Doubting mainstream medicine, COVID patients find dangerous advice and pills online.
Laurie, Stephanie's daughter, urged that Stephanie seek medical attention after she contracted COVID-19 soon before Thanksgiving last year.
Laurie remembers telling her to "just go to the doctor" since she was "really not feeling well."
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Stephanie, who was 75 at the time, chose not to go, though. A few years prior, she had become enmeshed in the bizarre claims made by online conspiracy theories, including one that John F. Kennedy Jr. was still alive. The pandemic made things worse. She developed a strong mistrust of the medical establishment.
(NPR is only using family members' first names to protect them from online harassment.) Laurie recalls what her mother used to say about the COVID vaccines: "Everybody who is vaccinated is going to die."
Thanks to a novel omicron subvariant, COVID cases and hospitalizations are once more increasing. The worst effects can be avoided with the use of vaccines and some effective treatments. However, there is a network of alternative medical practitioners, alternative healers, and online celebrities eager to promote unproven treatments for COVID for Americans like Stephanie who don't trust the medical establishment. there is a dubious black market where you can purchase them. Doctors claim that Stephanie's connection to the alternative medical network ultimately endangered her life.
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| Over the course of the pandemic, ivermectin has gained great popularity in part because of a tiny group of eccentric physicians who advocate it as a COVID vaccination substitute in spite of early research that found it ineffective. Ivermectin, however, has emerged as the centerpiece of numerous alternative medicines. Ivermectin, which was first used to treat parasitic worms, has gained a huge following across the pandemic, particularly in conservative political groups. That's in part due to a small group of credentialed doctors that advocate it as a COVID vaccine substitute. The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, led by Dr. Pierre Kory, is one of the most well-known advocates for ivermectin. In December 2020, Kory testified before a Senate committee that "ivermectin is practically a "wonder medicine" against COVID-19." |
But careful research demonstrates that ivermectin is not a miracle drug. Early in the pandemic, ivermectin was investigated as a possible COVID treatment, but it hasn't worked out. Ivermectin does not reduce hospitalization rates, according to extensive clinical research. Some of the first, encouraging findings, including one research led by Kory himself, have now been retracted. Ivermectin should not be prescribed to treat COVID, according to the American Medical Association and the Food and Drug Administration today.
David Gorski, a cancer surgeon and researcher at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Michigan, claims that "the non-fraudulent, non-messed up clinical trials are all quite universally negative." Before COVID, Gorski kept tabs on medical professionals who promoted complementary treatments for cancer. And he notices many similarities between such medical professionals and specialists like Pierre Kory. Gorski claims that COVID is no different from centuries-old quackery. Ivermectin is being promoted by Kory in right-wing media, along with his bravery for prescribing it: "People who have used ivermectin, their licenses have been endangered," he stated on a recent conservative podcast. However, Kory did not respond to NPR's emails by the deadline. I'm unsure what will happen to my license because I have eight complaints pending with my medical board. No pharmacies, no questionsStephanie was one of those who was impacted by Kory's speech. He had helped to develop an ivermectin-based therapy procedure that Stephanie's friends were sending around in text messages. Professor Timothy Mackey from the University of California, San Diego is an expert in online pharmacy. He claims that ivermectin's proponents have been promoting the medicine for months. He claims that "they are creating demand, and this desire is being distributed in all these various online groups." According to Mackey, a wide range of organizations are attempting to profit from the ivermectin demand that exists only in secret. Although it's hard to measure how many people are buying it on the illicit market, Mackey thinks that many Americans are impacted. According to him, "there are probably hundreds, tens of thousands of people who have tried to acquire medicines, maybe been scammed, and at worst, possibly even been hurt by these things." Stephanie looked for ivermectin after contracting COVID. She was given the name of a woman in Jacksonville, Florida who was prepared to offer it to her along with a few other experimental COVID medications by a friend. Stephanie placed an order for $390. According to Laurie, "She really did not want to do anything else and was just waiting for the pills."  Even though her mother was becoming worse, she resisted going to the hospital. Laurie was concerned since the mail-order medicines had cost her a lot of money. Who did you buy it from, I asked? I asked her, "Are you sure it's a doctor? " as I had read a lot about individuals obtaining it illegally. She replied, "I got it from a doctor." "Yeah, it's obviously a doctor," she responded. It wasn't a doctor, though. It was Elizabeth Starr Miller who was the lady. She works as a loan officer and a "quantum healer," according to her LinkedIn profile. Miller frequently warned Stephanie to be wary of the hospital in texts that Stephanie's family shared with NPR.  The medications, however, had not yet arrived. After a few days, Stephanie began to fear being duped.  Not licensed for use in the U.S. and possibly counterfeitIvermectin pills that are not authorized for usage in the United States were discovered when Laurie, her daughter, examined them. They appeared to be produced by pharmaceutical firms in India. However, Mackey, the pharmaceutical expert, wasn't even certain that the Indian company had manufactured them when NPR sent him images of the packets. The initial setup of this pill pack "seems quite questionable," claims Mackey. The stamp on the package that reads "WHO GMP Certified" is real in one Indian state, but Mackey has also seen it on counterfeit medications imported from other countries. He states, "Once you see this mark here, you're basically going to throw out this sample."  The person who sold Stephanie the strange medicines, Elizabeth Starr Miller, first told NPR she had nothing to do with the medications when she was contacted by phone. Someone else prescribes the medication, not me, she stated. Miller said that she and Stephanie had contacted a qualified physician when questioned about text messages she sent Stephanie that, among other things, included a tracking number for the ivermectin. The full text thread between Stephanie and Miller was examined by NPR, but there was no indication of such a meeting, and Stephanie's family denies knowing of any appointment. Miller claims she doesn't have any records from the consultation because the doctor passed away a few years ago from cancer. Ivermectin was being sold by well over a hundred physicians, homeopaths, and online druggists, according to Miller. She claims that she didn't cause Stephanie's death and that she thought the medications would be beneficial. She explains, "This was an adult lady who had made her choice. I merely wanted to support her. I had no desire to harm her. Never would I hurt someone. " Stephanie lost significant time as a result of her faith in the medications. Her hospitalized doctors told NPR that they think she lost important time waiting for them. Just a few days after Christmas, Stephanie started to get weaker and eventually passed away from COVID. Jai Ballani, a doctor from Northwell Health who treated Stephanie at the hospital last year, believes Stephanie's best chance would have been to get immunized before becoming ill. She would have done better even without the immunization if she had swiftly sought out treatments that had been shown effective by science. Ballani speculates that "there might have been a potential that this story would have had a different resolution." In the months since Stephanie's passing, Laurie and the rest of her family have started to recover. Laurie, though, is still incensed that misinformers and profiteers continue to operate and advertise their medical procedures to the general public. It is quite abusive, she says. "It's awful," Read Article: |
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