Staying home snorting ivermectin
Sorry, can’t do the anti-vax rally, have Covid.
A Republican lawmaker in North Dakota will miss his Monday rally opposing vaccine mandates because he has COVID-19. Instead, Rep. Jeff Hoverson said he will stay home and take a cocktail of medications including the unproven anti-parasite drug ivermectine and the malaria remedy Hydroxychloroquine.
He must be a very intelligent man.
Hoverson has battled mask mandates. He was barred from boarding a flight with his wife at Minot International Airport late last month after taking issue with a TSA patdown. Hoverson said he and his wife were traveling for their anniversary.
Covid doesn’t care what you’re traveling for.
H/t Holms
Why didn’t he just attend the rally with COVID, and infect his friends? Hmm.
I’m wondering about the practicality of this. I only know of horse wormer being packaged in syringes with the right amount to treat one 500 kg horse, and a ring on the plunger that you can adjust to get the right dose for smaller animals. I think you can go up or down by 50 kg increments, which is precise enough for a horse. Do they read the instructions – this much paste per bodyweight – and then calculate the right amount based on their own weight, and without experiencing the slightest doubt at the repeated references to “the animal being treated”? But then do they take a one-off dose, like you would give if you were using ivermectin for the intended purpose, or do they make up some kind of regime based on who knows what? Take half a Shetland Pony dose 3 times a day for 7 days, because why not?
In a way, I can understand people who have a distrust of medicine generally and think they are better off trying to cure cancer with natural remedies. It’s foolish, but at least there is some kind of reasoning. This new enthusiasm for embracing drugs but rejecting the knowledge of the people who know what to use them for is just bizarre.
I really wish people would stop the “horse paste” nonsense; it is simply propaganda, a signal of tribal affiliation just as embarrassing and free of truth as right-wing insistence that it is a magical antiviral cure-all. At least
is a bit more honest, though the grammar is misleading in a way Ophelia is fond of pointing out when she has a bee in her bonnet over the subject matter. Specifically, Ivermectin is *not* an “unproven anti-parasite” drug; its use as an anti-parasitic in human beings is what it was developed for in the first place, and it has been taken by billions of people for this purpose, to the point that its developers received the Nobel Prize in 2015. It has the potential to eradicate river blindness, for example, along with scores of other parasitic scourges which have ruined billions more human lives over the course of our history. The fact that it works in other large mammals for this purpose is an unintended benefit.
It is, however, an unproven anti-viral drug with mixed evidence for and against, enough that cranks on all sides can muster up shoddy or nuanced studies to “prove” it is either effective or ineffective, depending on one’s prior political and ideological commitments. But the hypothesis that it has antiviral properties did not come from nowhere, and it deserves to be studied for this purpose. Until its efficacy as an antiviral is established or ruled out, at least some doctors (some of them competent, some of them cranks) will keep prescribing it as part of a kitchen-sink cocktail of potential therapeutics.
But when doctors prescribe it, they are prescribing a well-established medicine for an off-label purpose, which is something that all doctors do all the time for all kinds of medicines. Even over-the-counter medicines can be an identical formulation with a different name and dosing regime for different purposes; the difference between a particular antihistamine and a sleeping pill is simply a matter of dosage, for example, though the conditions being treated and the underlying mechanism of action of the drug are completely different.
The blather about “horse paste” is mostly culture-war nonsense, both a product of and a further incitement to the deranged us-versus-them thinking that is destroying our civil society. One can support the uptake of vaccines and signal disapproval of vaccine skeptics without debasing oneself in such ways.
@3, I could be wrong, what with not being a fly on the wall of every ivermectin user in the USA, but my understanding is that a vanishingly small amount of human formulated Ivermectin is being prescribed by doctors to people wanting it as a covid treatment, and that there is ample evidence that people have in fact been resorting to the horse deworming paste – which of course has the advantage of being both cheaper and not requiring an expensive doctors consultation. you don’t have to delve into the sewer of the internet that far to find discussion in relevant circles of which products to obtain from where, what does to take and in combination with what other quackery for ‘best’ effect.
I don’t think it’s simply propaganda at all to make the claim and as this isn’t the first time Ophelia has raised the ivermectin issue, any regular reader would know and understand that her statement is in the context of Ivermectin being unproven as a covid treatment, not as a dewormer. I suppose to avoid making the sentance long and clunky, she might have included a footnote. Maybe that would have appeased you?
And sure, off label prescribing is a thing, but the evidence for Ivermectin as a covid treatment was always thin and has only become thinner as time has gone by. Multiple papers suggesting benefit have now been withdrawn by the authors or publishers because they have been been demonstrated to have major, in some cases massive flaws.
Rob,
Sure, there are frightened people who’ve been cynically led to believe that vaccines are more risky than they are who are looking for a miracle drug, and the US’s broken healthcare system demonstrably leads to a non-zero number of people experimenting with quack drugs and “alternative medicines”. Under these conditions it is guaranteed that a certain number of people will perform elaborate and sometimes dangerous magic rituals with veterinary medicine. In the profit-driven model of patients-as-customers-of-doctors and doctors-as-customers-of-pharmaceutical-representatives, it is also guaranteed that doctors prescribe drugs inappropriately, often at the patient’s own uninformed behest. While ivermectin itself is not a cash cow drug in the same way OxyContin is, the pharma-rep-to-street-addict medical culture established in the United States in the past two decades has likely made vanity prescriptions of ivermectin much more common in the US than in Europe (where the drug is currently undergoing multiple trials for efficacy as a potential therapeutic).
But the numbers of this actually happening, both with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, are probably vanishingly small; the Rolling Stone piece on the Oklahoma non-story is indicative of the media environment, where one doctor on one radio show said “I have seen some cases of people taking this medicine inappropriately; don’t take this medicine for off-label purposes without the express advice of a doctor; we’re in a pandemic and you don’t want to wind up in the hospital unnecessarily for a panoply of reasons”, which got translated to “GUNSHOT VICTIMS ARE WAITING IN LINE BEHIND HORSE PASTE OVERDOSES IN CLOGGED HOSPITALS!”, with a captioned photo showing people in winter coats and gloves for a story that ran in the height of summer. This was a headline and article so wide of the mark it cannot be considered any better than an intentional lie. Documented cases of older people taking fish-cleaning tabs and dying have also been sensationalised along the same lines, out of all proportion to what is probably actually happening on the ground.
Now, the following questions should be asked: How many people are experimenting with non-prescribed or non-medicine chemicals? How many people are being prescribed unproven off-label drugs as a kitchen-sink therapeutic strategy or vanity prescription? And does tarring all use or mention of ivermectin as “horse dewormer”, even in the latter cases, prevent the people who might, in their desperation and fear and paranoia, actually try to formulate their own amateur miracle cures and magic rituals from attempting to do so?
My Bayesian baseline estimates are, respectively, a small amount comparable to ideologically-committed users and promoters of alternative medicine, probably a lot more than you think, and very probably not. The first two points are very difficult to know, because it does not take any real effort for a community to spring up around anything (whether or not you consider it a sewer), and doctors do not make a habit of publicising their advice to patients, especially when they know this advice will become culture-war fodder.
For the third point, I think it is much more likely that the proponents of “horse dewormer” messaging are signalling allegiance to a political tribe, and asserting moral or intellectual superiority over another tribe, rather than having any concern for human well-being or even the truth of the matter. And the sensational media environment, the multiple walk-backs and out-and-out lies of government representatives across administrations and departments and national boundaries, and our tribal impulses are all making it very difficult for anyone to discern the truth of the matter.
And to be clear, I am not accusing Ophelia of intentionally promulgating propaganda. And I am by no means recommending taking ivermectin without the responsible advice of a qualified medical practitioner you trust (and if you don’t have one of those, you should not go to the farm supply store because of something you read on the internet). I am pointing out that this particular point — showing disdain for this drug and the people who use it — is part of a general class of thought-traps I have been noticing as an in-group tribal distinction, and I do not believe it is helpful to the causes of climbing out of our epistemic closure or of saving people’s lives in this pandemic.
Of course, I could be wrong, and I don’t think Ophelia or Catwhisperer or anyone here is evil or sinister, but in my opinion, the main upside of decrying horse paste is personal catharsis, and I believe the downsides outweigh this.
Wtf? What are you talking about? I didn’t say anything about horse paste. I quoted a news story that said “Rep. Jeff Hoverson said he will stay home and take a cocktail of medications including the unproven anti-parasite drug ivermectine and the malaria remedy Hydroxychloroquine.” Yes, that should have said “the anti-parasite drug ivermectin (which is unproven as a treatment for Covid)” or similar, but I don’t point out glitches of that kind every single time because it would be too much clutter.
I suppose I should have clarified that my initial comment was directed more at the general miasma of the article, and the specific characterisation by Catwhisperer, but I didn’t have the time to make the comment short enough as it was ;)
Ivermectin is an approved and effective anti-parasitic, not an anti-viral (Covid is a virus). The rest is mostly politics. :P
The words probably and likely are doing a lot of work in that post Durch…
Blimey. I would have thought if I was signalling an allegiance with any kind of tribe, it’s the tribe of people who are very familiar with anthelmintic drugs as just that. Maybe the double whammy of immediately recognising it as a horse wormer plus articles calling it, you know, a horse wormer stopped me thinking any further about whether there might be a legitimate reason to suppose it would be of some use in fighting a virus, or alleviating the symptoms of covid. I do know for sure that I have only seen it reported as “people are taking ivermectin to treat covid”, and not “doctors are prescribing ivermectin to treat covid”. Had I seen it reported that way, I imagine I would have blamed the bonkers US health care system more than the patients. Either way, I think I mostly resent being characterised as having it in for ivermectin when I am in fact a big fan. Although it is important to remember to treat for tapeworm in spring and autumn with a double dose of pyrantel and for encysted small redworm larvae with moxidectin in winter. Naturally ;p
As I understand it, ivermectin was initially developed for humans and then shortly after approved for veterinary use. I too have only heard of it being used as cattle and horse wormer until I did some research on it. I recall years ago being pleased when I saw how effective it was after witnessing all the dead worms showing up in my horse’s droppings after treatment. A little grossed out but pleased just the same.
High five, twiliter!
Cheers! ;)
Having been to Minot, the last thing I would ever want to do is to cause such a ruckus at the airport that I would have to stay there.
No, not so bright.