I appreciated the well-written final paragraph of the article:
Ivermectin, when used correctly, has prevented millions of potentially fatal and debilitating infectious diseases. It’s meant to be prescribed only to treat infections caused by parasites. It’s not meant to be prescribed by parasites looking to extract money from desperate people during a pandemic. It’s my sincere hope that this unfortunate and tragic chapter in the otherwise incredible story of a lifesaving medication will come to a quick end.
Meanwhile, I would never have predicted that so many people would refuse a COVID-19 vaccine “because I don’t want to be a human guinea pig” and yet they are willing to experiment recklessly on themselves after buying Ivermectin horse paste at their local Farm & Feed store.
The reason that so many people reject vaccines and embrace Ivermectin is a reaction against what they believe are Trump’s political enemies. It’s the same reason that they believe Trump won the election even though there is zero evidence. Trump is a demigod who is capitalizing on popular prejudices, false claims and promises.
Does your explanation also work for why Uttar Pradesh successfully embraced Ivermectin?
Repeating my most popular reply ever on Reddit …
Do you know what won a Nobel Prize the first year they were awarded?
Vaccines.
Somehow you missed “the reason so many people” in his comment?
People make decisions for different reasons. Pradesh is an individual so it would be difficult to place him into any particular group. Republicans are know for their loyalty (foundations of morality) and most everything that Dems embrace become anathema for them and anything that the Dems dismiss becomes a cause to rally around.
No, Frank, UP is a state in India, not a person. The problem with @Giltil’s claim is in claiming success without the data to do so.
He and his supporters may think so, but I suspect this is not the meaning you intended. Would it be a correct guess that you meant “demagogue”?
If so, I’d agree, but then, Biden is a demagogue, too. There is a demagogy of the left as well as of the right. The two versions of demagoguery both play on mass fears and prejudices, but the fears and prejudices differ. Most of current US politics is based on demagoguery rather than statesmanship. The problem is how to change this.
Meanwhile…
Yes, I meant “demagogue,” thanks.
I agree about Biden, but Trump is a lot better at it
Unlike the TIME “Man of the Year”, which has sometimes gone to not-human things, like “the computer”, Nobel prizes go to either individuals or an organization. So I assume the “what won” is sort of a casual tongue-in-cheek.
Nevertheless, I am still a little perplexed by the “vaccines” answer. If you are referring to von Behring’s Nobel Prize for Medicine, I thought it was for his serum therapy for diptheria(??), where he harvested antitoxins from animals for injection into infected humans. So I had understood it as a treatment rather than a preventative vaccine.
I think von Behring may have eventually developed a vaccine against diptheria but that was some years after that Nobel prize.
Hmmm. I just now looked it up and it appears that von Behring was recognized for this: He introduced weakened or killed pathogens into various animals to stimulate the production of antitoxin biochemicals. So the stimulation of the antitoxin production in those animals could be called a type of vaccination (even though that wasn’t the final end-product of the research.) If I understand this correctly, he developed a vaccine for animals which allowed their blood to be harvested and processed to produce a curative antitoxin serum which could be used on infected humans.
Have I properly applied the terms vaccine and vaccination in such a way as to explain Dan’s post?
RELATED QUESTION: Was von Behring’s diptheria antitoxin the same one which sled dog teams delivered to Nome, Alaska in what became the inspiration of the Iditarod race?
Isn’t every successful politician, to a lesser or greater extent, a demagogue? “A political agitator who appeals to the passions and prejudices of the mob in order to obtain power or further his own interests”, to use OED’s definition. I think the question should therefore be the extent to which the demagogic aspect of their political career predominates. With Trump, it’s hard to see much of anything that isn’t pure demagoguery.
Your explanation exceeds my previous knowledge on the topic, so I say it’s very adequate. 
My poorly researched Reddit reply was to an even more poorly researched meme proclaiming the wonderfulness of Ivermectin because it won a Nobel prize. I probably should have done more research, but the short and pithy response served it’s purpose.
Kindly supply some background data here, @Giltil.
The random control trials provide no support for the use of ivermectin. My inclination would be, therefore, that the Indian province tried several interventions in addition to ivermectin, and it was one or more of the other interventions that worked.
Or it could be that the COVID cases just depleted the density of susceptible population until the virus could no longer spread quickly.
There are many possible explanations here, @Giltil. That’s why high-quality evidence is required. I invite you to supply such evidence.
And no, this is not high-quality evidence.
First, it has nothing to do with Uttar Pradesh, so you have already changed the subject. This is not a winning strategy in discussions.
Second, how is it that this possible biochemical response would be significant, given that the high-quality random control trials show that ivermectin has no significant effect on COVID illness or mortality?
Pax Christi,
Chris
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