‘Simply insane’: SC congressman rips Horry GOP for promoting ivermectin to treat COVID
In a Facebook post on Friday, U.S. Rep. Tom Rice (R-Myrtle Beach) denounced the Horry County Republican Party’s promotion of ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug, to treat COVID-19.
“That the leaders of the Horry County Republican Party believe it is appropriate to advocate for medical treatment for any illness is simply insane,” Rice wrote in the post. “Especially in the middle of a plague, and in opposition to the guidance of the Center for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health, and 95% of the Physicians in the country.”
He added: “Folks, talk to your doctor if you want medical advice.”
Rice was responding to a story published by The Sun News on Thursday that detailed a recent meeting of the county GOP in which local party leaders promoted ivermectin, as well as other options, as alternative treatments for COVID-19.
At the meeting Monday evening at the Base Recreation Center in Myrtle Beach, party leaders played a video promoting ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment. One official, Tracy “Beanz” Diaz, interviewed a North Carolina nurse about the drug and other treatments, including nasal sprays, mouthwashes and vitamins.
During the interview, Diaz said her young son had contracted COVID-19 and that she believed her family’s daily routine of nasal sprays and mouthwash gargles, plus taking ivermectin, helped prevent others in her family from getting sick.
“Doing that ... along with a prophylactic post-exposure dose of ivermectin on day one of my son’s symptomatic infection and 48 hours later prevented me and my entire family ... from contracting COVID-19 from my son,” Diaz said.
Ivermectin, though, is not approved by any medical agency as a treatment for COVID-19.
The drug has proven successful at combating various parasitic infections in both humans and animals. Ivermectin was first discovered in the 1970s and was in use for animals by the 1980s. Later that decade, the drug was approved for human use, and by 2005, medical researchers were proclaiming it to be a “wonder drug” for treating parasitic infections.
As COVID-19 spread around the globe in 2020, researchers began testing whether the drug could be used to combat the coronavirus, by inhibiting its spread in the body. However, those studies remain inconclusive. Some studies have suggested the drug could be useful for that purpose, though a medical consensus has emerged that ivermectin is not an appropriate treatment for COVID-19.
The FDA issued a message earlier this month advising that it had not approved the drug to treat COVID-19 and that studies examining its effect on the coronavirus were ongoing. The agency also advised that human consumption of animal-grade doses of ivermectin — because a doctor won’t prescribe them the human version — could be dangerous.
In an interview with The Sun News, Horry County GOP Chairman Roger Slagle said the local party chose to promote ivermectin because medical experts are suppressing information about the treatments and that the party felt its members should hear “both sides of the story.”
“We feel compelled to share both sides of the story, and I’d say our big motivation was we are concerned about our members and we want them to have all the information to make decisions,” Slagle said, adding, “It’s a very important caveat that we stressed many many times: Talk to a medical professional, talk to a doctor.”
Rice, though, didn’t buy that argument.
“This is not about politics,” he said in the Facebook post. “I know too many people that have died from this disease. Every doctor I know says get vaccinated.”
Rice is currently running for a sixth term in Congress.
This story was originally published September 18, 2021 at 11:32 AM with the headline "‘Simply insane’: SC congressman rips Horry GOP for promoting ivermectin to treat COVID."
