Rolling Stone magazine published a completely false story about a hospital in rural Oklahoma being so overwhelmed with patients who had overdoes on Invermectin, or what the media now refers to as ‘horse dewormer”, that gunshot victims in the ER were having to wait for beds.
A number of media outlets picked up the story and repeated the lies including MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Newsweek, the BBC, Business Insider, New York Daily News and The Hill.
The story even went international and was picked up by the BBC, The Independent, and The Guardian.
Of course the doctor who made the claim, flat out lied.
In an interview with KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, Dr. Jason McElyea claimed “the ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated…All of their ambulances are stuck at the hospital waiting for a bed to open so they can take the patient in and they don’t have any, that’s it. If there’s no ambulance to take the call, there’s no ambulance to come to the call.”
One hospital where Dr. McElyea claimed he worked, fired back at his bogus claim, KNWA-TV reports:
“Administrators from Northeastern Health System – Sequoyah in Sallisaw, one of the hospitals where Dr. McElyea works, released a statement on their website claiming that Dr. McElyea’s statements aren’t true of their hospital, and he hasn’t worked at the facility in over two months.
Although Dr. Jason McElyea is not an employee of NHS Sequoyah, he is affiliated with a medical staffing group that provides coverage for our emergency room.
With that said, Dr. McElyea has not worked at our Sallisaw location in over 2 months.
NHS Sequoyah has not treated any patients due to complications related to taking ivermectin. This includes not treating any patients for ivermectin overdose.
All patients who have visited our emergency room have received medical attention as appropriate. Our hospital has not had to turn away any patients seeking emergency care.
We want to reassure our community that our staff is working hard to provide quality healthcare to all patients. We appreciate the opportunity to clarify this issue and as always, we value our community’s support.”
And not just in Oklahoma, the Associated Press had claimed that 70 percent of calls to the Mississippi Poison Control were about ivermectin complications. They were forced to issue an embarrassing correction. Notice how these "mistakes" always go in one direction.
Drew Holden did a incredible threat on Twitter highlighting all the media outlets and blue checkmarks pushing the disinformation.
He writes “It should go without saying, but inventing a narrative out of thin air simply because it confirms your priors is not going to help rebuild trust in the media. It would’ve taken a single phone call to shoot this story down. Why didn’t that happen?”