How the right's ivermectin conspiracy theories led to people buying horse dewormer
Source: Washington Post
How the right’s ivermectin conspiracy theories led to people buying horse dewormer
By Aaron Blake
Senior reporter
August 24, 2021 at 1:11 p.m. EDT
For much of the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump and his allies pushed an unproven drug, hydroxychloroquine, as a potential wonder drug to defeat the virus. It never panned out.
But many of the same people and organizations were apparently unchastened by that experience. Slowly over the past nine months, they have injected another supposed potential wonder drug into the political bloodstream: ivermectin.
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Even if you just treat this as an unanswered question, though, the endorsements of the drug in conservative media have often gone way beyond the evidence. They’ve pitched ivermectin as a bona fide treatment, despite most scientists, the FDA, the World Health Organization and other prominent groups continuing to discourage its use.
Perhaps chief among the earliest, most high-profile proponents was Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who pitched the drug long before many in conservative media or even on Fox itself joined her.
On Dec. 1, Ingraham welcomed a doctor who had advised Trump and claimed social distancing and quarantining don’t work. He mentioned the drug alongside hydroxychloroquine as having been “very successful and very safely used in most of the world.”
A week later, then-Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) hosted a controversial hearing featuring, among his witnesses, two doctors who advocated for ivermectin. Johnson claimed at the hearing that the information his witnesses provided was being censored on social media.
That was kibble for conservative media. ...
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/24/how-rights-ivermectin-conspiracy-theories-led-people-buying-horse-dewormer/
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