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And now Joe Rogan, another radio talker and anti-vaccine liar with chronic cranial-colonic inversion, has come down with COVID-19. He claims he’s throwing the kitchen sink at it, all kinds of meds, “monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, Z-Pak, prednisone, everything. I also got an NAD drip and a vitamin drip.” But he won’t say if he’s been vaccinated or not. Ivermectin won’t affect COVID-19, but it could force his head out into the daylight.
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This reminds me of the
Paul Krugman: The Snake Oil Theory of the Modern Right
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And much of this refusal [of vaccination] is political. True, many people who are refusing to get vaccinated aren’t Trumpists, but there’s a strong
negative correlation between Donald Trump’s share of a county’s vote and vaccinations. As of July,
86 percent of self-identified Democrats said they had had a vaccine shot, but only 54 percent of Republicans did.
But vaccine refusers aren’t just rejecting lifesaving vaccines, they’re also turning to life-threatening alternatives. We’re seeing a surge in sales of — and poisoning by —
ivermectin, which is usually used to deworm livestock but has recently been touted on social media and
Fox News as a Covid cure.
OK, I didn’t see that coming. But I should have. As the historian
Rick Perlstein has pointed out, there’s a long association between peddlers of quack medicine and right-wing extremists. They cater to more or less the same audience.
That is, Americans willing to believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and that
Italian satellites were used to switch votes to Joe Biden are also the kind of people willing to believe that medical elites are lying to them and that they can solve their health problems by ignoring professional advice and buying patent medicines instead.
Once you’re sensitized to the link between snake oil and right-wing politics, you realize that it’s pervasive.
This is clearly true in the right’s fever swamps. Alex Jones of Infowars has built a following by pushing conspiracy theories, but he makes money by selling
nutritional supplements.
It’s also true, however, for more mainstream, establishment parts of the right. For example, Ben Shapiro, considered an intellectual on the right, hawks supplements.
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Edit: Extended the quote