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Comment by BobaFloutist | Hacker News Reader

>We have had our access to medications for livestock severely curtailed over recent years.

Oh no, tell me it's not ivermectin...

Ivermectin is a very potent drug against parasites. That's probably why it worked so well in third world countries to "treat" COVID-- It didn't affect the virus but it did reduce the immune burden on the body by getting rid of other stuff

Are you saying this because you only recognize the name from breathless covid propaganda? Or because you know ivermectin is pretty important in livestock management.

Both! I think it would be unfortunate if a valuable deworming drug was difficult to access in an acute worm crisis because it had became unexpectedly politically salient from an crisis that did not involve worms.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220202042136/https://www.fda.g... https://www.tga.gov.au/safety/safety-monitoring-and-informat...

Did some further reading, and it seems likely that the shortages were at least partially created by a boom in demand and crackdown on counterfeit ivermectin products. It's hard for me to see this as a partisan issue when everyone involved was just doing the best they could under fog-of-war conditions.

I disagree, but I would also have a similar reaction if it turned out that toilet-paper supply chain issues left over from the pandemic were going to affect our ability to manage screwworms, and that particular overreaction was non-partisan.

Ivermectin is readily given to livestock. Sheep even get immersed in a bath of it, you can buy sheep drench in the same farm supply store you'll find the apple flavored ivermectin paste for horses.

It is

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