More Ivermectin Crazytown

Last week, I had a post about the fad amongst conservatives using ivermectin—a drug used mostly to deworm livestock—to treat/prevent COVID-19, rather than vaccines proven safe and effective over 367 million times in the U.S.  Since then things have gotten even more crazy.  Here are three items for your reading enjoyment.

Amazon Search

Go to the Amazon website and type "iv" in the search box, and voila, you get a bunch of autocomplete  suggestions for ivermectin. Yesterday The Verge claimed that Amazon was supporting COVID-19 disinformation because of this and wasn't planning on doing anything about it. 

Apparently that story generated some heat. Today Amazon announced that it is planning to change the autocomplete behavior to address this.

Judge Plays Doctor

A judge in Ohio has ordered a hospital there to administer ivermectin to one of its patients. The patient in question is ill with severe COVID-19 and has been on a ventilator for weeks.  

The patient's wife got in touch with Dr. Fred Wagshul for an ivermectin prescription. Dr. Wagshul is a co-founder of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, which breathlessly flogs ivermectin as COVID-19 treatment on its website.

The hospital refused to administer the drug, the wife sued, and won. Now I'm no physician, but I don't think any old physician can call up a hospital and prescribe treatment for an inpatient if they are not supervising the patient's care. So the judge is inserting himself into medical care decision making. 

What would be a legal analogy that the judge might understand? How would he react if he was handling a trial and some outside lawyer call and demanded he make a certain argument? He would react exactly the way the hospital did in this case. He'd tell the other lawyer to get lost.

Rand Paul Sees a Conspiracy Here—Naturally

Rand Paul says scientists won't study ivermectin because they hate T****. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Paul said (bad words censored):

The hatred for T*** deranged these people so much, that they're unwilling to objectively study it. So someone like me that's in the middle on it, I can't tell you because they will not study ivermectin. They will not study hydroxychloroquine without the taint of their hatred for D***** T****.

This is 100% horse shit. In the earlier post I mentioned that there is an international study underway that is looking at both drugs (and finding they don't work).  

There is also a large, late-stage trial underway testing ivermectin. The Oxford University is studying it too. Neither study is lookin at hydroxychloroquine. But hey, that's so last year.

So Senator Paul is either intentionally spreading misinformation, or is making these claims without knowing the facts. What's worse?

Image by Steven Iodice from Pixabay 

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