin manufactured for humans, which does require a prescription.
Explicitly or implicitly stating that Ivermectin is nothing more than a “horse dewormer” or “veterinary parasite drug” is at best staggeringly ignorant, at worst a lie, and in either case misinformation. A five minute google search would provide a trove of information that one version of Ivermectin is used as a horse dewormer, the other is FDA approved for, and used by humans.
In the article itself, Fox states that doctors are “aggravated at the constant requests to be prescribed the the veterinary parasite drug Ivermectin.” This sweeping claim is based on the AP interviewing six doctors in the U.S. As of March 2020 there were 1,022,000 practicing doctors in the nation. I’ll leave it to Josey the math goddess to figure out what percentage of all U.S. doctors were interviewed for this article - my eyes glossed over when the number got smaller than one-one thousand of 1%. Seems like a rather small sample pool to make such a sweeping claim. More damning, none of the doctors referenced in the article made any statement about Ivermectin or that Ivermectin is a “veterinary parasite drug;” nor did any state that they were “aggravated” by consistent requests to prescribe it. At lest none that were published in the article.
So, what is this Ivermectin I speak of?
Ivermectin is a drug that was approved for human use in 1987 to treat Neglected Tropical Diseases such as river blindness, elephantiasis and some others. Since its introduction the drug has been safely and effectively used worldwide by an estimated 2.6 billion people against an ever growing list of diseases. The drug is so safe and effective against so many diseases that in 2015 it was awarded a Noble Prize and in 2019 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it an essential medicine. Additionally, research over the last nine years has shown that Ivermectin has “demonstrated antiviral properties against RNA viruses, including influenza, Zika, HIV, Dengue, and most importantly, SARS-CoV-2.” (emphasis mine). Sounds like a tad more than horse dewormer to me.
Ivermectin is also FDA approved as a treatment for a couple of diseases, but not COVID. However, it is legal for U.S. doctors to prescribe Ivermectin for COVID treatment or prevention - it’s called off-label use, which is the use of an FDA approved drug to treat a disease it is not specifically approved for, but which the doctor believes it is effective against. Simply put, doctors in the U.S. can prescribe Ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID.
Though there are no large scale double-blind studies proving Ivermectin is effective against COVID, there are numerous studies indicating it is an effective drug to treat the disease. In addition to these studies there is real world data that strongly indicates Ivermectin is effective in both preventing and treating COVID.
The Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) has used Ivermectin to both treat and prevent COVID since 2020. The results? As of October 3, 2021 UP with a population of 224,980,000 and a full vaccination rate of only 9.6% had a total of 158 active COVID cases and a seven day average death rate of 0.00027/100,000. In comparison, the US with a population of approximately 338,000,000 and a full vaccination rate of 65.5% had 28,835 new COVID cases on October 3 alone. Think about it, with a vaccination rate 6.8 times higher than UP the US had 182.5 times the number of new cases in one day than UP has total active cases. The only difference between the U.S. and UP, besides our much higher vaccination rate…UP uses Ivermectin to prevent and treat COVID.
So much for the MSM’s claims that there is no evidence that Ivermectin is effective against COVID. You can argue the evidence might not be conclusive but you cannot argue that there is no evidence.
Is Ivermectin effective at preventing and/or treating COVID? Not sure, but there is strong evidence indicating it is. If it’s not, then how do you explain UP’s success? In any event what I am sure of, is the MSM calling Ivermectin a “veterinary parasite drug” and ‘horse dewormer” to stifle debate is neither honest nor helpful. Instead, it’s another ‘noble lie’ made by the self-righteous in their misguided effort to shutdown debate they deem harmful to the ‘greater good.’ As I’ve said before, the ‘noble lie’ is not noble, just a word the self-righteous use to justify their lying.
Ivermectin has proven to be a safe drug used by an estimated 2.6 billion people since 1987 with strong, though perhaps not conclusive evidence, that it’s effective in countering COVID. If we are truly in a pandemic, then why not use it? Since it’s proven to be safe, seems the worst that could happen is people use it, it proves ineffective, and we continue to deal with the virus. The best that could happen is people use it, the U.S. achieves results like UP, we get rid of the divisive vaccine mandates, and go about life.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see the downside to using Ivermectin to prevent and treat COVID.
* Subtitle is a quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway
See CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo News, NBC News, Times Union, Rolling Stone, LA Times, and the list goes on.