Notorious COVID misinformer Joel Hirschhorn is back to promoting dubious treatments for COVID. In his Dec. 8 column, he hyped a study claiming that high levels of vitamin D could help fight off a COVID infection. While the study appears to be legitimate, other studies have found different results. But because Hirschhorn is a conspiracist at heart, he began his column by huffing that “There seems to be an endless refusal by the public health establishment to fight the pandemic with the best science-based tools. Instead, they keep pushing vaccines” — as if vaccines were a bad thing — then went on to rant:
As the U.S. approaches 800,000 COVID-related deaths it is reasonable to believe that perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved if the government had strongly supported vitamin D blood testing and supplementation if needed. But in the absence of such a COVID policy, people have good reasons to use D supplements if they are not routinely exposed to sunlight without using sunscreen products.
[…]Sadly, we cannot count on the public health establishment to take a science-based, aggressive policy on using vitamin D supplements as an alternative to COVID vaccines or expensive medicines. Its up to individuals to protect their own lives by being well informed and proactive.
For his Dec. 16 column, Hirschhorn returned to his first dubious medication love, ivermectin:
Ivermectin has been attacked by pro-vaccine interests despite it being a cheap, safe and proven medicine for COVID-19 treatment and prevention. Despite a mountain of clinical and test evidence showing that it really works, Big Media, Big Pharma and Big Government have stubbornly fought its use. Its use in a number of countries, notably India, has proven its effectiveness against COVID.
[…]As the following examples show, the medicine has been found lifesaving for critically ill, hospitalized patients with little chance of survival when government-approved protocols are used. Family members have requested hospitals use IVM as patients’ face probable death, often to no avail. In response, some gutsy people have used the judicial system to get hospitals to do what is justified by medical science: save lives by using ivermetctin.
In Illinois it took a court to force a hospital to capitulate to family demands to give a very sick elderly patient IVM. The hospital had used the approved ways to treat the patient without success. These included the proven unsafe and very expensive drug remdesivir, intubation and ventilator use for a month in the ICU. None of it worked, and the patient was given only a 10 to 15% chance of surviving.
Hirschhorn continued to hype that case, claiming that the patient “showed signs of improvement almost immediately” after being given ivermectin. He didn’t mention that part of the legal fight involved the fact that the doctor who wanted to use ivermectin on the patient was himself not vaccinated, or that the hospital has said the patient was improving before treatment started.
He also hyped fellow WND columnist Wayne Allyn Root’s claim of having beaten COVID in 48 hours with ivermectin — but, of course, was silent about the fact that Root was running around doing a book tour while hiding from people that he had an active case of COVID, potentially spreading the virus to — and sickening and maybe killing — unsuspecting people.
Hirschhorn touted ivermectin again in his Jan. 5 column, laughably headlined “Praise the Lord and pass the ivermectin”:
Hospitals have become killing machines, places where the kiss of death is a protocol following government guidelines. Despite wide COVID vaccine use, deaths in hospitals because of late-stage viral infection remain at a high level. Difficulty in getting COVID testing quickly and often probably contributes to the high death rate. Too many people do not get their COVID infection addressed early. There remains too little use of monoclonal antibodies early for infected people. So their infection progresses to serious lung and breathing problems. That is the beginning of the end.
And it will be a long time before the new antiviral drugs from Pfizer and Merck are broadly available, and there will be more information ascertained on whether or not they are really safe and effective for all diverse types of people.
[…]In a few successful court actions, such late-stage COVID patients were given the cheap, safe generic ivermectin and – much to the astonishment of hospital doctors – have walked out of the hospital, completely recovered.
And there is considerable medical research literature supporting such use of ivermectin, principally because of its anti-inflammatory property. As just one example, a published medical 2021 hospital study found nearly a 50% reduction in deaths for patients with severe pulmonary involvement, the typical late-stage COVID death-bed patient condition. The many doubters of ivermectin should pay more attention to the medical science literature.
But published medical articles are ignored by the medical and public health establishments.
[…]Time to let those who want to use ivermectin in an attempt to save their life get it. It is medically and morally the right thing to do.
With now a long record of hospital protocols for late-stage COVID utterly failing to save lives, how can the medical profession justify not using a generic medicine that both research and clinical results justify and explain its ability to save lives?
They cannot.
Families trying to find a lawyer and a friendly court face a very, very difficult race to save their loved one stuck in the ICU just like a prisoner sentenced to death.
Is it COVID killing these people or the medical profession and their hospital employers? Worth pondering as you keep watching mounting COVID death numbers.
Hirschhorn found a new way to praise ivermectin in his Jan. 19 column:
Moving beyond words is a new vote of confidence in using ivermectin to fight COVID with an innovative injectable product.
There is good reason to have hope for a new way to deliver ivermectin to millions of people to fight COVID variants. It offers a very sound alternative to vaccines. And everyone should understand that after omicron could come lethal COVID variants.
With all of the considerable controversy about using ivermectin for treating and preventing COVID, something has slipped the attention of its supporters and critics. A relatively small French company has spent the past year or more developing an injectable product of ivermectin for prophylactic use that lasts in the body for months.
[…]One can imagine that this innovative product could be just like annual flu vaccines in how it is administered to large numbers of people in a multitude of places, including medical offices, drug stores and supermarket pharmacies. And it would be wonderful if medical insurance covered it like it does flu shots.
Hirschhorn didn’t mention that injectible ivermectin already exists … for animals, as a parasiticide. There’s nothing terribly novel going on here. It’s also worth noting once again that COVID is a virus, not a parasite.
But, again, Hirschhorn is a conspiracist, so he concluded the column by arguing that “The question to be followed is if and how Big Pharma takes actions to stymie” development of the injectible ivermectin.