Coronavirus has caused people to do some really nutty things.
A store in Las Vegas announced that it will allow customers to buy this drug intended for horses – but only if the buyer presents a picture posing with the horse.
And of course, you’re thinking – why?
Pet food stores in the States have seen a significant increase in demand for Ivermectin, a medication that, among other things, clears up worms and parasites in horses. The staff at the stores were puzzled, until they began to realize that people were using the drug against coronavirus.
The New York Times reported last week that Gregory Yu, an emergency doctor in San Antonio, was receiving similar inquiries every day from his patients, some of whom were vaccinated against coronavirus and others who sought the drug Ivermectin.
This drug, by the way, has been tested as a possible treatment against coronavirus to mixed results.
To sum up, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in recent weeks there has been a sharp rise in Ivermectin prescriptions, which peaked at more than 88,000 a week in mid-August.
Ivermectin has been praised by vaccine opponents, who have described it as a wonder drug, yet there isn’t enough official data to support their claims. One meta-analysis that showed positive results for the drug was halted at the request of the authors after it was discovered that one of the studies contained false data. Following the rejection of this study, the meta-analysis found no benefit in raising the survival rate of coronavirus patients who took the drug.
Although the drug, discovered in 1975, is approved and prescribed to eradicate many parasites in humans such as lice and scabies (and even won its inventors the Nobel Prize in 2015), a common use of Ivermectin is to treat animals.
The greatest risk is taking too high a dose; there are documented cases of people taking a dose 10-15 times higher than that recommended for humans. The reason for the prevalence of overdoses is that this is a drug intended mainly for use in horses, which have a much greater body mass than humans.
So, calls to poison treatment centers for Ivermectin exposure have risen dramatically to five times the normal in July, according to the CDC.
Calls to various poison control centers in the States after people took Ivermectin included reports of nausea, muscle aches and diarrhea. People have died from overdosing on Ivermectin in the past, although none of them had taken it to treat coronavirus.
Although it has never been sufficiently proven to be effective in treating coronavirus, people are now desperately trying to get the drug, and turning to social media networks such as Facebook for tips on how to find it. Some doctors have compared this phenomenon to rising interest in hydroxychloroquine in the past year, (promoted by former US President Donald Trump), the drug for malaria treatment which gained momentary worldwide fame shortly after the pandemic began, until it became questionable whether it could successfully treat coronavirus.
The New York Times noted that a recent review of 14 studies on Ivermectin with more than 1,600 participants concluded that none of them determined that the drug could prevent corona, improve a patient's condition or reduce mortality.
Thirty-one other studies investigating the drug (including in Israel) are still ongoing. At least one by a doctor from Sheba Medical Center has shown positive results.
In short, as the US Food and Drug Administration tweeted: "You aren’t a horse, you aren’t a cow. Seriously, all of you, stop it.”
The FDA added to the tweet a warning that Ivermectin isn't approved for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19 and that taking large doses without medical supervision can cause harm.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.