By Tea Lynn Moore

Is propaganda the new “journalism”?

There’s no question that over the past year-and-ahalf one of the most promising early COVID-19 treatments, Ivermectin, has gone through a wide assortment of attacks by the pharmaceutical-industrial complex.

First, it was censored, primarily through shadow-banning (burying stories and videos on the topic further down in searches and feeds). Then, it was out-right banned on websites like YouTube (whose terms of service specifically prohibits videos that make “claims that Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are safe to use in the treatment of COVID-19”). Even a senate testimony video of a COVID ICU specialist (Dr. Kory) was removed for the crime of discussing his Ivermectin research. Nobel Prize winner Dr. Satoshi Omura, who developed Ivermectin, was also censored from YouTube recently.

Ivermectin was also denied funding by the NIH and the WHO. On June 22, 2020, while Ivermectin was experiencing it’s first round of popularity, the World Health Organization issued a statement saying that Ivermectin should not be used to treat COVID-19, and that it would not be included in its international Solidarity Trials. A few days after that, the FDA issued its first of many warnings against the use of Ivermectin. And while the NIH has spent billions on vaccine development, and billions on researching expensive, patented drugs like Remdesivir (who received over $6.5 billion NIH dollars alone) over the course of the pandemic, not a single penny has been spent on Ivermectin research as a treatment for COVID-19.

And now, there’s a new weapon against Ivermectin: pharma-funded lies and propaganda, all under the disguise of “journalism.”

The first line of manipulation the corporate media used was collectively labeling this Nobel Prize-winning, safe and FDA-approved human drug that’s been saving covid patients, as a toxic “horse de-wormer.” This narrative began on August 20, 2021, when the Mississippi Department of Health was reported to have stated that “70% of the recent calls” to its state poison control were over people taking livestock versions of the human drug Ivermectin.

The media went wild, with outlets such as The Hill, The New York Times, and The Washington Post reporting how “crazy anti-vaxxers” were putting their lives in danger by taking a horse med.

The FDA even tweeted out a reaction to this story on August 21, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” along with an article warning of the “dangers” of Ivermectin, stating it can cause “even death.” For the record, Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 has not resulted in any reported deaths in the US or worldwide.

It turns out, the Mississippi Department of Health’s quote was actually “misinterpreted,” and a retraction was issued by the Associated Press on August 25. After several freedom-of-information-act requests, the actual number of calls in August 2021 to Mississippi Poison Control over Ivermectin was not 70%, it was in fact between 1 to 2% (and 70% of these 1%-2% of calls were for the veterinary formula).

Nevertheless, the narrative of Ivermectin being a dangerous horse dewormer medication stuck, and on September 1st, 2021, the American Medical Association (AMA), in conjunction with the American Pharmacists Association, issued a joint statement calling for “an immediate end to the prescribing, dispensing, and use of Ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19 outside of a clinical trial,” being sure to mention that calls to poison-control centres over Ivermectin have increased dramatically. Ironically, this attempt to make doctors and pharmacists fearful of making the human medication available to the public, as it previously was, may result in more people feeling they have to resort to veterinary versions.

Fortunately, podcast host Joe Rogan was diagnosed with COVID days before the AMA & APA’s joint statement and was prescribed Ivermectin by his doctor. When he announced to his followers on September 1 that he took Ivermectin for his COVID, The Washington Post, CNN, the Rolling Stone, and other mainstream media networks claimed he took a “horse de-wormer” despite the fact that he took the human form. (There’s also a canine aspirin, will CNN start calling aspirin “chewable dog tablets” as well?)

And then, the unbelievable happened (as in: it’s such a fake story it’s hard to believe so many “journalists” believed it).

A viral Rolling Stone article circulated the internet in early September, with the featured image showing a crowd of people bundled up in winter jackets lining up outside a supposed Oklahoma hospital. Yes, winter jackets on a summer Oklahoma day.

Headlined “Gunshot Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says,” the story was built on a single interview that Oklahoma-based physician Dr. Jason McElyea gave to KFOR-TV. Dr. McElyea was quoted saying statements such as “The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated,” Dr. McElyea also claimed that the overdoses were causing an ambulance shortage as well, saying “all of their ambulances are stuck at the hospital waiting for a bed to open… if there’s no ambulance to take the call, there’s no ambulance to come to the call.” McElyea added some color to his story, claiming, “The scariest one that I’ve heard of and seen is people coming in with vision loss,” the doctor said.

The problem is: the story was complete fiction. The hospital in question — Northeastern Health System – Sequoyah — issued a statement hours later revealing that McElyea “has not worked at our Sallisaw location in over 2 months,” and explained the hospital has not experienced a single case of Ivermectin overdose and “has not had to turn away any patients seeking emergency care.” Only one hospital Dr. McElyea is affiliated with claimed to have had any patients who have taken Ivermectin, but the hospital was not in “rural Southeastern Oklahoma” as Dr. McElyea described, and they said they were “not backed up.”

The attacks on the safety of Ivermectin are unwarranted, as it has a 34 year long track record of being an extremely safe medication for humans. Before COVID19, the NIH classified it as having a “very high safety profile.” More recently, an expert review of 500+ sources and papers in 2021 by world prominent toxicologist Dr. Jacques Descotes, MD, PhD, concluded that “hundreds of millions of human subjects have been treated with Ivermectin… the safety profile of Ivermectin has so far been excellent” No death or serious side effects were observed in this review, which included multiple overdoses (including a suicide-attempt overdose of 100 times the recommended therapeutic dose.)

Remdesivir, the only FDA approved antiviral drug for the treatment of COVID, causes “severe” side effects in 25% of patients, and another 23% exhibit evidence of liver damage on lab tests. Remdesivir was granted full FDA approval based on data that showed it only reduced the number of days in hospital (was not life saving) and that “positive effect” was only see in patients on “low-flow oxygen” (not patients on high flow oxygen, not patients on no oxygen, not patients on a ventilator, or ECMO) from relatively small trials with about 1000 participants.

Ivermectin, on the other hand, has had 64 studies completed to date, with over 26,000 participants, (with 32 randomized controlled studies with 6,648 patients) with statistically significant improvements seen for mortality, ventilation, hospitalization, recovery, cases, and viral clearance. The probability that an ineffective treatment generated results as positive as the 64 studies is estimated to be 1 in 222 billion. Visit ivmmeta.com for Ivermectin study results.

Ivermectin is used as a COVID treatment in over 20 countries worldwide, including India. India’s most populated state, Uttar Pradesh, says early use of Ivermectin helped to keep positivity rate and death rate low. It was the first Indian state to have introduced a large-scale “prophylactic and therapeutic” use of Ivermectin in 2020. The state has a population of 240 million and a vaccination rate of only 12% of the eligible population, yet their daily average number of new cases is 16 and their daily death rate is 0. Ivermectin is saving lives from COVID and it’s a tragedy that it’s not saving more.

It’s clear that here in North America, drug companies are driving the COVID-19 responses — responses that have endangered, rather than optimized public health — and mainstream media have been accomplices in spreading their propaganda, leading the public astray, fostering fear based on lies.

We simply cannot allow drug companies —who have a long, strong track record of prioritizing corporate profit over people’s health — to continue to control entire nations by way of carefully orchestrated and organized centralized propaganda disguised as journalism. It’s time for more people-funded news. It’s time for the truth. And it’s time for generic, potentially life-saving medications like Ivermectin to get the funding and coverage it deserves.