Patrons-Only: Ivermectin? We Hardly Even Know Them!

Maybe they sympathize with a group of people being caricatured and demonized? I also think the group is a lot larger than those who would have been called “anti vaxxers” 2 years ago. Trust in institutions is at a very low point, the vaccines were developed quickly, and some people don’t have any immediate sense of danger depending on where they live/who they know, so it all seems disproportionate. I think it’s the same thing as “not all Trump voters are racist”. Speaking as someone who literally administers these vaccines, if people choose not to take it, it really just doesn’t bother me. (Even if many of the reasons are insane etc). But I don’t think the people who get worked up about it can control their reaction any more than I can control my own not giving a shit.

Cory

Agree.

Cory

It was good! I think it was a fair summary. Could have gone into more medical detail but then you’d risk going way outside your wheelhouse. I think the Dark Horse people have gone WAY further than the evidence allows for. I’m rooting for it to maybe be effective for prophylaxis, but I admit that’s largely for culture war/anti authoritarian reasons.

Cory

Why is it that so many anti-woke people who (rightfully imo) mock the excesses of pseudo social justice suddenly want to hold the hand of anti vaxxers? These people are the mirror image of each other. It may be a small number of people, but if you’re poisoning yourself when a free vaccine is available, you’re ridiculous.

Been nervous about listening to this episode since most of the coverage makes me want to tear my hair out. I’m coming at it as a pharmacist who thinks this drug’s role (or lack thereof) in Covid is not close to being settled. Gulp! Here I go.

Cory

The context added by the doctor at the end didn’t cast him in a suspicious light. He was saying, “Hey, it’s kind of fucked up that we have such shitty transfer capacity for local trauma patients, since the ICUs at the major medical centers are full of COVID patients, the vast majority of which could have been prevented by a vaccine, *yet we also* have to deal with stupid shit like Ivermectin side effects on top of that.” I think he was just commenting on the irony (maybe that’s not the right word). Edit: punctuation

Accipitridae

"I don't want to go up against Bret & heather on Ivermectin" No! Ya'll should go toe to toe, it'd be like couples tennis. You could even get away with cargo shorts Jesse!

Klondike

The first red flag was “gunshot wounds in Oklahoma.” really? it ain’t the south side of Chicago out there.

The biggest pain of passing along Twitter headlines is that often, all you have to do to fact check is click through to the underlying article and read it carefully. This comes up all the time with my friends - someone passes along some weird sounding twitter story and somebody else from the group goes to the trouble of actually reading the underlying article, only to learn the headline is way overblown.

DGin, well said. For that matter, why take pot shots at a responsible pro like Rachel Maddow (for tweeting something that, after hearing this episode’s addendum, seems to actually be correct), while consistently propping up Joe Rogan and all of his disingenuous, supplement-pushing bullshit, which only adds to the REAL problem: dangerous anti-vax, anti-science nonsense.

Maybe Ivermectin helps, maybe not. In any event, it should only be used as prescribed by a doc. I would be surprised if many of those ending up in ER rooms with an ivermectin overdose were getting a scrip for it. These are anti vax people. Anti vax is driving the surge in the medical facilities, whether it is just from getting COVID and having severe symptoms, or because they ate too much horse paste. The surge is real. The cause is anti vax. Yeah, the burnout is real. I know many docs and others in health care and they are suffering. But, a lot of it is because of how they are being treated by people. The hostility. The cray cray. Too bad these guys are afraid to go after some who are pushing the cray cray. Go after the cub reporter who screwed up, or pushed her agenda, or whatever. Fine. But what about Brett and Heather, who have pushed cray cray to a massive audience, under the guise of science?

DavidtheG

Yeah this whole situation feels like a comedy of errors, with each party partially culpable. No individual did anything *too* egregious, but the sloppiness got amplified at each level (with each bit of sloppy reporting from an outlet lending more credibility to what became a totally bullshit exaggeration/false story.) It kind of reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/978/

I see nothing wrong with anything the doctor said in the full recording. He wasn't saying Ivermectin was meaningfully contributing to the fact there are no beds (he said it was a handful of cases), he was just using it to reinforce his point that the whole situation is completely fucked, in a myriad of ways.

Those poor horses. What will they do without Katie's jokes? Nobody will remember them.

I feel like katie should be limited to only 2 horse jokes per episode. poor jesse's fake nervous chuckle gets more and more pained as the show goes on.

Was there ever a surplus or even a steady supply in the US (on a nationwide basis - I realize individual markets can vary greatly)? I recall traveling a number of years ago sitting next to a guy whose job was going to Indonesia, Philippines, etc to hire nurses to come to the US - and these were to fill positions in a variety of facilities - even basic spots in training hospitals like UNC-CH and others.

LT Fish

Well they've thus farm been vindicated on almost everything. IVM is still far from settled.

Uh. What? Thanks for trying; but no.

Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying are peddlers of misinformation and the worst (I recommend Decoding the Gurus post on Weinstein/Heying).

JGraves

Katie, I work in healthcare and can confirm. The nurse staffing shortage is very real and oddly I never put it together. Yup, you nailed it. Everyone is so burnt out from last year.

MY DOG EATS WHAT I EAT* DAMMIT AND YOURE NOT GONNA CHANGE THAT WITH YOUR FANCY MEDICAL/TRACTOR SUPPLY LINGO. *except chocolate, of course. I'm not a philistine.

As a health care practitioner myself, I can ditto this. I’m a firm supporter of 1. Get vaxxed and 2. have ivermectin (human-grade prescribed only) on hand if exposed to take in the 1st few days to stop viral replication. See FLCCC guidelines for usage. Do not take extra dosing, it will not help. 3. Call your fucking doctor right away if you get covid. Early treatment is essential to stay out of the hospital.

I'm a goat farmer and I've been giving Ivomec to goats and dogs for about 15 years now. One thing that is totally overlooked in all of these conversations is the various formulations of what is being called "ivermectin". When you buy it from a pharmacist it's in a human dose and contains no carcinogens or toxic preservatives. It comes with human instructions and a person with a degree asks you if you understand the instructions before sending you away. At Tractor Supply, where I buy it for my dog, it comes in many forms. There's Sheep Drench Horse paste Injectable .8% Injectable 1% Pour on. Ivomec + with a pretty dangerous flukacide Etc. Across a bunch of brands. None of those are made to human safety standards. None of the instructions tell you what dose a human gets for covid infections. When poison control reports incident with ivermectin, they're not giving any info at all really. Is ivermectin safe in humans? Depends on the dose. Are people buying at tractors supply and overdosing? Yes. Yes they are.

😂😂 rectal horse paste …

Early studies suggest it's very promising but key data supporting them was recently retracted, so I would expect that informed people stockpiled it at some point. Getting COVID when you're not vaccinated is a far greater risk than an Ivermectin overdose. That said, I'm not at all confident right now that Ivermectin is an effective treatment.

I have no trust in the media anymore. At all. Especially in stories of importance. Its sad and scary. I spent a lot of my life goofing on my weirdo friends left or right who were like "big media is all lies, man!" Sure institutions had a point of view, and this affected how they viewed the news and what leads they gave credence to, etc. But generally, with some exceptions (News channels probably being the worst), I think there was a desire to get it right. I simply don't believe that anymore. I can't imagine getting a big NYT Sunday anymore and plowing through it other than as some self flagellating 10 Minutes Hate. (Or actually I guess it'd be more like a Leisurely 3 Hour Brunch Hate, but same diff.) I dont even really blame them, given the economics. If someone gave me 10 million and said "start a news based media company, but you have to make money" I'd start a politically weighted click bait mill like the rest. If you tried to start an Honest News Source outside a political niche you'd be broke in 6 months.

This is my understanding and I have a real science degree! Ivermectin prevents viral replication. If you take it when you think you’ve been exposed or within 48 hours of symptoms, it helps reduce symptoms and may prevent the second inflammatory phase of the illness since there’s less viral debris for your body to get rid of. The second phase is the cytokine storm that kills people. Ivermectin does not work in this phase because the virus isn’t replicating anymore. So, in this way, it’s like Tamiflu. It’s no good if you show up to the doc after 48hrs. As for the “it’s an anti-parasitic” argument, we use medications for multiple maladies no matter what the class of the drug is. Lamotrigine is for epilepsy. Turns out it works well for bipolar patients as a mood stabilizer. So can we only use it for the one approved thing and nothing else? That seems harmful too. Lots of psychiatric drugs were “found” like this.

Ivermectin seems to have the same PR problem as ketamine in its random equine associations.

So just a personal story to not take any advice from (and I did get the jabs): I have three friends that I would trust above all others to give me advice like whether I should get the jabs (they said yes) and whether ivermectin should be considered. This is two drs and a pharmacist. To my surprise I found out all three have a stash of ivermectin in case they get Covid and at least one is using it as a preventative (all have had the mrna vaccines). One of the drs actually does an insane amount of research on drugs as that is this persons job. Obviously don't take a random account on the internet as any kind of advice but I was very surprised to find this out given how the media is treating this medication. Clearly there are at least some positive suggestions that it does work or at least can help.

CTE

Nice to hear Cleuci's name again, she's been off twitter for along while!

Manzell Blakeley

Early studies seemed to show it might work, but a paper with key data ended up being retracted.

Don’t understand the economic pressure? So that makes it ok? Turns out the local report was accurate, albeit shallow, and the doctor is a lying piece of shit. The aggregators deserve scorn for the story whores they are. They choose to be whores so they need to accept their whoredom. Maybe, clutching their pearls, they could pushback against the “whorrible” economic pressure while collapsing on the “feinting” story couch.

Ivermectin became popular among conspiracy theorists while the studies still looked promising, as in "the pandemic could be over in every country within 3 months if THEY would just look at these research papers and give everyone Ivermectin." It's similar to conspiracist beliefs about free energy technology or panacea medical treatments.

So, Ivermectric seems to *work* - against parasites. But COVID isn't a parasitic infection if I'm not mistaken?

Manzell Blakeley

Thanks so much guys!