Let's look at this article.  It's an opinion piece by David Henderson and Charles Hooper asking 'Why is the FDA attacking a safe, effective drug?  Ivermectin is a promising COVID treatment and prophylaxis, but the agency is denigrating it.'  

I want to talk about why I think this is and look at why I am not super happy about the way that this article or this op-ed is structured.  'The FDA claims to follow science, so why is it attacking our Ivermectin, a medication certified in 1996?'  The simple answer to that is that it hasn't--so like, when you approve a medication for a specific disease, you want to have studied that medication for that disease, not just to know that it's safe, but to know that it's effective, because we don't approve medications for diseases--to treat conditions or diseases--that we do not know that they treat.

That is it.  That's a basic--doesn't have to be this dangerous.  We have to know that it actually treats the disease, 'cause it's dangerous to say to someone that this will treat a disease if it is not going to.  Earlier, they put out a special warning and what I think the, like, so they are framing this warning as the FDA is trying to hide Ivermectin from you.  It has some ulterior motive, whether that's to get people to take vaccines in sort of a, you know, we don't want to have a treatment, because we want people to take the vaccines and we want people to be confused kind of way, where they're just sort of like, subtly manipulating people.  It's kind of a good thing, like, that they would think at least that they're doing a good thing, but actually, they're just manipulating people and they shouldn't be doing that -OR- more sinister, the idea is 'oh my God, they want people to get the vaccines because of what the vaccines are bad or because they want their friends at Pfizer to get rich' or something.  I don't know.  There's some conspiracy going on, and they've put out this statement that says it can cause serious harm, hospitalized, dangerous, very dangerous, seizures.  

If you read the warning, it says 'if you take too much Ivermectin, all of these things can happen'.  It is an FDA approved medication, but what happens is when you have a bunch of conspiracy theorists talking about how the FDA is--or like, the global system of conspiracies is preventing people from knowing about what a great treatment Ivermectin is, you get people who go and they start to take their fucking dog's heartworm medication and like, that happens.  It hap--that is the thing that the FDA is trying to prevent here. 

I don't know that this is good.  I don't know that this works, but that's why they put out these statements, so that you don't take your dog's heartworm medication or your horse's worm medication.   Like, that's, you know, that's what Ivermectin is--one of the main things Ivermectin is used for.  It's also used for other stuff.  It's used in humans.  It is an FDA-approved medication, but if you can't get it from--this is a problem--if you can't get it from a doctor, are people gonna go and get it from their vet and take it themselves and dose themselves incorrectly, which is, this is the kind of thing that the FDA worries about.  This is their job to worry about this kind of stuff.  The fact that they're portraying this, I know I've gotten two paragraphs into this, the fact that they're portraying this as 'oh my god, why is the FDA hiding this great treatment?' when like, all you have to do is read the statement to know, contextually, that they're worried about people self-medicating with fucking dog pills, so it seems a little bit misleading from the start, this article.

You know, maybe I should figure out a little bit about who David Henderson and Charles Hooper are, so let's look up them.  Who are they?  That's--I had a--oh, they've--they're together on an Amazon.com page.  In 2005, they wrote Making Great Decisions in Business and Life.  There's 32 reviews.  Congratulations you guys.  They've got an article on flawed climate models from the Hoover Institution.  

Youth pay a high price for COVID protection, FDA should keep--shouldn't keep safe drugs off the market, so another one about Ivermectin, I imagine.  Sometimes drug prices are too low, okay.  That doesn't tend to be the concern that I have!   A cure for our healthcare ills, flawed climate models, want cheaper drugs? Increase competition!  The FDA's power grab, did global warming cause California's drought, climate change alarmists claim the science is settled but that's far from the truth.

So it's interesting that these guys both are--their vibe is 'we don't like the FDA and climate change is fake' so, obviously not exactly what they were saying.  Anyway, now we have a little bit of background on Ivermectin.  It is a good drug.  It is used a lot.  It treats parasites and it may be an effective anti-viral.  We are still testing its ability to fight viruses.  Ivermectin fights 21 viruses, including SARS-COV-2.  Does it--look, we're looking into it, and we're like, anti-virals are a promising avenue of research and we should continue to do that.

Some 70 clinical trials are evaluating the use of Ivermectin for treating COVID-19.  Alright, this is textbook science stuff, but the number of trials being done does not indicate the effectiveness of a medication.  It just indicates that people are looking into it.  I mean, that--ughh!  Also, evaluating.  Not 'have evaluated', there are 70 clinical trials ongoing!  This is excellent news for you guys.  You want Ivermectin to be a treatment.  Do ya think we should make it a treatment before we're done like, doing the 70 clinical trials that we're doing right now??  Why do you think we're doing the trials?!  Do you think we're doing them to hide Ivermectin from people?  That indicates to me that there's a lot of research that needs to be done to determine whether or not this is a safe, effective treatment which you say in the beginning of the article that it is, is, present tense, a safe, effective treatment.

Well, if that's the case, why are there 70 current trials testing that?  It sounds like we should wait for the fucking 70 trials to get in!  That sounds like we're going to have some really good data soon.  Like, you can say all you want right now, but scientists have to wait for the research to get done.  What the fuck? 

'The statistically significant evidence suggests that it is safe and works for both treating and preventing the disease'.  Does it?  'Cause it doesn't really.  So like, there--now, if you include a recently retracted paper that contained clear evidence of plagiarism, duplicating data, intentionally replicating data to make it look like one set of data is a new set of people, but in fact, it was just cloned.  Like, this is a very worrying study.   If you take that study out, which was a very large study that showed very, very promising results for Ivermectin, then all of these studies look much more like there isn't a huge effect.  That doesn't mean that there isn't a huge effect!  I think that we should continue to do research on this.  

'In 115 patients with COVID-19', so this is the study of the many studies that have been done that they've pulled out.  They pulled out one study, and this study is very promising.  Does it need to have other papers confirm the results?  Is 115 patients like, a really big sample size?  It's not, but like, it's great.  Now, it doesn't look to me like it's  more effective than say, a fucking vaccine.  

'Moreover, the drug can help preve--', so, so yeah.  So like, all, you've read this by now maybe, but like, these results are great.  These are like, fivefold to eightfold decreases in the impact of COVID-19.  There are other studies, though, that have shown that there isn't much impact on the progression of COVID with people taking Ivermectin.  

It is an activary of research, and this is the thing.  You can't say that it does something--you can, Mr. Hooper, but you can't say that it does something until you know that it does something.  That's the situation that doctors and scientists are in.  Now, op-ed columnists can say whatever the fuck they want.  In fact, they are encouraged by the nature of their job to say whatever the fuck they want.  By the nature--so like, they can--you guys can make this case.  What you can't do is say that the FDA is hiding this treatment, which is what you are implying, which is total bullshit.

'Morever, the drug can help prevent COVID-19.  One 2020 article in Biomedical Biophysical Research Communications looked at what happened after the drug was given to a family member of confirmed COVID-19 patients.'  That's a very iffy study to me, because like, that's gonna be very small sample size.  I don't know why they didn't link to the paper here, but it's like, that's a hard thing to study, what has happened after it's given to family members of confirmed COVID-19 patients.  Different families are gonna treat this differently.  Different families have different immunities.  They're composed of different ages.  It's--that's a difficult thing to study, so, but that's great.  If that's a thing, we should continue to look at it.

'Despite the FDA's claims, Ivermectin is safe in approved doses.'  That's not what they fucking said, dickwads!  They said it's not safe at high doses!  If you go and get a prescription for Ivermectin, it's safe.  If you take the stuff that you got from your horse doctor, it's not.  That's--ughhhh.  'The same study found that Ivermectin has been used safely in pregnant women, children, and infacts.'  Look, absolutely, and it's saving lives.  It's a fantastic medicine.  'If the FDA were driven by science and evidence, it would give an emergency use authorization for Ivermectin for COVID-19.  Instead, the FDA asserts, without evidence, that Ivermectin is dangerous.'  

I mean, I don't understand.  Like, these gu--well, I guess I do understand.  Having read this with the context of who these guys are, like, they are argue for a living.  The whole fucking thing is based on 'Ivermectin products for animals are different from Ivermectin products for people'.  That's the fucking thing that they're trying to tell people.  Don't take your horse drugs!  It's not a conspiracy!  They're trying to get people to not take doggie pills!

I don't know, man.  Like, this is irresponsible to print in the Wall Street Journal.  It's irresponsible to write, and it's irresponsible both from the perspective that we don't know whether or not Ivermectin is a safe cure--a safe treatment--for COVID-19.  We don't know whether it is the prophylaxis for COVID-19, we are studying those things and we should study those things, but it is especially, especially irresponsible to imply that the FDA is intentionally keeping a safe, effective treatment for COVID out of the hands of people who are sick with COVID.  Like, that is deeply irresponsible and it fucking infuriates me.  You can say whatever the fuck you want.  You a a person who works for the Hoover Institute, whatever that is, but like, the FDA can't, and doctors can't prescribe drugs that we don't know are effective at treating a disease.

And then you have a bunch of people who go, who like, talk about how the FDA is hiding a dis--how the FDA is preventing a treatment for COVID from being public, and then you have people going to take their horse pills and then you have the FDA being like, don't take horse pills, and then you get to say, look, see!  They're doing this crazy stuff to tell you that Ivermectin's super dangerous!  Taking horse pills is dangerous.  Taking medicines for animals is dangerous.

Don't do that.  That's all they're saying.  Oh my god!  How is this in the Wall Street Journal??