I don’t know if Ivermectin works to prevent or treat COVID-19 or not.
What I do know is this has turned into yet another dumb, overwrought political battle, and I am really, really tired of dumb, overwrought political battles.
All of our COVID policy debates these days seem to immediately devolve into red-versus-blue tribal signaling that obscures any nuance or rational decision-making process.
The debate about mask mandates in schools isn’t about making a reasonable assessment of the costs and benefits to kids based on the science available.
If you’re on the blue team it’s about showing how much you love masks: The more masks the better! Stronger masks! On more people! In more places! For a longer time! Masks are great! They’re so healthy and good and beneficial and you can’t wait to wear them every flu season after the pandemic, too!
It’s how you show people that you’re a member of the blue team in good standing, and that you love Dr. Fauci and have a yard sign about believing science and an “I’m Vaccinated” frame on your profile picture.
It’s hard to remember now that at one point early on, Trump and weirdo fringe right-wingers were pro-mask and the blue team said they didn’t work or could even be counter-productive. But things have changed.
If blue team loves masks, then red team hates them.
If red team loves something, then blue team hates it. And that goes double if the red-tribe king himself, Donald Trump ever says anything good about it.
Remember “injecting bleach”? (Which to be fair, he never really said.)
Or hydroxychloroquine?
Or the vaccines right up until December 2020?
Well, enter Ivermectin. There have been some indications that the drug, which has anti-parasitic, and possibly anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties, and which is used by people and domestic animals for conditions from parasitic infections to rosacea, might have some effect on COVID.
It has been touted by some people who have been skeptical of the vaccines, and was even recently taken by Joe Rogan among a plethora of treatments he used to combat his own COVID diagnosis this week.
The drug is cheap, it has a good safety profile when taken in an appropriate dose, and it’s been around a while. It doesn’t seem to be a COVID miracle cure, but it also doesn’t seem super dangerous. Off-label use is perfectly legal under the guidance of a physician. It would be great if we could let doctors prescribe it to people who want to give it a shot, and study if it does anything in a non-partisan, level-headed way.
But of course, this is 2021, so we obviously can’t take that approach.
Red team wants Ivermectin, so blue team (which includes the media and the academic establishment) hates it.
So they’ve made it harder and harder to get prescriptions, issued strongly-worded statements about the lack of evidence for its effectiveness, and banned some discussions of the drug from social media.
Instead of this crackdown inspiring love and trust between red and blue, it has predictably widened the rift even further. Sure that there is a conspiracy to keep the true cure for COVID away from them, Ivermectin advocates have turned to purchasing livestock versions of the drug and trying to take the correct dose of those instead, which is much more dangerous and prone to error.
So did the rise in cases of accidental overdoses and calls to poison control awaken sympathy from blue team and cause them to reevaluate their hardline anti-Ivermectin stance? Were there calls to loosen restrictions on prescriptions of human Ivermectin?
Have you been paying attention at all the last year and a half? Of course not.
Blue team instead took to Twitter to dunk on red team for “gulping down horse paste” and laughing at the dumb rubes who would do such a thing.
So funny, right?
And it hasn’t just been the opinion crowd doing it, but the straight news headlines, too:
Ivermectin may not work against COVID-19, but it’s also not exclusively “horse paste” or “cow dewormer” or “sheep medicine” or any of the other absurd phrases being hurled around at the people taking it. It’s a legal and relatively safe drug that just hasn’t been proven very effective against COVID-19.
This lie is so stupid, so obviously just cheap partisan dunking, that it only serves to sow more discord and mistrust around the medical information it is supposedly trying to clarify.
I don’t know if Ivermectin works to prevent or treat COVID-19 or not.
And unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to know anytime soon.
For all of their pointing their fingers and laughing, should they get Covid, liberals will be the first ones complaining when they are told to go home and take Tylenol. That’s your treatment. I know from experience.