Hold Your Horses on Ivermectin

FDA renews ‘horse’ smear as ivermectin trends on new Twitter

Agency tweets: ‘Hold your horses, y’all’ on drug successfully treating COVID

Noticing that the word ivermectin is trending on the newly liberated Twitterverse under Elon Musk, the FDA has reprised its disingenuous “horse dewormer” smear of the drug as a treatment for COVID-19.

“Hold your horses, y’all. Ivermectin may be trending, but it still isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19,” said a post on the FDA’s Twitter account.

The reference to horses played on the explosion last fall of media articles and social media posts mocking people who treated COVID-19 with the drug as ignorant rubes who were sneaking into farms or patronizing Tractor Supply stores in quest of “horse dewormer.”

During the pandemic, Twitter and other social media platforms censored positive mention of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine despite the countless testimonies and dozens of studies from around the world showing the drugs to be effective in treating COVID-19.

A follow-up FDA post Tuesday said: “Also, a reminder that a study showed it didn’t actually work against COVID.”

Dr. Pierre Kory, who has testified to the Senate of the effectiveness of ivermectin against COVID-19, fired back.

“You are not a horse, you are not a cow, you are Big Pharma’s ass,” he tweeted.

The FDA, he wrote, was “messaging BS” by citing “one corrupt study” while ignoring 82 trials, including 33 randomized controlled trials with 129,000 patients from 27 countries that show “massive benefits” of ivermectin in treating COVID-19.

“Stop lying man, people are dying,” he wrote, adding the hashtag “earlytreatmentworks.”

In an article published Tuesday for the Brownstone Institute, Kory wrote that it’s “a tried-and-true tactic with effective and dastardly results” for “Big Pharma and other well-financed interests” to sponsor purportedly impartial medical trials “aimed at discrediting cheaper generic alternatives.’

“Ignoring the flaws in the methodology, the media runs wild with the desired narrative, which is amplified by a well-orchestrated public relations effort,” he wrote.

Kory cited as an example the newly reported clinical trial from Brazil known as “TOGETHER,” which he said ostensibly aimed at studying the effectiveness of ivermectin to treat COVID.

Among the flaws was the lack of explicit exclusion criteria for trial participants on ivermectin, meaning both trial groups had access to the same drug.  Further, the treatment window was set for only three days, which didn’t allow for adequate dosing, and the trial was conducted during the massive gamma variant surge, which was one of the most virulent and deadly COVID variants.

“The dosage of the trial was far lower than everyday Brazilian clinicians were prescribing patients at the time to match the strength of the strain,” Kory pointed out.

“In spite of these and other readily apparent shortcomings, the nation’s leading media gobbled up the results. ‘Ivermectin Didn’t Reduce Covid-19 Hospitalizations in Largest Trial to Date’ blared the Wall Street Journal, while a New York Times headlined announced, ‘Ivermectin Does Not Reduce Risk of Covid Hospitalization, Large Study Finds.'”

Meanwhile, social media platforms stifled conversations while California pushed potentially precedent-setting legislation to punish doctors “who dare question phony studies,” threatening loss of a medical license.

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