An investigative reporter wrote a very interesting article on the FDA and Ivermectin. I am posting this so you can see what the reporter turned up about the FDA, not Ivermectin. The article was published on rescue.substack.com and I will post a link to the article below. I am not familiar with that website, but the FOIA emails look authentic. The article is rather long, but I hope the excerpts I am posting below entice you to read the entire article at the link.
In a hokey tweet on August 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration told Americans the obvious: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
Everyone knew what “it” was: an animal form of the drug ivermectin that folks were said to be using, widely, for covid-19. Don’t, said FDA.
Within two days, 23.7 million people had seen that Pulitzer-worthy bit of Twitter talk. Hundreds of thousands more got the message on Facebook, LinkedIn, and from the Today Show’s 3 million-follower Instagram account.
There was one problem, however. The tweet was a direct outgrowth of wrong data—call it misinformation—put out the day before by the Mississippi health department. The FDA did not vet the data, according to our review of emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and questions to FDA officials. Instead, it saw Mississippi, as one email said, as “an opportunity to remind the public of our own warnings for ivermectin.”
It began with one sentence in a Mississippi health alert on reports to the state’s poison control center: “At least 70% of the recent calls have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers.” In the thick of a fierce covid wave in the American South, no official at the FDA, or reporter for that matter, seemed to ask: 70 percent of what? Instead, government and media joined forces against a public health threat that, in retrospect, was vastly exaggerated.
Amid dozens of articles that ensued, Rolling Stone told of Oklahoma hospitals so jammed with ivermectin overdoses that gunshot victims had to wait for care—except it wasn’t true. Twice, The New York Times printed corrections of the same false information from Mississippi, which it described in one article and later removed, as “a staggering number of calls.” The Associated Press, Washington Post and, twice, the The Guardian in London also corrected its reporting on the alert.
The Times’ correction summed it up: “This article misstated the percentage of recent calls to the Mississippi poison control center related to ivermectin. It was 2 percent, not 70 percent.” (The Times and Post both made corrections in direct response to our reporting for this article.)
In real numbers, six calls were received for ingestion of ivermectin. Four were for the antiparasitic drug given to livestock.
So how big was the surge that FDA described as “multiple”? Four, an agency spokesperson said just after the page went up. Three people were hospitalized, but it wasn’t clear if that was for covid itself. When pressed for details, FDA cited privacy issues, and said in an email, “Some of these cases were lost to follow up.”
This is how government gets away with some whoppers, and with the media’s help.
Below, FDA officials crow over the deception that was “the most popular post we’ve ever had on Twitter:”
8-23-21email.png)
…and the FDA commissioner was thrilled:
In this email obtained by Linda Bonvie under the Freedom of Information Act, FDA officials celebrate reaching the “everyday” American with a tweet that sparked a media firestorm of lies:
8-22-21email.png)
Here is the link for the entire article:
https://rescue.substack.com/p/horse-bleep-how...-on-animal
Here is the FDA's bio for Erica Jefferson, Associate Commissioner for External Affairs.
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-organizatio...-jefferson
Interesting follow-up note: Mary Beth Pfeiffer, the investigative journalist who wrote the article, was locked out of Twitter for violating their rules one day after the article appeared. She was gaining lots of new followers until the lockout.
https://rescue.substack.com/p/a-day-after-our...tm_source=
So many interesting points could be made about this. Here are the first few I thought about:
The FDA has an External Affairs Department ready to move quickly, even on erroneous data.
The FDA tracks number of hits on tweets and new followers.
Now think about their unsigned hit-piece on Leronlimab. I wonder if they also counted the hits on that one and then celebrated?
I know I am "preaching to the choir" about the FDA, but the FOIA emails are (pick one or use your own): amazing - astounding - appalling - disappointing....................................
In a hokey tweet on August 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration told Americans the obvious: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
Everyone knew what “it” was: an animal form of the drug ivermectin that folks were said to be using, widely, for covid-19. Don’t, said FDA.
Within two days, 23.7 million people had seen that Pulitzer-worthy bit of Twitter talk. Hundreds of thousands more got the message on Facebook, LinkedIn, and from the Today Show’s 3 million-follower Instagram account.
There was one problem, however. The tweet was a direct outgrowth of wrong data—call it misinformation—put out the day before by the Mississippi health department. The FDA did not vet the data, according to our review of emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and questions to FDA officials. Instead, it saw Mississippi, as one email said, as “an opportunity to remind the public of our own warnings for ivermectin.”
It began with one sentence in a Mississippi health alert on reports to the state’s poison control center: “At least 70% of the recent calls have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers.” In the thick of a fierce covid wave in the American South, no official at the FDA, or reporter for that matter, seemed to ask: 70 percent of what? Instead, government and media joined forces against a public health threat that, in retrospect, was vastly exaggerated.
Amid dozens of articles that ensued, Rolling Stone told of Oklahoma hospitals so jammed with ivermectin overdoses that gunshot victims had to wait for care—except it wasn’t true. Twice, The New York Times printed corrections of the same false information from Mississippi, which it described in one article and later removed, as “a staggering number of calls.” The Associated Press, Washington Post and, twice, the The Guardian in London also corrected its reporting on the alert.
The Times’ correction summed it up: “This article misstated the percentage of recent calls to the Mississippi poison control center related to ivermectin. It was 2 percent, not 70 percent.” (The Times and Post both made corrections in direct response to our reporting for this article.)
In real numbers, six calls were received for ingestion of ivermectin. Four were for the antiparasitic drug given to livestock.
So how big was the surge that FDA described as “multiple”? Four, an agency spokesperson said just after the page went up. Three people were hospitalized, but it wasn’t clear if that was for covid itself. When pressed for details, FDA cited privacy issues, and said in an email, “Some of these cases were lost to follow up.”
This is how government gets away with some whoppers, and with the media’s help.
Below, FDA officials crow over the deception that was “the most popular post we’ve ever had on Twitter:”
…and the FDA commissioner was thrilled:
In this email obtained by Linda Bonvie under the Freedom of Information Act, FDA officials celebrate reaching the “everyday” American with a tweet that sparked a media firestorm of lies:
Here is the link for the entire article:
https://rescue.substack.com/p/horse-bleep-how...-on-animal
Here is the FDA's bio for Erica Jefferson, Associate Commissioner for External Affairs.
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-organizatio...-jefferson
Interesting follow-up note: Mary Beth Pfeiffer, the investigative journalist who wrote the article, was locked out of Twitter for violating their rules one day after the article appeared. She was gaining lots of new followers until the lockout.
https://rescue.substack.com/p/a-day-after-our...tm_source=
So many interesting points could be made about this. Here are the first few I thought about:
The FDA has an External Affairs Department ready to move quickly, even on erroneous data.
The FDA tracks number of hits on tweets and new followers.
Now think about their unsigned hit-piece on Leronlimab. I wonder if they also counted the hits on that one and then celebrated?
I know I am "preaching to the choir" about the FDA, but the FOIA emails are (pick one or use your own): amazing - astounding - appalling - disappointing....................................
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