Ivermectin

Can someone explain to me why Americans think a deeply studied, peer-reviewed vaccine is risky, but a literal horse deworming tablet is as safe as can be and super effective?

My in-laws in the Deep South are becoming insufferable on social media. Apparently the vaccine is the devil himself, and the only thing that can save us is the stuff they give to horses to kill bugs in their shíte.

Sorry for posting this, but Christ I’m frustrated.

 

Fundamentalist Christianity?

 

An appalling education system AND fundamentalist christianity.

 

I mean, yeah, probably a large part of it. It just infuriates me to see. They’re not inherently bad people, but the brainwashing would impress any fascist dictator.

 

Yes and they say the same about Muslim Fundamentalists.....

And Atheists.

 

Yup. These are the kind of people who say Sharia Law is abhorrent (it is), but then advocate chopping off hands for shoplifting, and execution for abortion.

The mind boggles.

 

The anti vaccine movement uses exactly the same tactics as the anti EU one and how they got Trump elected.
It’s now a repeatable known successful propaganda playbook. Carefully targeted messaging via soc media, using meaningless emotional rather than factual slogans.

And it will eventually lead to a large number of fascists elected worldwide.

 

Hitler and others did it without social media but it will certainly help their modern counterparts.
I'm not sure how we tackle this but if democracy is to survive, I think proportional representation is a must - certainly here in the UK and in America (the Presidential voting system is as bad as ours). We will have to accept that there will be minority parties with extreme views who will gain representation but PR would at least limit their success.

 

Just a question, what do they think Ivermectin is effective for?
De-worming themselves presumably....

 

America is such a strange place. On the one hand it's modern and supremely advanced, but on the other they pray to sky people and believe they need guns just in case their own government goes rogue...

 

We learned lessons from the rise of Hitler, but those lessons are now forgotten, or indeed not learned by the generation after mine.
And one of those lessons was to control political propaganda quite strongly. That’s how we managed to keep the far right as a tiny minority for so many years.

Social media has handed control of political messaging to a small number of financially motivated individuals and that’s where it gets scary.

I recently read a tweet by a female doctor who had been banned by Facebook because her response to a creepy guy asking to see pictures of her in a bikini was to call him a fu cking creep. Zuckerberg sees nothing wrong with men being sexually inappropriate (who’d have guessed).

 

I’m not so sure about that. The PR system almost guarantees coalition government, which often means extremist fringe parties forming part of the government.

 

Not necessarily. Hitler was backed because other parties thought they could control him and he was a better bet than the socialists/left leaning parties. Look at the Tories allying with the DUP.

 

Just to be clear: I think people taking horse dewormer is nuts.

I just wanted to add, because I think it’s important to know for anyone who doesn’t and as it hasn’t been mentioned in this thread, Ivermectin is also a human medicine. Not for treating Covid, and people in America clearly are using the horse stuff with its massive dosage not intended for humans so they are still off their head, but it seems disingenuous to not admit that it is for humans too as they are daft enough without hiding that fact.

 

or socialist/commie

 

How?
I’m no theological expert, but as far as I’m aware, the bible describes ‘life’ as starting at birth. Now whilst I know that to be incorrect, the blokes writing the bible didn’t.

There’s tons of stuff ‘believed’ by Christians that has no basis whatsoever in the bible, ie widely held beliefs of heaven and hell. And for many devout ‘Christians’ who lean on Old Testament views rather than the more caring and liberal views of the New Testament.

 

Whilst I don’t disagree with the overall premise of the original post, this is yet another example of exaggeration that do the argument no favours. Ivermectin is licensed for use in humans (whilst most of the Covid vaccines are only licensed for emergency use) and is routinely prescribed to treat scabies, river blindness and other stuff caused by parasites (notwithstanding none of this obviously has a relationship to Covid).

Pretending it’s simply a horse dewormer is as obviously daft and wrong as pretending it is proven to work on Covid, which it clearly is not.

I think it’s ok to question why the press do this.

 

Although I agree with your general point, you do get fundamentalist Hindus. The current government under Modi are of this ilk and their youth wing have killed Muslims and burned down mosques. I am also sure that the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar might question this point about Buddhism not having its fundamentalists.