Rolling Stone 'Horse Dewormer' Hit-Piece Debunked After Hospital Says No ODs | Hacker News Reader

Rolling Stone 'Horse Dewormer' Hit-Piece Debunked After Hospital Says No ODs

zerohedge.com

91 pointspseudo045 comments

Not my first choice for a source, but I looked through the references they cited and everything seemed to check out. Hopefully this answers some of the questions people had in the comment section for the Insider article based on this Rolling Stone story:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28412115 - ERs backed up with ivermectin overdosers while gunshot victims wait: Oklahoma DR (82 comments)

I just noticed the original story from the Rolling Stone has now also been picked up by Dutch news outlets. I can imagine the same happens in other countries all over the world.

It's amazing how fast the lazy behavior of a single journalist can make incorrect news spread that fast.

I notified a couple of Dutch journalists on Twitter, as I am curious whether they will (and how) correct this.

It seems that many journalists in my country just pretty much translate and summarize foreign media.

Lazy? Or noble lie?

There's nothing noble about lying.

Tell that to everyone involved in Covid

Straight up fake news. Don’t know how you can “accidentally” post something like this

not lazy. this is intentional information war against safe and easy targets

So this happens because journalists apparently use one source. I thought journalists learn that one source is no source.

Especially on health subjects, journalists should be more thorough.

It amazes me that Business Insider does not have one hour of an interns time to confirm sensational stories like this. More likely everyone in the publishing chain was deathly afraid of questioning any part of the narrative of obedience to medical authority that their main stream editors require.

Business Insider is part of Axel Springer AG, a German publisher best known for their flag ship BILD. They've always played loose with sources and facts, and have always favored attention/clicks/sales over truth.

BI isn't as one the nose as their tabloids, but I haven't had the impression that they operate by different principles either.

Accuracy doesn't matter when you're paid to push an agenda. Whether that payment is in literal money or just a continued seat at the cool kids table.

Looks like another great example of disinformation.

When, if, they print a retraction, it is always in smaller print and never on the front page.

To be fair, anyone who believes Rolling Stone after the absolute atrocity that was that college "rape" piece a few years back is probably irredeemably stupid.

The article now includes a tweet referencing the Hospital's statement as though it was expected, without an extra heading or correction notice or title change. Then they pad out the statement again as if to address the concerns of falsehood it raises, before getting the same doc to restate his concerns for the ignorant masses in more detail.

Presumably this time they prodded him for something that does not require confirmation, there isn't an hour to waste in getting on top of a backlash.

Calling ivermectin a “horse dewormer” is the lowest form of intellectual discourse - political meme warfare using pejorative labels. It says more about those who repeat the phrase blindly. Ivermectin is a Nobel prize winning drug that has had incredibly surprising applications. I haven’t looked into it much, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone determined it had some application with COVID. Even if it isn’t very effective, it might provide an imperfect benefit with limited downside, which is all we get from the various vaccines out there anyways. But really what is wrong with people speculating about drugs, discussing them, and making choices on their own about their health and what risks they are comfortable with?

Ultimately the ivermectin controversy is less about ivermectin itself and more about other problems in modern western society that have been laid bare by the pandemic. It’s about uncivil discourse (“horse dewormer”). Its about bad reporting and a failing journalism industry that veered too far into manufacturing narratives. It’s about blindly trusting authorities. It’s about whether speculation and free thought is allowed. It’s about collectivism versus individualism. It’s about groupthink and tribalism. It’s about censorship, for example YouTube censoring videos of the Nobel prize winner discussing ivermectin (https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-censors-dr-satoshi-omura-i...).

We have seen other similar situations throughout the pandemic, like with early speculation about COVID’s existence, whether it could transmit between humans (WHO said it can’t in late Jan 2020!), about masks, about the lab leak theory, and now this.

PS: many left-leaning pharmacists are openly discussing on social media how they can arbitrarily deny doctors’ prescriptions for ivermectin and other drugs that have become politically charged (example: https://www.reddit.com/r/pharmacy/comments/p8zq68/what_are_y...). That may be why some patients are seeking out veterinary doses, which may then be leading to ODs.

Oh please. We have multiple vaccines that have all been demonstrated to be safe and highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death from COVID in multiple studies.

Ivermectin has had decidedly mixed results in very limited early trials, and may not be effective at treating COVID at all.

The only reason people are taking ivermectin when safe, effective, and FREE vaccines are available is because of politics.

> We have multiple vaccines that have all been demonstrated to be safe and highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death from COVID in multiple studies.

Since these are non-sterilizing vaccines without nasal/mucosal immunity, i.e. they do not prevent infection or transmission, there is still benefit in early treatment for vaccinated people who become infected. There are multiple therapeutic options available, including monoclonal antibodies being distributed by some states.

Some studies have shown that the vaccine reduces transmission by as much as 80%. That was with the earlier variant, so it may not hold.

So it is not sterilizing, but it seems to go a long way towards that.

Israel would like a word with you.

Could you be more specific?

I am vaccinated and am not planning to get ivermectin. Your aggressive response seems to assume I have a stake in this. My only stake is that one side seems to think only their favored authorities are allowed to exercise free will, ultimately. These are the same authorities that have been MASSIVELY wrong throughout the pandemic on multiple fronts. I favor decentralization and competing ideas/choices as a way to run a free and just society. From my perspective, the only reason people are against ivermectin is because any deviation from a one size fits all approach undermines the broad lurch towards collectivist control that has been taking place, particularly in American politics. You could say that it is political for both sides of this issue, and I would say that’s fair. But only one solution let’s people live freely, which is individuals making their own choices and voluntarily interacting with others to support those choices.

I accept people who were supporting Ivermectin when it first came out, we didn’t know much about its effects on covid, and it seemed to help some people. It’s not particularly bad for you, so if you’re hospitalized it was a reasonable last resort. But multiple studies have now come out showing ivermectin really isn’t effective against covid, so it doesn’t make sense to support any more.

Also IIRC the “horse dewormer” claims are about people actually taking livestock dewormer, because it contains ivermectin and they can’t get medical ivermectin prescribed. And then people are being hospitalized because livestock dewormer contains other chemicals which aren’t safe for humans.

There was a story about people using horse grade ivermectin and overdosing. However the "horse dewormer" label is being used to talk about medically prescribed Ivermectin as well like in the case of Joe Rogan or the woman suing the hospital to have Ivermectin administered to her comatose husband. If a doctor wants to prescribe Ivermectin alongside with Regeneron then there's nothing to make a big deal about from a medical perspective.

Some are calling it horse dewormer in bad faith. But a lot of cases of people ODing is actually from the horse dewormer version.

Also, ivermectin was originally only for animals, until it was found to work and be safe in humans. Additionally, it is not commonly prescribed in the US. It is only FDA approved for particular types of intestinal worms and externally for severe lice and scabies.

So while calling it horse dewormer is not fair, assuming we are talking about the human Rx version, it's also not that far off. Calling it just a "dewormer" would be more accurate.

Something can be both technically accurate and a pejorative. That is how most slurs come to exist, for example.

More abstractly, it is a an insult based on an implicit teleological argument, and those are typically (always?) fallacious

> Additionally, it is not commonly prescribed in the US

Is is prescribed for immigrant refugees: https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/guidelines/overse...

"All Middle Eastern, Asian, North African, Latin American, and Caribbean refugees should receive presumptive therapy with:

...

Ivermectin, two doses 200 mcg/Kg orally once a day for 2 days before departure to the United States."

The reason why the horse dewormer, and indeed the malaria prophylactic before it, are so popular (in certain sections of society) is that they can be taken after infection.

Thus they require no forethought or preplanning for the possibility of catching Covid, instead they can be used to instantly gratify the consumer - a consumer who has been trained to solve all problems with some stuff bought with a credit card.

That is the problem we have with our society.

so what, it's a moral failing that people try to treat the infection they caught by not thinking ahead and masking/getting vaxxed?

I strongly disagree. anything that helps, before or after, should be tried and studied, and available to whoever needs it, regardless of whether they did it to themselves.

also, ivermectin is being used as prophylaxis for covid infection.

Using Ivermectin isn't any worse than getting an injection of a drug that never made it out of animal trials.

At least you can read the ingredients on the package label.

I hate to whatabout this, but sure, Rolling Stone publishes a garbage piece and the conservative outrage machine cranks up.

Fox News does worse, 24 hours a day, every day.

… and msnbc and Russia today and a whole bunch of shitty networks doesn’t really excuse any of this

> I hate to whatabout this...

Then don't.

I found a way to live with it.

can you point to a Tucker Carlson piece that is flagrantly false like this?

… All of them.

Fox’s own lawyers argued that ‘no reasonable viewer’ should take what he says seriously, and won a court case on the back of that argument.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/7216968/9-24-20-McDou...

Specifically - “This “general tenor” of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not “stating actual facts” about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary.” Milkovich, 497 U.S. at 20-21; Levinsky’s, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 127 F.3d 122, 128 (1st Cir. 1997)). Fox persuasively argues, see Def Br. at 13-15, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer “arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism” about the statements he makes.

any lawyer defending the press in a defamation suit is going to argue exactly that

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