I was never an ivermectin proponent — although I thought the "horse dewormer" rhetoric was self-defeating, because it's obviously and well-known to be also a human dewormer (amongst other parasites), and the "horse" part just seemed to be played up to make ivermectin supporters look stupid — but this article is indeed the first one I've seen to make the parasite-COVID-comorbidity argument. It's not, in fact, the first time that argument has been made... But it seems like the first time that link was made was within the last month, as the blog post links to the following Twitter thread from a medical researcher: https://twitter.com/AviBittMD/status/1456376484180922368
It's not ridiculous to me that this blog post would be someone's first encounter with that argument, considering how recent the link is.
I have a little bit of experience with reading lots of research papers about COVID safety measures, and coming to the opposite conclusion of medical experts: in early 2020 I read lots of papers on masks, and tried to convince most of my family to mask up even when the CDC said that masks didn't work. I happened to be right, and to my parents, I now look like a smart and forward-thinking, science-driven person. But that's only because I was right! I could see someone doing the same with the ivermectin studies, and while it appears that they were wrong, I don't think it deserves dismissal or derision — especially when it comes from someone willing to change their mind and admit they were wrong when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary.
Please provide sources that "many people" are using horse doses. I only hear of well known people such as Joe Rogan and Aaron Rodgers using human-prescribed pill form ivermectin.
On the contrary, the majority of people who called poison control were "worried well" who had no symptoms. And I think "not a lot in absolute numbers" is really underselling it: the total number of "reported exposure cases" was 459 in a country of 330 million people, up from 133 cases the previous month (before people started thinking ivermectin was a suppressed miracle cure). That's one out of every million people. Of those, zero died.
By way of comparison, every year, two out of every million people in the US die by falling out of bed.
There were many news articles stating this that were corrected for grossly exaggerating the situation. I would suggest going back and re-reading the source material to see if it has been updated or has disappeared.
I was never an ivermectin proponent — although I thought the "horse dewormer" rhetoric was self-defeating, because it's obviously and well-known to be also a human dewormer (amongst other parasites), and the "horse" part just seemed to be played up to make ivermectin supporters look stupid — but this article is indeed the first one I've seen to make the parasite-COVID-comorbidity argument. It's not, in fact, the first time that argument has been made... But it seems like the first time that link was made was within the last month, as the blog post links to the following Twitter thread from a medical researcher: https://twitter.com/AviBittMD/status/1456376484180922368
It's not ridiculous to me that this blog post would be someone's first encounter with that argument, considering how recent the link is.
I have a little bit of experience with reading lots of research papers about COVID safety measures, and coming to the opposite conclusion of medical experts: in early 2020 I read lots of papers on masks, and tried to convince most of my family to mask up even when the CDC said that masks didn't work. I happened to be right, and to my parents, I now look like a smart and forward-thinking, science-driven person. But that's only because I was right! I could see someone doing the same with the ivermectin studies, and while it appears that they were wrong, I don't think it deserves dismissal or derision — especially when it comes from someone willing to change their mind and admit they were wrong when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary.