MMA Fighter Claims NIH Added Ivermectin To Covid-19 Treatments List

Mixed martial artist (MMA) fighter Jake Shields recently claimed on Twitter that on August 31 “the National institute of health added Ivermectin to the list of covid treatment.” The tweet also stated, “Looks like the conspiracy theorist were right and the ‘experts’ wrong once again.”

OK, so, according to Shields, the “National institute of health” (apparently just one of the institutes and not all of them) added the anti-parasitic medication ivermectin to the “list of covid treatment.” Not the list of treatments, plural, but the list of just one treatment, singular. And, based on what Shields said, “the conspiracy theorist,” apparently the one big one, “were right,” sort like saying how a gigantic doughnut were in your fridge. That tweet got re-tweeted over 15.5 thousand times as you can see here:

Besides an interesting mismatch of plural and singular nouns and verbs, there was one itty bitty problem with what Shields had tweeted: he didn’t provide any evidence supporting his statement. And his statement went against what’s actually listed in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Covid-19 Treatment Guidelines. OK, two things were wrong with his tweet, along with the plural, singular stuff. All right, three things were wrong.

Before believing what Shield, or rather Shields, says about the NIH, you may want to look up the NIH Covid-19 Treatment Guidelines yourself. The ivermectin page specifically says the following: “The Panel recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19, except in clinical trials.” That doesn’t sound like adding ivermectin to the list of Covid treatment. Or rather list of Covid treatments, since list typically implies more than one item. For example, you usually don’t make a list of things to shop for and just have the word “meatball” on it.

Why did Shields make it seem like the NIH recently changed their stance? After all, the NIH Covid-19 treatment guidelines have long recommended against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of Covid-19 ever since random politicians, personalities, and social media accounts started telling people to use the medication without offering that little thing called real, legitimate scientific evidence. All of that began way prior to August 31. So nothing really special happened on August 31, except for perhaps National Eat Outside Day.

Did Shields provide any evidence that ivermectin actually works against Covid-19. Well, Shields’ tweet thread went on to mention “the study” that supposedly showed “95% decrees In mortality” without specifically indicating what study he was referring to or providing a source:

I don’t know if you’ve ever faced a “decree in mortality” but that sounds pretty scary. If someone were to walk up to you in a bar, look straight at you in your eyes, and issue such a decree, you’d probably want to leave the bar as soon as possible. In the tweet, Shields also added, “These people would rather you die than admit they were wrong and lose money.” Yeah, you always want to look out for “these people,” no matter who “these people” happen to be. That’s the case, for example, when you are on a Tinder date at a restaurant or back at your place and have to ask your date, “why did you bring along ‘these people’?”

On the next tweet in his thread, Shields asserted that “The study used 88,012 people with 92% reduction in death,” providing a screenshot of something that had no label or link:

Umm, without a source or a link, this screenshot for all you know could have come from a toilet tissue paper package insert or a transcript of what was written on a bathroom stall. You can’t really assess a “new study” when you can’t even tell how legitimate the study may be. You can’t just post a screenshot of a paragraph with the words “new study” in it with no clear source and expect people to believe what’s being said. That would be like posting a screenshot of the words “Detroit Lions win Super Bowl” or “wind turbines cause cancer” and expecting everyone to believe it. OK maybe the second example wasn’t the best example.

Nonetheless, if the NIH had added ivermectin to the list of Covid treatment or treatments, don’t you think the NIH would have announced such a change? If there were indeed a legitimate ground-breaking scientific study on ivermectin, surely you would be able to find it on PubMed and a major press release. After all, it’s not as if medical researchers say, “I really hope a MMA fighter finds our study and tweets about it.”