PSA: Don't Go Taking Horse Pills Unless You Are Literally A Horse, Which You Probably Are Not

Ivermectin poisonings are up in Mississippi, because of course they are.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course, and no one should talk to a horse of course — especially if that horse is trying to sell you drugs .

For the last few weeks, we've been hearing about American patriots going down to their local Tractor Supply stores in order to procure Ivermectin, for the purpose of curing or preventing COVID-19, a thing it doesn't do.

While Ivermectin is approved for use by humans under certain circumstances, usually to treat parasitic worms, the kind they are getting is for horses or cows, because that is what the Tractor Supply store sells and that's the only way they can get the drug without a prescription. As you can probably guess, this has not turned out well and the Mississippi State Department of Health has had to send out a notice asking people to please stop taking horse Ivermectin, due to the large number of calls they are getting to their poison control hotline.

In fact, according to the notice, "at least 70% of the recent calls have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers," which seems like a lot.

Taking a horse-sized dose of practically any medicine is generally a bad idea, since, as they say, s  ola dosis facit venenum, "the dose makes the poison." Even a horse-sized dose of homeopathic medicine would be a bad idea, since that many sugar pills would surely do something unpleasant to one's stomach. In the case of Ivermectin, an overdose can lead to "rash, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, neurologic disorders, and potentially severe hepatitis requiring hospitalization."

The FDA has also created a helpful FAQ about why one should not take drugs meant to cure parasitic worms in horses, noting that many of the inactive ingredients in medicines created for animals could also harm humans.

Of course, none of this is going to do anything to convince people to stop trying to take Ivermectin for the purpose of curing COVID, particularly those who do not believe COVID exists in the first place.

Iceman80: THERE IS NO COVID!

Sidetracked Again: I agree. There's no way to test for it so there's no way to call it something ... but for sure - something is making people sick and the people are treating themselves with Hydroxy ... and Ivermectin.

Well that is certainly one way to explain how COVID-19 simultaneously does not exist and can be cured with horse pills. Perhaps they could call it Schrödinger's Virus?

We've gone through this with a variety of different "cures" — bleach and Lysol, hydroxychloroquine, "Miracle Mineral Solution" (which is also bleach), etc. Sadly they have not gotten into the "cure" promoted by one Indian politician that involveddrinking cow urine and then smearing oneself with cow shit (though there is still time).

It's not hard to figure out what it is they want in a cure. For one, they want doctors to hate it. And the FDA, because they hate doctors and the FDA. They also want it to be a "cure" for literally everything else on earth. For instance, several people on the Great Awakening Qanon message board are now claiming that it also cures MS and cancer.

They are in search of a clickbait cure, because that's what they've been socialized to want — by clickbait itself, by magazines in the checkout aisle, by television shows like "Dr. Oz." They have been showered, for years in "Doctors hate this one weird trick to cure literally all of your ailments!" so as far as they're concerned, doctors hating something is conclusive proof that it works . They are rooting for the medicinal underdog because it would be more emotionally, narratively satisfying for the simple horse pills to have been better than the flashy vaccine all along.

It's a fucking Taylor Swift song. And this is your OPEN THREAD.

 Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons .

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