Stephan: I am really really tired of readers writing me to tell me that I am wrong about taking a strong position, as I have, against taking a horse dewormer, Ivermectin, for covid. Some even tell me it is as good as the vaccine. That is CRAP. Do you get it, CRAP. There was one study -- just one study -- that claimed that Ivermectin was effective in helping with covid. That study has since been withdrawn and utterly discredited for falsification of the research data presented and for plagiarism.
The Mississippi Health Department took to social media Friday to issue a warning about the phenomenon, which has been reported throughout the pandemic.
Mississippi’s poison control center has seen an increase in calls of people taking ivermectin, including versions of the deworming drug intended for livestock, to treat or prevent COVID-19, according to state health officials.
The Mississippi Health Department also issued an alert Friday to health care providers in the state regarding the increase in poison control calls due to potential ivermectin toxicity.
“At least 70% of the recent calls have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers,” stated the alert, which did not specify the number of total calls.
Ivermectin can be deadly in large doses. Most callers to Mississippi’s poison control center had mild symptoms, though one person was advised to seek further care “due to the amount of ivermectin reportedly ingested,” according to the alert.
Earlier this week, state health officials said they knew of at least one person in Mississippi who was hospitalized due to […]
Stephan: Here is what the pharmaceutical company, Merck, that makes Ivermectin has to say about its use for covid. The Fox disinformation operation has been promoting ivermectin for covid for weeks now, spreading one lie after another. Personally, I think Fox should be held responsible for adding in mass murder, but in the United States, we no longer seem to be able to hold the rich and powerful accountable for their misdeeds and crimes.
KENILWORTH, N.J., Feb. 4, 2021 – Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today affirmed its position regarding use of ivermectin during the COVID-19 pandemic. Company scientists continue to carefully examine the findings of all available and emerging studies of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 for evidence of efficacy and safety. It is important to note that, to-date, our analysis has identified:
No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies;
No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and;
A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.
We do not believe that the data available support the safety and efficacy of ivermectin beyond the doses and populations indicated in the regulatory agency-approved prescribing information.
Indications and Usage for STROMECTOL® (ivermectin)
Ivermectin is approved in the United States under the brand name STROMECTOL. STROMECTOL is indicated for the treatment of intestinal (i.e., nondisseminated) strongyloidiasis due to the nematode parasite Strongyloides stercoralis and for the treatment of onchocerciasis due to the nematode parasite Onchocerca volvulus.
Stephan: America's death merchants are extraordinarily profitable investments, if one has no moral character. Here is the proof of that.
Illustration: Soohee Cho/The Intercept/Getty
If you purchased $10,000 of stock evenly divided among America’s top five defense contractors on September 18, 2001 — the day President George W. Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and faithfully reinvested all dividends, it would now be worth $97,295.
This is a far greater return than was available in the overall stock market over the same period. $10,000 invested in an S&P 500 index fund on September 18, 2001, would now be worth $61,613.
Moreover, given that the top five biggest defense contractors — Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics — are of course part of the S&P 500, the remaining firms had lower returns than the overall S&P returns.
These numbers suggest that it is incorrect to conclude that the Taliban’s immediate takeover of Afghanistan upon the U.S.’s departure means that the Afghanistan War was a failure. […]
Stephan: The corruption of the American justice system is appalling. Here's a fact. In the World Justice Project rankings America is not even in the top ten. We rank 21st, and the reason for our dreadful ranking is that we have two systems, one for the oligarchs and the people they sponsor, the other for ordinary people.
America has lost its way.
World Justice Project National ranking
After spending more than 700 days under house arrest, a human rights and environmental lawyer was found guilty last month of criminal contempt in a legal saga that has demonstrated the deep-rooted conflicts of interest layered throughout the judicial system when it comes to climate justice. In Steven Donziger’s conviction, the initial judge who referred him to trial, the second judge who was asked to lead the trial, and the private prosecutors who tried him all had deep ties to Chevron, the company Donziger had won a landmark multibillion-dollar ruling against.
The story began in 2011 when Donziger brought litigation against Texaco (now Chevron) in Ecuador for the harm it caused the Indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the fossil fuel company decided to deliberately discharge 16 billion gallons of toxic waste from its oil sites into rivers, groundwater, and farmland. A refusal from Chevron to adhere to environmental regulations — which earned the company an extra $5 billion over 20 years — led to more than 30,000 […]
Stephan: All my readers know that I think the American Gulag is one of America's greatest shames. (See SR archive We have more people incarcerated than any nation on earth, and the system is disgustingly racist. Warehousing humans is very expensive, and for private prisons very profitable. It costs as much to keep a man in prison as it would to keep him in college. This well-done piece gives some insight into the gulag.
African-American man in U.S. prison cell. Credit: Shutterstock
In July, 2016, thousands of demonstrators gathered in Baton Rouge to protest the death of Alton Sterling, a Black man who was shot by a police officer after being pinned to the ground outside a convenience store, where he had been selling compact disks. Although the protests were largely peaceful, officers in full riot gear dispersed the crowds and made more than a hundred and fifty arrests. A coalition of advocates, including the A.C.L.U. of Louisiana, filed a lawsuit accusing the Baton Rouge Police Department of infringing on the protesters’ First Amendment rights. A year later, Andrea Armstrong, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, who had served as a legal observer during some of the protests, co-authored a report cataloguing degrading conditions at East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, a local jail where the demonstrators were detained. Protesters were crammed into filthy, overcrowded holding cells and denied water and toilet paper. Some were pepper-sprayed. Others were strip-searched in front of strangers. In multiple instances, injured protesters received no […]
