Ivermectin Nearly Wrecked Him!

The unregulated use of the medication ivermectin has resulted in emergency calls to poison control centers nationwide.  Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic medicine, primarily an antihelmintic... the developers of ivermectin's precursor, avermectin, won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 2015, because of the drug's use to combat diseases caused by worms, such as the horrific filarial blindness, which actually rendered certain regions of sub-Saharan Africa uninhabitable.  

Ivermectin gained its cachet among anti-vaccine crusaders because, experimentally, it inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in monkey kidney cells in vitro... in concentrations which are dangerous to humans.  Because of this finding, desperate South Americans, with no access to vaccines, used ivermectin, a not uncommon drug used in the Global South, as a 'Hail Mary' response to COVID-19 infection.  The important thing to realize is that these individuals had no access to vaccines.  

In a developed nation in which vaccines have been distributed freely, the use of ivermectin, in the form of veterinary medicines, is a bad idea, but conspiracy theory promulgators are now touting it as a 'miracle cure' for just about everything:

The same idiots who couldn’t rig a few voting machines to get Hillary into office in 2016 are capable of forcing the whole world to not take the drug that would cure COVID. pic.twitter.com/7RBI7aQEqe

— Poker and Politics (@PokerPolitics) September 3, 2021

As I recall, Mick Jones sang about this... There being a fine line between black comedy and horror, people who should be able to get vaccines with no problem are still consuming the horse paste (I believed the following could be a joke, but the guy's social media posts suggest otherwise):

uhhh guys i found something and it's cursed pic.twitter.com/emrxA5Hoz1

— Jean-Michel Connard  (@torriangray) September 4, 2021

I suspect we'll read about this guy in the Irish racing form.

For a good overview of ivermectin and its fascination for the MAGA crowd, I suggest a listen to the latest episode of Matt Binder's DOOMED podcast, in which he interviews internal medicine doctor Eric Osgood.  The Good Doctor gives a thorough breakdown of what ivermectin is, what it does, and how it came to be seen as an anti-COVID measure.  It's a compassionate, intellectual discussion of a controversy which has, bizarrely, taken on culture war status.  I can't recommend it highly enough.