Comedian Jimmy Kimmel had audiences roaring on his first day back from a summer away by joking that COVID-vaccinated heart attack patients should get priority over someone who’s quaffing ivermectin.
“That doesn’t seem so tough to me,” he said. “Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right on in, we’ll take care of you.”
But someone taking horse dewormer for his COVID infection would be a different story.
“Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, Wheezy,” Kimmel said.
He was riffing off comments made by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has warned that hospitals may soon be overrun enough with COVID patients to have to pick and choose who gets treated.
“We are perilously close in certain areas of the country of getting so close to having full occupancy that you’re going to be in a situation where you’re going to have to make some tough choices,” Fauci told CNN on Sunday.
While Fauci didn’t say vaccination status would help determine the decision over who gets treated — he said he doubted it would be a factor — he didn’t rule it out entirely.
Kimmel made his comments as an ivermectin craze sweeps the nation with a spike in weekly prescriptions, even though there are no proven benefits against the virus. Ivermectin is used to treat heartworm in livestock, and river blindness and intestinal roundworms in people. Prescriptions have soared from 3,600 per week in the year before the pandemic, to 88,000 in one week last month, The Washington Post said.
Not to beat a dead horse, but Kimmel underscored his point by calling out the gaping hole in the logic of those who would take the ivermectin non-cure over proven preventative vaccines out of a distrust for “big pharma.” The veterinary drug itself, after all, is made by Merck, one of the largest firms out there – and the manufacturer itself has urged people not to use the drug for COVID.
“If a pharmaceutical company says, ‘Please don’t take the drug we’re selling,’ you should probably listen to them,” Kimmel said. “Or you could just go with a TikTok posted by a disgraced veterinarian instead.”
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