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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

The whole Ivermectin debacle was ridiculous.

I never had Covid. Or if I did, it was so mild I never noticed. So, I really have no dog in this fight. But the way the media handled this coverage was really, really off-putting.

First, if it doesn't work, just say that. "It doesn't work". "Ivermectin is not an effective treatment for Covid". That's all that was really necessary, right?

But no, there was this whole ridiculous crusade of "It's a horsey drug for horses! If you take it, that means you're a horse!". Which, after two seconds of consideration, was patently absurd. It's an extremely commonly prescribed drug for people. And there's plenty of drugs that are used for both people and animals. Ketamine. Antibiotics. We give antibiotics to horses too. So does that mean if you take antibiotics you're some whackjob taking horse drugs?

So now you have the media constantly repeating something which anyone with two brain cells can discern is a blatant lie, and they somehow wonder why people don't trust them?

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It was a story because people, for some stupid reason, started buying the horse version of the drug and horse owners couldn't get Ivermectin for their horses anymore: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/20/ivermectin-sho...

I haven't read any story that said: "It's a horsey drug for horses! If you take it, that means you're a horse!"

> I haven't read any story that said: "It's a horsey drug for horses! If you take it, that means you're a horse!"

That’s been said multiple times. By government agencies and media conglomerates. Amazing what you can find when you look for it.

Literal talking point from the FDA https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1429050070243192839?s=20

Debacle with CNN and Joe Rogan https://news.yahoo.com/lie-joe-rogan-accuses-cnn-151300650.h...

"Literal talking point from the FDA"

Oh, come on. The tweet links to a page that gives information that doesn't fit in 280 characters; making a sly reference to what people are talking about is hardly outrageous, and likely intended to increase distribution of the useful info in the link. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...

The next tweet has a FAQ, too (https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1429050498515144708) that's quite clear that ivermectin has some uses in humans, but isn't approved or shown to be useful for COVID.

If you base your reality off single jokey tweets, that's on you.

ha, that's pretty funny actually

it's almost as if joe rogan took prescribed ivermectin on purpose to show CNN how dumb they were calling it horse medicine (i dont' think what rogan did was Smart, but what CNN did was DUMB).

Yeah that didn’t really happen. The article you linked is a 404

Obviously they didn’t use those exact words, but any time it was mentioned they were sure to include something like “…which is used to treat livestock…”, when that is not really relevant since it’s also widely used for people.

Yes, it did happen.

> FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine officials said in a letter to veterinarians and animal product retailers that people have become seriously ill from consuming highly concentrated ivermectin formulations, such as pour-on products, injectable products, pastes, and drenches meant for horses, cattle, and sheep.

> Poison control officials said in August they were receiving substantial numbers of calls from people experiencing side effects—mostly mild illnesses—from consuming veterinary-use ivermectin. Some poison control centers across the U.S. were receiving five times as many calls about human exposures to ivermectin in July 2021 as compared with a pre-pandemic baseline. The reports of ivermectin misuse coincided with rising numbers of SARS-CoV-2 infections.

https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2021-10-01/people-ingesting-...

You might find it politically inconvenient to reconcile this with the stance you’ve chosen but there were plenty of people buying it from veterinary suppliers and reselling it online. Denying that is not a good way to establish credibility.

Then you say, "Ivermectin is also used in a veterinarian capacity at concentration levels dangerous to humans."

But the media chose the sensational way of saying it. It was also frequently dismissed entirely as being for horses without reference to concentration levels or what it actually does.

> You might find it politically inconvenient to reconcile this with the stance you’ve chosen

You might find it politically inconvenient to reconcile this with the stance you’ve chosen but the media and your side isn't right just because the other side is wrong.

> You might find it politically inconvenient to reconcile this with the stance you’ve chosen but the media and your side isn't right just because the other side is wrong.

Oh, a strawman argument with bonus points for trying to look clever by pretending this is a “both-sides” situation so you can avoid intellectual engagement.

If you re-read the thread you might notice that this was specifically in response to someone who was incorrectly claiming that people misusing animal medication didn't really happen. Nobody was saying that it's never used for humans — the big questions were whether it was useful for treating COVID (no) and whether it was a good idea to take non-human formulations and/or doses well outside of the safe ranges without involving a doctor (even more strongly no).

If you want to rant about “the media” or sides, it would probably be a good first step to be specific about what you're talking about so anyone else can evaluate whatever claims you're making. “the media” covers a very wide range of voices and it's not like there's anywhere close to 100% fidelity between different parts of the media or, for that matter, the scientific and governmental voices they're reporting on.

People were literally taking formulations of the drug meant for horses.

To be fair, this is not entirely the case in the linked article:

> Ivermectin is a deworming agent most commonly used on horses, livestock and occasionally dogs and cats. It is used in smaller doses in humans as an anti-parasitic, to treat conditions including skin problems and headlice.

fixed the link

> started buying the horse version of the drug

FYI there is no horse version of drugs. It would be a logistics and production nightmare to produce two kind of medicine like that.

If a medicine has a chemical compound (like for example Amoxicillin) then it is good for both your fish and for you generally speaking.

That's not exactly true, it's not necessarily horse-specific but there are variations between human and animal versions:

> Animal drugs, on the other hand, are often highly concentrated—especially those used in large animals such as horses and cows—and high doses of those drugs could be highly toxic in humans.

> In addition, animal drugs often have inactive ingredients not evaluated for use in human medicine, and FDA officials don’t know how those ingredients affect drug absorption in a human body, FDA information states.

https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2021-10-01/people-ingesting-...

It looks like the source of your mistake is missing that while the active ingredient is the same, the formulations differ both due to size and variation in how the body handles the drug. For example, differences in bioavailability or the liver’s effectiveness breaking it down affect the choices about dosage and what other compounds are used to encourage uptake, make absorption faster or slower, etc. This is why you’ll often see species-specific warnings on veterinary medication since they don’t want you assuming that you can give one of your pets the same thing you got for a different one without checking.

Veterinary drugs are separate products with a different FDA approval pipeline.

> FYI there is no horse version of drugs.

By "horse version" I don't mean a different chemical active ingredient. I mean packaging, dosage, etc. E.g. for animals Ivermectin is often in powder form so it can mixed with food, while for humans it's usually a pill. That means the human version is not approved for lifestock and the lifestock version is not approved for humans. They are two different drugs in that sense.

That's definitely not true about antibiotics.

Surely the people pushing conspiracy theories about the pandemic are a bigger concern than the subset of media that weren't effectively dispelling those conspiracy theories?

It really doesn't make sense to collectively blame "the media" because some of them say silly or incorrect things sometimes. The word itself -- a plural -- tells you there isn't a cohesive "the media" to blame anyway. Who are you actually talking about when you refer to "the media"?

But it wasn’t a conspiracy theory. If you look at, for example, Scott Alexander’s analysis[1] there’s 26/30 studies showing an effect.

Now, if you’re a medical doctor like he is and you spend hours poring over the studies, you can eventually conclude that they’re all flawed in various ways, and there’s not really an effect.

If you’re a layperson and you see that there’s studies published in peer-reviewed journals, but the media is telling you you’re a stupid redneck who’s just a sucker for “conspiracy theories” you’re going to figure they’re just insulting and dismissing you, as they have been consistently doing for years. When those same outlets say the claims about Ivermectin are “baseless” you’re going to wonder why those 26/30 studies don’t constitute a “base” and maybe suspect that there is something else going on.

So, at the end of the day, it is really irresponsible of any media outlet to marginalize and dismiss people, who are trying their best to make sense of a confusing and stressful situation.

[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...

> Now, if you’re a medical doctor like he is and you spend hours poring over the studies, you can eventually conclude that they’re all flawed in various ways, and there’s not really an effect.

Sure, and that's why governments around the world employ such people, in significant quantities, to do exactly that, and then tell the media what they've concluded, who help distribute that information to us laypeople.

Which is exactly what happened.

That’s not what happened. The media’s responsibility was to accurately communicate that information. Instead what they did was “Lololol horsey drugs! You silly horse people” which was false, and caused the people they needed to convince to dismiss them.

There were substantial numbers of substantive articles about ivermectin, human trials, potential and cautions, etc. For a good example, here's NPR discussing it with an even tone that doesn't match your assertions at all: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/09/19/1038369...

Or here's the NYT using pretty clear wording like "forms of the drug meant for horses": https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/health/covid-ivermectin-p...

There were also some less serious outlets discussing the fact that people were self-prescribing by going to veterinary sources without much context to them. These ones, due to the somewhat funny nature of the concept, tended to go more viral. Doesn't mean the more substantive articles didn't exist.

You have people advocating medical treatments against the advice of medical professionals. The arguments include using studies they have no basis to understand and which don't actually support their theory. Not that they care since they are just looking for points to superficially support their predetermined conclusion, which they formed listening to Joe Rogen or reading social media posts.

You don't want to call that a conspiracy theory, but then what should it be called?

And which media outlets have been calling people stupid rednecks? You have a grievance against "the media", but who exactly is that?

I'm really a lot more concerned with the irresponsibility of pushing ineffective medical treatments to a serious health hazard than I am with how gently "the media" tells people that their conspiracy theories are wrong.

> I'm really a lot more concerned with the irresponsibility of pushing ineffective medical treatments to a serious health hazard than I am with how gently "the media" tells people that their conspiracy theories are wrong.

Perhaps you should be concerned with that which causes more harm. After all, a lack of concern for what is true is the fundamental flaw with conspiracy theorists is it not?

Anyone blaming "the media" automatically gets an eyeroll from me these days. It's really the laziest form of criticism available. People desperately want there to be some left-leaning media consensus that they can bash but in reality usually the person criticizing hasn't been personally spoon fed the information that they are arguing against. The biggest media outlets by industry include Fox News for TV, Joe Rogan for podcasting, Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino for text media according to Facebook so no there is no monolithic left leaning "media" consensus.

In a public health crisis, people who are in charge of communicating with the public should be held to a higher standard than random people on YouTube. Yes, CNN saying that people are dying because of Ivermectin usage is a bigger problem than people suggesting we look at Ivermectin for COVID prevention/treatment.

I've heard that sometimes in public health you have to lie to avoid the strange incentives that people acting as a massive group have. But your lies have to at least make sense. When you go around frantically pushing a narrative that is a blatant lie, you lose the public's trust. It doesn't help when half of news programs are brought to you by Pfizer - a company with a vested interest in Ivermectin not working for this purpose.

The randos on YouTube will always be there, but it's the failing of the mainstream media that anyone takes them seriously.

So many people invested in regeneron and the like that that wasn't exactly a one sided calculation. Plenty of vested, veiled interests in PR.

I think the horse thing came from the fact that some people were actually buying the horse version of ivermectin and presumably self-medicating. There were some reports of shops restricting horse-ivermectin purchases to people who could prove they owned a horse.

The absurd response seemed to be in response to absurd behaviour, as far as I can tell.

To be fair, it wasn't necessarily easy to get Ivermectin in human form. The CDC and FDA both came out strongly against doctors prescribing it for COVID, and some health system wouldn't allow doctors to prescribe it or pharmacies to fill prescriptions.

Hard to blame people for taking the horse version if that's all they could get. Also hard to blame pharmacies for not wanting to give out medicine that doesn't work, although pharmacies seem more than happy to sell other kinds of snake oil.

....which itself was a result of the insane overreaction to covid from the same media convincing people they were all going to die.

Not all, but millions of people did die, including over half a million Americans. That's not exactly nothing.

Also overcrowded hospitals. Maybe this was not case in America but in many places other treatments were partially blocked by Covid overflow.

Firstly, they (aka medical leadership in most countries) did say that.

Secondly the whole "horse drug" came about because people actually started taking a literal horse drug when they could not get their hands on a prescription for the human version. So people made fun of them.

And yes, taking a drug dosed/mixed for horses based on Facebook posts makes you a wackjob.

Not gonna defend the media and political spindoctors. But we all know what they are about. All people had to do was listen to the medical authorities.

But no, everyone applies the "politicians/media lies" selectevly so that they can keep listening to the ones that make them feel good.

Personally, I am angrier at the people who said "covid is not real" and refused to get vaccinated than the people who may have exaggerated how often Ivermectin is used for livestock.

Can you define who "the media" is in your complaints? A quick search for "ivermectin horse paste covid" brings up a bunch of articles from 'mainstream' outlets such as the Washington Post, FDA, and Guardian about how horse owners are frustrated because they cannot find any supply, it's not FDA approved for COVID, and that people have been hospitalized for using it. But nothing about them ridiculing people for taking it calling them horses.

I think this kind of take is really unfair and inaccurate. You can't ascribe any sort of misdeeds to "The Media" when that's a sweeping generalization of thousands of not just journalists, but commenters, comedians and assorted cranks.

The MSM was mostly fair and accurate in their reporting. "Horse paste" was mostly a meme or a joke. The NY Times and CNN didn't make jokes about horse paste. The CDC and similar orgs all gave accurate explainers of the use and misuse of Ivermectin (and Hydroxychloroquine).

While a lot of right-wing media like FOX and OAN was absolutely endorsing it. Here's a good one where Tucker Carlson has an Ivermectin booster on his show but apparently conflates it with Hydroxychloroquine.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/biologist-tucker-ivermectin-ef...

Not to mention the former president spreading absolute nonsense about HCQ, disinfectant, UV light and whatever else popped up in his twitter feed. This inspired a lot of clapbacks from satirists and unserious opinionators, but you wouldn't see any real news being that sarcastic.

If you had stuck with left-leaning and moderate MSM, traditional news sources during these past few years you would have been very well informed.

I've heard NPR referring to "the livestock medication Ivermectin", and this was not in a generic context, not related to people actually procuring the horse formulation.

It seems like there are often specific turns of phrase that just get widely adopted. What I cited above is one example. Another is "the deadly January 6th insurrection".

(Probably there's some right-wing phraseology around "stolen election" or "southern border invasion" or something like that. But I can't think of any specifically, so at least from my perspective they're less widespread or less sticky.)

Can you cite an example? A quick google search for 'NPR "the livestock medication Ivermectin"' leads to https://www.npr.org/2021/08/23/1030208101/mississippi-livest... which explicitly states it's a version -formulated- for livestock.

Sorry. I may not have the exact words correct, despite having used quote marks. My point was that it was NPR, which is very mainstream, and that they were taking the idea that Ivermectin is for animals (and implicitly not for humans) as a given. I do recall that I heard it on their Alexa flash briefing bit.

So, just to be clear NPR is essentially a federation of local public radio stations and not a single editorial board. That being said, WNYC's On The Media did a great breakdown of reporting miscues and the political word-twisting about Ivermectin. They've also done breakdowns on lab leak theory and a lot of other hot topics. Some misleading stories have been weasel-worded reports of reports, but also Tucker Carlson and his ilk are the ones willfully sponsoring disinformation.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/how-iverme...

downvote for assertion without evidence. please provide a useful link or preferably delete your claim.

You realize you're being as misleading and unfair as 'the media' you wanted to criticize, right?

You realize that the word "media" appears nowhere in my comment, right?

My intention was to point out a general trend across all discourse, be that traditional media, or even between individuals.

Ivermectin is used in human medicine too, but not much in the u.s.

One time we had 4 humans and several cats in the house and we could see the worms in the litter box and could see them in the human feces too so we gave everybody (humans and cats) pyrantel which is what gets used for that here.

People get ivermectin in Africa where the problem is worse, but it is going to be in an appropriate dosage and form.

> First, if it doesn't work, just say that. "It doesn't work". "Ivermectin is not an effective treatment for Covid". That's all that was really necessary, right?

Apparently not. Because that is what was said at first. And doctors refused to prescribe it because it didn't work, there was no reason for it to work, etc.

So people went down to Sneed's Feed and Seed, bought the apple-flavored paste with a picture of a horse on it and started shitting themselves in the middle of WalMart. They deserved to be mocked.

> That's all that was really necessary, right?

That didn’t seem to get people vaccinated.

I'm a little confused. You're complaining about how "the media handled this coverage" but your specific complaints seems to be about jokes made by Twitter users. Who exactly is "the media" here?

I think the main difference is that ivermectin is a potent medicine for parasites, and is commonly used to treat them, and in America parasites are more common in livestock and other animals than in humans. So, horse paste.

When one side politicize drug, yes, the opponents will mock it. But also, there is version of Ivermectin for people and for horses. Those are two different things, dosages and buy at different places. Guess which one was originally talked about and taken.

> We give antibiotics to horses too.

Which are not the same for people and horses either.

---------

Maybe the ridiculous thing was to make Ivermectin into political calling card into first place. And in the second place, attacking doctors who say it is not tested or does not work. What about that, really.

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