There is a nationwide campaign being driven by the media to undermine ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug used regularly for both humans and animals, as a treatment for COVID-19. It is similar to the debate over hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug touted by former President Donald Trump in the early days of the pandemic, in that no one actually knows whether the drug works against COVID-19 or not.
However, the media have convinced themselves that they know better than the doctors prescribing ivermectin to their coronavirus patients. Headline after headline dismisses ivermectin as a “horse dewormer” or “livestock medicine” and suggests the coronavirus patients seeking out the drug are mindless idiots. A fact these articles conveniently fail to mention is that ivermectin is also a Nobel Prize-winning “wonder drug” regularly prescribed to human beings for a variety of reasons.
To be clear, we do not know whether ivermectin is an effective treatment against COVID-19. Because it’s not an anti-viral treatment, it’s very likely that it’s not effective at all. But there is also no evidence that ivermectin would harm coronavirus patients if it is prescribed in the correct dosage. So why shouldn’t patients be able to request the drug for treatment if they want?
Again, I’m speaking here of prescribed ivermectin — not the kind that is sold over-the-counter and specifically designated for animals. You should absolutely not buy ivermectin from Tractor Supply and try to self-treat. There’s a big difference between the two kinds of ivermectin. But most of the media’s coverage of the drug conflates the two as if they’re the same. They’re not.
The media did the exact same thing with hydroxychloroquine. As soon as Trump began to tout it as a possible therapeutic for COVID-19, report after report blasted it as a dangerous and unproven drug despite the fact that, like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine was widely used and well known and posed very little risk to those who used it against COVID-19.
We still don’t know whether hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment against COVID-19. Some studies say it is. Others say it isn’t. The same goes for ivermectin: We just don’t know. It would be nice if the media at least admitted as much instead of jumping to a conclusion prematurely. But then, how would the media make themselves appear smarter than everyone else?
