I’ve been alternating between being bemused and aghast when I hear about people taking horse dewormer to deal with COVID symptoms. We have a proven preventative! The COVID vaccines are an incredible achievement, and absolutely everyone who can take one should take one. If you don’t trust that, why on earth would you trust a different medicine developed by science which isn’t at all indicated for this? The mind simply boggles.

I had not previously seen an explanation for the origins of this nonsense, however, so I was glad to read this piece from the Washington Post

So how did people get the idea that [ivermectin] can treat covid?

The idea that ivermectin could be a coronavirus treatment began gaining steam in the spring of 2020, when Australian researchers observed that the medicine killed the virus in a laboratory setting. The findings had notable caveats, however. For one, the amount of drug required to have an effect on the virus was much higher than the amount approved for use in humans, and could be fatal. And lab-based tests, where the drug and virus interact in a petri dish, also don’t account for the complexities of the human body.

By that same token, did you know that bullets can stop cancer if applied correctly?