Coronavirus: Thread

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A Myth Is Born: How CDC, FDA, & Media Wove A Web Of Ivermectin Lies
That Outlives The Truth
Via RESCUE with Michael Capuzzo Substack,

https://rescue.substack.com/p/a-myth-is-born-how-cdc-fda-and-media

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=160174529614551
https://www.facebook.com/nmdoh/videos/436744228007312
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/574051-new-mexico-reports-two-deaths-from-ivermectin
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/09/25/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine#new-mexico-health-officials-link-misuse-of-ivermectin-to-two-covid-19-deaths
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/ivermectin-overdose-death-probed-in-nm-i-dont-want-more-people-to-die/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8415517/
https://rescue.substack.com/p/horse-bleep-how-4-calls-on-animal
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC3043740/
https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/pdf/CDC_HAN_449.pdf
https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/index.asp
https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antiviral-therapy/ivermectin/
https://invest.medincell.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/PR_MDCL_safety_ivermectine-50321.pdf
https://ivmmeta.com/
https://piper.filecamp.com/uniq/LBCv1y2lnReGWEAu.pdf
https://covid19criticalcare.com/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/local/new-mexico/2021/09/22/nm-vaccination-rate-increases-as-covid-19-delta-variant-spreads/5814609001/
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/574051-new-mexico-reports-two-deaths-from-ivermectin
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/health/covid-ivermectin-prescriptions.html
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/09/25/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/21/mississippi-ivermectin-covid-surge-livestock/
https://www.wispolitics.com/2021/state-supreme-court-declines-to-take-case-seeking-to-force-hospital-to-administer-ivermectin/


New Mexico officials admit they were wrong: Two people died from
covid. NOT from ivermectin. Yet the CDC generated the nation's highest
health alert and a thousand fake headlines on false cases.

Linda Bonvie  and Mary Beth Pfeiffer

When a Texas cattleman, seventy-nine, died last September in New
Mexico after contracting covid, his family never anticipated the
worldwide headlines that would ensue.

In a ballyhooed press conference, New Mexico Human Services Secretary
Dr. David Scrase, the state’s top health chief, announced New Mexico’s
first ivermectin “overdose,” soon adding a second fatality allegedly
from “ivermectin toxicity.”

An ornament with a photo of the Texas cattleman, whose death was
falsely attributed to ivermectin and used as part of a deliberate
effort to make that perfectly safe drug appear to be highly dangerous,
is lovingly hung on the family Christmas tree by his daughter.

Now, Scrase has acknowledged that his repeated, what he called
“offhand,” assertions were groundless. Two deaths were not caused by
ivermectin, a long-used generic drug that was emerging as a covid
treatment. Instead, he said that the pair died because they “actually
just delayed their care with covid.”

That is a big difference.

Scrase backpedaled on December 1 in a little-noticed online press
briefing and only after we pressed his agency to provide evidence for
its claims of so-called “ivermectin deaths.” Officials had repeatedly
said they were awaiting a toxicology report on the cattleman’s death.
Yet we learned that the report was never even ordered or done, and,
moreover, the man’s death was ruled by the state’s coroner as being
from “natural” causes.

Not a single media outlet reported Scrase’s admission, even as dozens,
including the The Hill and The New York Times, had eagerly covered his
original assertions about ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug awarded
the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015.

    “I don’t want more people to die,” read one early headline,
quoting Scrase. “It’s the wrong medicine for something really
serious,” Scrase said in the Times article.

Doctors, scientists, and toxicologists worldwide were puzzled by the
assertions, because ivermectin is an extraordinarily safe,
FDA-approved drug. A fixture on the WHO’s list of 100 essential
medicines all hospital systems are recommended to carry, nearly four
billion doses have been given in four decades.

New Mexico became a key player in a broad pattern of governmental
deception late last summer to portray ivermectin as dangerous, in
tandem with three related developments. Research strongly supported
the drug’s efficacy against covid; prescriptions were soaring; and
public health officials were single-mindedly focused not on treatment
but on vaccination.

We previously reported that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s
tweeted warning last August against using ivermectin meant for
livestock was prompted by incorrect—and unverified—information from
Mississippi. Health officials there had posted an alert suggesting the
state’s poison control center was deluged with hundreds of calls over
ingestion of livestock ivermectin; in reality, we found, four reports
were received.

But, fueled by bits of contorted evidence like this, the
anti-ivermectin train was unstoppable. We have now learned that, in
the rush to bury a drug described as “astonishingly safe” and long
used globally to quell animal and human parasites, FDA was not alone.

Emails we obtained from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control show that
an influential August 26 national health alert on ivermectin was
spurred, like the FDA tweet, by a sliver of evidence: just three cases
of alleged ivermectin side effects, two involving animal formulations.
No patient died; one appeared to have been hospitalized, and one
declined any medical help.

Nonetheless, those three reports, obtained by Atlanta-based CDC from
the Georgia poison control center, sealed the decision to issue the
nation’s highest-level health warning, according to the emails.

Shortly after learning of three cases, CDC's Michael Yeh writes, “we
have evidence of significant toxicity.”

Referring to planning for the health alert, “the consensus was that
unless we’re seeing bad adverse effects from ivermectin, we’d hold
off,” wrote a CDC medical toxicity officer, Dr. Michael Yeh, in an
August 17 email. “Now it sounds like we have evidence of significant
toxicity.”

That email was written seventy-two minutes after brief information on
three reports arrived in a separate email.

While CDC’s intention might have been to protect people, the alert is
emblematic of what had become a national obsession: Portray an early
treatment for covid—whether in the animal or human form—as potentially
toxic.

CDC hopped aboard.

In an email later that day, Yeh laid out the evidence. The most
serious case involved a man, seventy-seven, who had was said to have
taken a dose of ivermectin “apparently meant for an 1800 lb. bovine.”
He had “hallucinations and tremors, which improved but he was
eventually diagnosed with COVID-19” for which he needed only
supplemental oxygen, Yeh notes.

In two other cases, a woman who took the human form of the drug was
said to have suffered “some confusion.” Another woman had “subjective
visual disturbances” after taking “a product meant for sheep” but
declined medical help. These side effects are in keeping with what the
National Institutes of Health calls a “well-tolerated” anti-parasitic
drug with such adverse effects as “dizziness, pruritis, nausea, or
diarrhea.”

French researchers published a review last March of 350 ivermectin
articles in the medical literature and found adverse effects to be
“infrequent and usually mild to moderate.” The study, by the French
drugmaker MedinCell, noted that no deaths were reported even after
accidental overdoses or suicide attempts.

In view of ivermectin’s well-established safety profile, our request
for CDC documents under the Freedom of Information Act sought the
rationale for the health alert and specifically asked for the data CDC
used from the American Association of Poison Control Centers, to which
state centers report. (AAPCC had refused to provide it.)

In response to the FOIA request, CDC asserted, quite remarkably, that
it “no longer possesses or has access to the data” because its
“licensing agreement” with AAPCC had lapsed. The data might have
specified, for example, just how many calls were related either to
animal or human formulations; the alert instead lumps all reports
together, making it difficult to fathom the extent of livestock
ivermectin use.

The CDC asserts in a letter to us that it no longer possesses the data
on which a national health alert was based.

An increase in ivermectin calls to poison control centers in 2021 is
not in dispute, especially as doctors learned of studies showing fewer
deaths, shorter hospitalizations, and outpatient success. Poison
control centers often see upticks in calls when new drugs come into
use, with many callers seeking only information. Centers also field
calls on old, long-established medications. Acetaminophen alone
generated 47,000 reports in 2019 and led to 164 deaths, according to
the AAPCC.

This context, of course, was missing from CDC’s alert. Calls to poison
control centers for use of animal and human ivermectin grew five- to
eight-fold from “pre-pandemic levels,” the alert ominously reported.
At the same time, it said, ivermectin prescriptions had soared
twenty-four-fold—in a perfectly legal trend led by physicians but one
the CDC clearly found unacceptable and alarming.

No distinction was made between animal and human formulations in the
alert, which was peppered with phrases like “ivermectin misuse and
overdose;” “seizures, coma, and death;” “sheep drench,” “severe
illness,” and “rapid increase.” The message: Don’t use either form,
even as seventy-one studies show 64 percent of 50,180 patients
improved after taking ivermectin for covid.

Despite the alert and New Mexico’s unfounded pronouncements, no one
has died from ivermectin poisoning among 2,112 cases logged by AAPCC
from January 1 to December 14, 2021. Two percent of those reports,
about forty-two, involved a “major” effect, an AAPCC bulletin states.
Seventy percent were dismissed as having no effect, “nontoxic
exposure,” and the like.

One category of those calls might rightfully have been classified as
anti-ivermectin hysteria. New Mexico, for example, urged citizens to
report any known ivermectin use to the state’s poison control center,
even if  “someone you know has taken it.”

We asked Dr. Paul Marik, a founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical
Care Alliance, his thoughts on the effort to vilify ivermectin as
dangerous.

    “Ivermectin is one of the safest medications on this planet; far
safer than aspirin or acetaminophen,” he said.

    “This is a fairy tale. Disney could not come up with a better fairy tale.”

But it was no kind of fantasy for the cattleman’s family when he got
sick. It was a painful experience with a politicized health system.
A “Very Puzzling” Phone Call

It wasn’t a secret that a cattleman, who died while in New Mexico from
covid, took an animal formulation of ivermectin. It is a drug he was
well versed in using, having routinely administered it to his herds in
Texas.

Others in the family also used Ivomec, a liquid formulation of
ivermectin for cattle, since news spread of ivermectin’s effectiveness
against covid. “Practically everyone I know takes it,” we were told by
a close family friend and business associate of the Texan. (We are
withholding the man’s name at the family’s request.)

Ivermectin is just one of 167 drugs tested for safety and approved by
the FDA for both animals and humans. Yet those who take either form of
ivermectin for covid have been characterized as being anti-science and
influenced by “misinformation.”

The Texan is one of two individuals who, according to repeated
statements from New Mexico officials, died from “ivermectin toxicity.”
While their identities were not revealed by the department of health,
a source familiar with the cases released them to us during this
investigation.

Documents and interviews with those knowledgeable about the death of
the rancher tell a different story than the narrative put forth by New
Mexico health officials.

When the cattleman arrived at the ER on the evening of September 2
with his wife, he was soon diagnosed as suffering from acute
dehydration as well as being covid positive.

His daughter arrived at the hospital several hours later.

In an interview, she told of the surprise eightieth birthday party for
her dad the weekend before, where eight of the eleven family members
attending ended up with covid. Everyone seemed to have mild symptoms,
she recalled.

With her dad in New Mexico and not feeling well, she suggested he be
checked out. “My father was not very good at keeping himself
hydrated,” she said, and at that point he didn’t seem to be drinking
at all.

He arrived at the hospital dehydrated to the point that his kidneys
had become damaged, doctors told the family. Lacking a proper dialysis
machine at the Lincoln County Medical Center, the family was told that
they were trying to locate another hospital to send him to.
Unfortunately, he never made it out of Ruidoso, dying on September 3.

But what happened while his wife and daughter anxiously waited outside
the ICU, soon after being informed that the Texan was likely going to
pass away, struck them as most peculiar.

His daughter recalled a “very puzzling” phone call her mother
received—so disturbing, in fact, that she felt like “yanking the phone
from her.”

An unknown man was on the line asking if her father took ivermectin.
It was the only time she remembers that particular drug being
discussed in the hospital.

    “I feel like they were pushing her. It was really irritating,” she
said, adding, “it was not a doctor or nurse, but mom cannot remember
who it was or what they represented.”

They were most interested, she recalled, in grilling her mother about
her dad’s use of Ivomec.

At the very next press briefing, Dr. Scrase announced that a “reliable
source” reported the state’s “first death” from someone who took
ivermectin. While he hedged his bets about the role of ivermectin—and
mentioned delayed care—he nonetheless repeatedly characterized the
man’s death and one other as specifically being caused by ivermectin.

However, the cattleman’s death certificate, filed at the end of
September, says otherwise. It stated he passed away from “natural”
causes. His death was not listed as requiring any type of “pending
investigation,” and the medical examiner’s office confirmed the fact
that no autopsy or toxicology report was done.

But Dr. Scrase’s original tale proved to be very popular with the
media. USA Today liked it so much the paper released several versions.

“Two die of ivermectin poisoning,” it announced the same day the death
certificate was officiated. Five days after that, a headline in The
Hill trumpeted, “New Mexico reports two deaths from ivermectin.”

The New Mexico Department of Health has yet to respond to any
questions about why a straightforward correction was not made to the
media early on regarding the two deaths that were erroneously
attributed to ivermectin. It is also not clear why at a recent press
briefing the agency was continuing to perpetuate this fallacy even
after admitting it was untruthful, rather than correcting the
record—and why they have alleged another ivermectin-related death,
again without offering any evidence to that effect.

The second supposed ivermectin death involved a thirty-eight-year-old
woman from Cuba, New Mexico, reportedly of Navajo heritage. An autopsy
was done, but the results have yet to be released.

While Scrase has acknowledged that the two deaths were from covid, not
ivermectin, he nonetheless announced what he called yet a “third”
ivermectin death at his December 1 briefing.

The new death, Scrase said, is a “60-year-old man who took a horse
preparation. This gentleman took 150 milligrams, [suffered] liver
failure, kidney failure and actually died from the ivermectin without
the covid.”

As with the first two cases, the cause of death remains to be seen.

According to Dr. Marik, 150 milligrams of ivermectin can be safely
tolerated. “I do not know of a single case of liver failure and organ
failure due to ivermectin,” he wrote in an email.

Both the CDC and New Mexico Department of Health declined to answer
questions for this article.

Despite ongoing requests by the New Mexico Department of Health for
residents to report any ivermectin use, as this slide displayed during
a December 1 press conference shows, only 29 calls came into the
state’s poison control center for most all of 2021. The graphic also
states that ivermectin caused three deaths in the state, despite the
fact that during that very same press briefing it was acknowledged
that the first two of the alleged deaths were due to covid, not
ivermectin (with no evidence released to support the third claim).

The CDC emails suggest it took very little to convince the agency to
issue a national warning about the use of ivermectin. Details on those
three cases are scant, the emails show.

Ivermectin dosages are missing or, in one case, described as
“concentration unknown.” One woman “was sent to the hospital, but her
baseline mental status was unclear.” Another woman was to be contacted
for follow-up after declining aid, but there is no indication this was
done.

These anecdotal bits are the threads from which a mythical tapestry
about so-called “ivermectin toxicity” has been woven. This myth lives
on in easily accessed online articles.

Among them:

    Mississippi’s health alert on August 19 said 70 percent of
poison-control calls were for ingestion of livestock ivermectin. The
actual figure was 2 percent; it was not corrected for forty-six days.

    FDA claimed last March to have “received multiple reports” of
injury and hospitalization after people took livestock ivermectin. In
reality, the agency relied on four reports, a spokesperson said in an
email. CDC officials referenced the FDA “consumer warning” when
planning their own contribution to the myth of ivermectin harm.

It matters little that false Mississippi figures were corrected (at
our behest) by The New York Times, twice, and The Washington Post.
What matters is the hurricane of fear, whipped up by New Mexico,
Mississippi, the FDA, and CDC—and abetted by media—made ivermectin
into something it was not.

So where do we stand as vaccines fail and cases rise?

On October 28, WisPolitics.com reported the case of a family that
failed to convince a court to give FDA-approved ivermectin to their
dying loved one.

    “There have been multiple reports nationally,” the website
reported, “of people taking the version of the drug intended for
animals to combat COVID-19 and sickening themselves in the process.”

Unsupported in the medical literature, the false image of ivermectin
convinced doctors in that case to suggest that “the prescribed dosage
may be lethal.”

Indeed, the invented peril, rather than promise, of ivermectin has
become ingrained in the national media and consciousness.

That is the story that lives.