Ivermectin is an excellent drug, at least as long as you happen to be a horse or a cow or some other livestock. If you are a patient infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, not so much. As the American Food and Drug Administration admonished earlier this year via Twitter, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” In the United States these days, this counts as vital information.
Not everyone is convinced. After all, why believe a bunch of scientists when the eminent universal genius of our time, Donald Trump, has vouched for the safety of the drug, normally used to treat parasites in animals, and its effectiveness against COVID-19. Effective it might be, safe less so.
Over the past year, dozens of American ivermectin enthusiasts have paid for their trust in The Donald with their health and even their lives. Yet relatives of seriously ill COVID-19 patients have continued to demand that hospitals administer ivermectin to their loved ones, in some cases going so far as to involve the courts. The courts have invariably refused to force the medical staff to administer the drug, much to the doctors’ relief.
The Ivermectin crowd, on the other hand, has been irate, claiming that politics, not medical reasons, is behind the drug’s bad press. Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky who is “undecided” on the drug (“I don’t know if it works, but I keep an open mind”), earlier this year blamed the bad press on an association with Trump: “The hatred for Trump,” Rand claimed, “deranged [medical researchers] so much, that they’re unwilling to objectively study it.” The same was true, he continued, for hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug the former president had promoted as a treatment for COVID. This is the very same senator who claimed on YouTube that masks were not effective against the virus.
Ironically enough, this is exactly what Merck, the pharma giant that manufactures ivermectin, has said with regard to the drug. Earlier this year, the company stated that “there is no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against Covid-19 from pre-clinical studies.” Again, why believe what scientists say when the ultimate authority on everything assures us of the drug’s enormous benefits.
Europeans have a tendency to sneer at Americans and their gullibility and After all, quite a few Americans are convinced that the world is flat, even more that the Earth was created some 10,000 years ago, and even more still (at least among Republicans) that Donald Trump was a great president who was defrauded of a second mandate. The rapid diffusion of even the most absurd conspiracy theories has done nothing to correct these impressions. On the contrary, it seems no idea is silly or outright stupid enough that there won’t be people eagerly gobbling it up.
My personal favorite is the notion that dinosaurs lived peacefully alongside Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There they all — including the — fed on leaves and vegetables. Only Adam’s fall from God’s grace turned them into carnivores. The silliness goes on and on. Those interested might want to explore the Creationist Museum in Rand Paul’s Kentucky. It is a true revelation.
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