"Hey Doc! Are you a Democrat? Or a Republican?"
This might seem like an odd question to ask your doctor. How important is their political affiliation in your treatment of medical issues?
A Montana emergency physician was recently asked this question after being overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients in her ICU.
"I am your physician," Dr. Sara Nyquist told Dr. Sara Nyquist while speaking to Missoulian's local news station.
She pondered, "You do wonder how it got here."
We don't need to wonder. Political polarization is a reality. Social media is fueling this polarization. There are heated discussions on Facebook, Twitter and anywhere else you visit online about people who pass on life-saving vaccines and instead consume horse paste that they bought from their local animal feed shop.
Social media has made medicine political.
Horse paste debate
Joe Rogan, a podcaster, announced in September that he had COVID-19. Popular, but controversial host Joe Rogan posted an Instagram video sharing his diagnosis. He also included a list of medications that he was taking.
Ivermectin is a Nobel Prize-winning antiparasitic medication that has been used for years to treat roundworms.
Ivermectin can be used to treat people in many countries, but a different version is used for deworming livestock. It is available in a paste form that can be used to induce horses to take the medication.
However, Ivermectin has been hailed by anti-vaxxers as a COVID-19 miracle treatment.
Both the FDA and CDC have made clear warnings against Ivermectin being used to prevent or treat COVID-19. Merck, the largest manufacturer of Ivermectin here in the U.S., has also issued a statement opposing the use of the drug to treat COVID-19. Merck directed Mashable to the exact same statement when Mashable was reached for comment.
Ivermectin is not recommended by many doctors as it is not considered a treatment for COVID-19. Some have used the horse paste version to get around this problem.
There have been countless Facebook Groups and other forums devoted to anti-vaxxers who are urging people to ingest the horse paste for months. These groups will even contain people discussing their daily regimen of ingesting Ivermectin horses paste to prevent them from getting COVID-19.
The surge in Ivermectin-related overdoses reported by people who took the Ivermectin meant for farm animals was a warning from poison control centers. Even the FDA issued a statement urging people to stop using horse paste.
Rogan, who had tested positive for COVID-19, announced that he was now taking Ivermectin.
Rogan had told his young listeners that they didn't require the vaccine. He was spreading conspiracy theories about COVID-19 throughout the pandemic. He even hosted Dr. Pierre Kory, Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, (FLCCC), on his show to discuss the drug months before his Instagram video.
The Ivermectin mention on his Instagram video was what really got attention and set off an internet firestorm.
Rogan claims that the Ivermectin prescribed to him by a doctor was for humans. He didn't eat horse paste.
The "miracle cure" movement
As cases rose, some developing countries, having no other options and plenty of Ivermectin, tried the drug as a COVID-19 remedy. The success of Ivermectin in treating COVID-19 was quickly reported to others, despite not having any data or rigorous study.
The FLCCC was founded by Dr. Pierre Kory and is now Ivermectin’s most powerful backer in America.
This may actually be an understatement.
People who believe Ivermectin can cure COVID-19 are often cited by Kory, as he has called it a miracle cure in his testimony before a Congressional committee. He has no supporting evidence.
In March 2020, the FLCCC was created in the early days of the pandemic. The treatment of COVID-19 victims who had flooded hospitals in the United States at the outbreak was not clear. Kory, an ex-critical care specialist, created the FLCCC to find ways to help these patients.
Dr. Eric Osgood MD is an intern medicine doctor that treats COVID-19 long haulers. These are people who continue to experience severe symptoms and other ailments even though they have beaten the virus.
Osgood told Mashable that he first joined the FLCCC as they were "forward-thinking doctors who were able get ahead of their profession" regarding a few hospital treatments for coronavirus. These included the use of blood thinners in COVID-19 patients.
Osgood, however, left the company earlier in the summer. Why? The FLCCC's insistence on Ivermectin promotion over the life-saving COVID-19 vaccinations, led Kory.
Dr. Osgood explained to me that vaccines are now readily available and have been shown to save many lives. "The group's influence does not help people overcome their doubts and fears about vaccines.
Screenshot of the FLCCC homepage, showing the Ivermectin subsection on the main menu. Credit: Screenshot: mashable
The FLCCC website has very little mention of COVID-19 vaccines. Ivermectin is a prominent topic on the FLCCC homepage's main menu. It is right next to the website's FAQ and About pages.
Osgood is probably the most prominent voice in the Ivermectin discussion. Osgood isn't against Ivermectin being used in COVID-19 patients. He says he has witnessed its effectiveness in the treatment of certain symptoms, such as acting as an anti-inflammatory. Once there is enough research, we will be able to learn more about the potential benefits of Ivermectin for COVID patients. Based on this data, he is open to error.
He explained that he was deeply uneasy with the way Ivermectin [by FLCCC] is being treated like a settled science, rather than making arguments based upon data, risk and benefit, burdens, and lack of effective outpatient options.
It's not a cure-all and it's certainly not a substitute for a vaccine.
Polarization of COVID-19
Social media has exacerbated political polarization in the United States. This is not a new phenomenon.
The polarization of medical care? This is a new concept.
Mashable is told by Osgood that he has never seen anything like it in medicine. This was before Donald Trump, who backed hydroxychloroquine as an experimental miracle cure at the outbreak of the pandemic.
Even though there was some criticism from doctors, right-wing COVID skeptics quickly embraced Trump's claims. Some people took the wrong kind of hydroxychloroquine, which led to the horse paste crisis.
Trump found a group fringe doctors to support him in his claims. These same fringe doctors, also known as America's Frontline Doctors, now write Ivermectin prescriptions to people who are looking for the drug.
Later studies would confirm the critics' claims regarding the ineffectiveness hydroxychloroquine. To right-wingers and antivaxxers, anyone who criticized hydroxychloroquine was making an ideological statement, not a scientific one.
Similar to political discourse, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists were also able to make use of social media to their advantage. They used filter bubbles on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to make false claims about vaccines and miracle cures.
Conspiracy theories are all the rage right now
Anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists existed long before COVID-19.
During the pandemic, and even during early lockdowns as confused citizens searched online for answers to their questions, conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers were always ready to help them with their lies.
Right-wing conspiracy groups like QAnon thrived during the pandemic. QAnon supporters spread false claims that COVID-19 was a hoax, and then mixed it with conspiratorial foundational beliefs such as Trump's political enemies who run global trafficking rings.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 684 000 deaths have occurred in the U.S. as of the publication date of this article. The virus is causing the death of more than 2,000 people each day in the United States.
Conspiracy theorists quickly convinced people via social media that COVID-19 had been created by Trump's competitors, and was only intended to cost him the presidency. The very vaccinations Trump claimed credit for were then used by President Joe Biden's government to track people using 5G nanochips. This is false. The COVID vaccine does not contain a 5G chip.
Trump supporters, anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists are officially in control of the COVID-19 narrative through their social media followers. They seek out fake miracle cures such as Ivermectin.
Then, the problems suddenly disappear.
One doctor in Idaho recently told how her son-in-law threatened her death for not using Ivermectin. A Chicago hospital received a flood of calls earlier this month from QAnon followers, who harassed the doctors about not using the drug in order to save a well-known conspiracy theorist with COVID-19.
This problem will not go away
Dr. Kory, an Ivermectin proponent, has long promoted studies that show the drug's benefits for COVID-19 patients.
These studies were eventually pulled because of ethical concerns or faulty data.
Dr. Osgood described some studies on Ivermectin or COVID-19 as "flawed," "fabricated,"" and "done not according to scientific standards."
Mashable: "There's always been research fraud, but I have never seen so much fraud and scientific misconduct around one drug." he said.
Due to the polarized nature of the topic, even Ivermectin's online opponents have fallen for misinformation online. In the last few weeks, a dubious study that claimed Ivermectin reduces male sperm counts quickly became viral online.
The number of COVID-19-related deaths in America continues to rise. You'll be able to find anti-vaxxers on Facebook sharing conspiracy theories about COVID-19.
Reddit has a new community, "The Herman Cain Award", which is now active. Named after Herman Cain (a former Republican presidential candidate), the award was established in honor of Cain who refused to wear masks at a Trump rally during pandemic. COVID-19 was the cause of his death.
This subreddit allows users to share images of unvaccinated social media users' online posts. Image after image of an anti-vaxx user declaring COVID-19 a hoax, or that the vaccines are a secret government surveillance plot.
Then, last but certainly not least, Redditors call "the money shot", the post that earns the user "The Herman Cain Award." This is the final Facebook post from a relative declaring that the poster who was unvaccinated has died due to COVID-19.
Osgood and I discussed a recent report that revealed a molecule found in the venom from a Brazilian viper, which could be used to combat COVID-19.
I laughed about how anti-vaxxers will soon be intentionally bitten by venomous snakes.
Osgood sent me a link to an article about how unvaccinated people are now drinking iodine in order to combat COVID-19. This was undoubtedly due to misinformation on social media. Osgood believes that much of what we see is an opportunity for contrarians and to challenge the system. How better to upset the establishment than to take on officials during a pandemic.
He said, "The snake venom will be coming, my friend ..."."
Healthcare has been a political issue since the beginning, particularly in the United States of America which is the only industrialized country without universal healthcare. There is no denying that there are many criticisms to be made of the lobbying by government officials to protect profits and the large pharmaceutical companies.
However, medical treatment has not always been a political polarizing topic.
We are here.
Mashable did not reach out to the FLCCC for comment.
