The Idiocy Of Democracy
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/health/covid-ivermectin-prescriptions.html
Ivermectin is not a benign drug and it is not for use in humans with viral diseases. For the most part it is a deworming agent for use in cattle. Its discovery did win a Nobel Prize in 2015, but again, that was for its treatment of parasitic diseases only. I remember having to spend six hours on the phone trying to get the FDA to approve its emergency use in a bone marrow transplant patient who had contracted strongyloides. It took all that time just to track someone in Washington down on a Saturday to gain the approval which a faculty member rightly sought help to acquire before he employed the drug in his patient.
I was reminded of all this when reading the attached article in The New York Times by Emma Goldberg on August 31. Apparently many pharmacies cannot keep up with the demand for ivermectin by people wishing to use it to treat or prevent covid-19. The problem is that there is absolutely no evidence that it works. In fact, there are studies confirming its ineffectiveness against this coronavirus disease. Nonetheless, people are even seeking the drug in feed stores (and using it at cattle-like doses and getting ill). When one combines the use of this unproven drug with the 80 million people who refuse to get vaccinated and the large number who refuse to adhere to mask mandates or let their kids comply, you have to be impressed that there are a lot of Americans who are basically idiots.
There has been a lot written by well-meaning journalists about how we vaccine believers should not be shaming or badgering the non-believers into taking the vaccine. It’s a personal choice. No, it’s not. It’s the non-believers’ choice to increase my likelihood of contracting covid because they won’t get vaccinated or use the one barrier protection shown to be effective in abating the spread of the airborne disease. Frankly, I’ve had enough.
I think what this reluctance to get vaccinated and rush to use quack remedies indicates is that many Americans are too ignorant for their own good. That would be fine except when it comes to public health. Individual rights have to take a back seat because the individual that exercises his or her rights to have unprotected sex when harboring the AIDS virus is committing a crime. So are these nincompoops who won’t get vaccinated and they should be made to get the shot or have to stay in their homes. They should not be free to expose others to the virus because they are stupid.
I know, I know I am going overboard. But, am I? I don’t think so. We demand that school children get all sorts of vaccinations. We restrict where people may smoke to prevent second hand exposure. We make people wear seat belts in automobiles as well as in airplanes and you can’t carry a loaded weapon on said airplane even if you have the best of intentions. Even in a free society there are limits to how you exercise that freedom and the limit usually stops at the jaw of the other guy. In this case it stops at the nose of the other guy.
No one has the right to cause someone else harm and that’s what the unvaccinated are doing. We also should punish physicians who are writing prescriptions for ivermectin for the covid-ignorant and feed stores should lock the stuff up for use by real farmers only.
We in America have gotten drunk on some crazed idea of freedom. It is not the right to do anything one wants regardless of the consequences to others. You have to stop at the red light or suffer the consequences. You have to get vaccinated against covid-19 or stay home. That’s the price of true freedom and until that occurs, no one will be free again.
