COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.]

The rise of the ivermectin cult is one of the most nonsensical storylines — in a sea of nonsensical storylines — to emerge during the pandemic. Even now, as Covid begins to become a less dominant force in our lives, the ivermectin bunkum continues.

There have been several recent large, well-done, clinical trials, including one published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, that definitively show, according to one of the study’s authors, “there’s really no sign of any benefit.”

But this growing body of it-doesn’t-work evidence hasn’t stopped ivermectin champions from championing. “RETRACT PAPER @NEJM NOW!!!!!” an anti-vaccine physician posted on Twitter a few days after the study was published. In her view it is a “CRIMINAL PAPER” that is “PROMOTING MURDER.” (All caps and exclamation marks in original, of course.)

The ivermectin stories have gotten so bizarre that I increasingly need to double-check to see whether they are satire. People are advocating giving it to babies, patients are sneaking it into hospitals inside teddy bears, and a candidate in Wisconsin’s attorney general election wants to investigate potential homicides in hospitals because “loved ones were basically being murdered” because ivermectin is being “withheld from them.”

Reality: There has never been good clinical evidence to support the use of the drug in the context of Covid. In the pandemic’s early days there were laboratory studies — that is, research done in petri dishes and not involving actual humans — that suggested the drug, which is used to treat parasites in horses, had antiviral properties. (This kind of work rarely translates into clinical application.) There were also some observational studies that seemed promising.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/w...sedgntp&cvid=ddaa5ad98b364dcd9e1dcecde3d61a61