The campaign to demonize ivermectin has claimed another victim: the credibility of the Associated Press.  Peter Skurkiss elsewhere on these pages today explores some of the reasons why so many media and governmental entities falsely portray ivermectin, whose inventors received the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for its role in curing river blindness (in humans), as a veterinary drug for deworming horses, highly dangerous for human use.  As Ashe Schow writes, the AP signed on in a big way and did a faceplant:

The Associated Press had to issue a correction to an article published in late August that claimed 70% of calls made to the Mississippi Department of Health were from people who had ingested the livestock version of Ivermectin.

The story followed media hyping the idea that people were taking a common horse dewormer to treat COVID-19. Someone, somewhere may have done this, but the media has treated it as if it is a common phenomenon — and have been proven wrong.The AP issued the following correction to its article:

In an article published Aug. 23, 2021, about people taking livestock medicine to try to treat coronavirus, The Associated Press erroneously reported based on information provided by the Mississippi Department of Health that 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center were from people who had ingested ivermectin to try to treat COVID-19. State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said Wednesday the number of calls to poison control about ivermectin was about 2%. He said of the calls that were about ivermectin, 70% were by people who had ingested the veterinary version of the medicine.

So, doing the math, a total of 1.4% of the calls to Mississippi Poison Control were from people who said they had ingested the livestock version of Ivermectin.

The correction was issued on August 25, two days after the story was published.

Seventy percent is fifty times 1.4%, so the AP exaggerated by a factor of fifty.  That's not an understandable error; it is propaganda.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.