First it was sunlight and bleach. Then came hydroxychloroquine. Now, as the coronavirus pandemic surges to new, deadly heights across the country, a sizable portion of the population has decided that a common barnyard deworming agent is the real cure-all for everything. And despite desperate objections from the Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration (to say nothing of the pleas from frontline doctors), the horse deworming drug Ivermectin is not only being ingested by humans in lieu of an actual, approved, proven effective vaccine, but at least one Ohio hospital has been court-ordered to administer the drug against apparent wishes of the physicians on hand.
Last week, Butler County Judge Gregory Howard ruled in favor of Julie Smith, who had petitioned the court that weekend to force West Chester Hospital near Cincinnati to administer 30 milligrams of Ivermectin a day for three weeks to her husband Jeffrey. Jeffrey Smith has been hospitalized with a severe case of COVID since mid-July and was placed on a ventilator on Aug. 1. The hospital had initially refused the use of Ivermectin as a treatment.
