The Ivermectin Boom Is the Inevitable Product of Our Crass Culture Wars
Natalie Shure
August 30, 2001
Whoever runs the Food and Drug Administration’s Twitter feed has just about had it with the widespread off-label use of ivermectin—a generic anti-parasitic drug commonly used in veterinary medicine, as well as a treatment for diseases like river blindness in humans—as an alternative to the Covid-19 vaccines. “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” the agency quipped, alongside a link to an explanatory article titled “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19.”
That’s exactly what people appear to be doing: Nearly 90,000 U.S. patients were allegedly prescribed the medicine in one week in August, a rate 24 times higher than in early 2020. And that’s nothing compared to the untold numbers of people sourcing Ivermectin from veterinary pharmacies, foreign wholesalers, or the black market. The alleged wonder pills have been hyped on television programs and podcasts including Tucker Carlson Tonight, The Joe Rogan Experience, and The Jimmy Dore Show; pushed by enthusiastic if dubious physicians; and promoted on Facebook through advertisements and private discussion groups. And that’s just in the United States—ivermectin has also racked up fans abroad and is reportedly used widely in India and South America. According to one estimate, tens of millions of patients worldwide may have taken ivermectin as either a prophylactic, a treatment, or both over the course of the pandemic.
Despite its surging popularity, there’s no good evidence that ivermectin is effective against the coronavirus. The largest and most reputable clinical trial to date found the drug offered no clinical benefit whatsoever, and much of what’s been sold as promising evidence to the contrary has been debunked. Meanwhile, increasing reports of emergency room visits, poison control calls, and significant side effects associated with off-label ivermectin use—largely among patients unwilling to get vaccinated against Covid-19, even as hospitalizations and deaths climb—have become downright alarming. No less so is the story of how we even got to the point where federal agencies feel compelled to warn people away from taking horse dewormers from livestock suppliers for a disease that’s now mostly preventable through free immunization. As the right leans ever harder on waging eternal culture war as an electoral tactic, ivermectin has become its latest wedge issue.
It’s hardly a surprise that the novel coronavirus has been politicized from the get-go: Pandemics are by definition public health emergencies, demanding governmental intervention and far-reaching mobilizations of resources, education, and labor. How exactly to wield authority and allocate services in such a crisis—not to mention who foots the bill—are intensely ideological questions. Throughout the 2000s, public health departments across the U.S. saw their budgets slashed to the bone by austerity-minded officials, leaving them particularly vulnerable to the ravages of Covid-19 when it emerged in Wuhan, China, nearly two years ago. Once the pathogen began spreading rapidly in the U.S. in early 2020, the urgent need to curb transmission by shutting down nonessential business and paying people to stay home was pitted against monied interests. Later on, as Congress negotiated relief bills, Republicans largely opposed direct relief payments and generous unemployment benefits, while championing beefy payouts and liability waivers for corporations.
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