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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat's getting obscured in the ivermectin debate
Link to tweet
Tweet text:
Matthew Gertz
@MattGertz
Personally, I have sympathy for the people taking ivermectin. They're being conned by powerful conservative propagandists whom they trust.
Whats getting obscured in the ivermectin debate
mediamatters.org
11:01 AM · Sep 8, 2021
Matthew Gertz
@MattGertz
Personally, I have sympathy for the people taking ivermectin. They're being conned by powerful conservative propagandists whom they trust.
Whats getting obscured in the ivermectin debate
mediamatters.org
11:01 AM · Sep 8, 2021
Several national news outlets stepped on a rake over the weekend by credulously parroting an Oklahoma TV news stations apparently bogus report that the states rural hospitals were flooded with people who overdosed while taking the veterinary form of the anti-parasite drug ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment. After the story was debunked, conversation on Twitter quickly turned to the practices of mainstream journalists, as well as to whether mocking conservatives for taking so-called horse paste is effective or counterproductive in getting them to take COVID-19 vaccines.
I think journalists should be much more skeptical about thinly sourced news stories and try to report them independently rather than simply accepting the accounts as true. But these debates also strike me as tangential to an issue that is more directly driving public health outcomes: Influential conservative media figures have spent much of this year assailing the effort to vaccinate Americans while falsely suggesting that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe and ineffective, and their sabotage has been very successful in convincing Republicans not to get shots of potentially lifesaving drugs.
In this particular case, those influential conservatives have been touting ivermectin to their audiences as a COVID-19 treatment they could take instead of the vaccines, even as the relevant health agencies and the drugs manufacturer say theres no evidence that it works. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning following reports that some people had overdosed while taking the more-concentrated version of the drug intended for horses, rather than the formulation prescribed by doctors for humans.
Whos been talking up ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment? An incomplete list includes Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Maria Bartiromo, Brian Kilmeade, Greg Gutfeld, and Will Cain, along with regular network guests Drs. Harvey Risch, George Fareed, and Ramin Oskoui; influential podcasters Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein; an array of personalities on One America News Network; and PragerU founder Dennis Prager. Discussions of the drug are also rampant on social media platforms including Facebook.
*snip*
I, on the other hand, have no sympathy for these people.
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What's getting obscured in the ivermectin debate (Original Post)
Nevilledog
Sep 2021
OP
I know cable and internet are exempt from FCC regs, but how about radio?
Midnight Writer
Sep 2021
#3
Effete Snob
(8,387 posts)1. Well, they picked some bad people to trust
Ferrets are Cool
(21,063 posts)2. I have no sympathy for idiots.
Midnight Writer
(21,548 posts)3. I know cable and internet are exempt from FCC regs, but how about radio?
The Hate Radio shows are pushing all kinds of "miracle cures" for Covid. They should lose their broadcasting licenses over this.
LetMyPeopleVote
(144,005 posts)4. Ivermectin causes sterilization in 85 percent of men, study finds