Bret Weinstein's Covid Agenda

Bret sees himself in a heroic struggle against demonetization and demonization, but what he's actually doing is building a powerful "just asking questions" brand of conspiratorial musing.

On June 28, Bret Weinstein announced that “YouTube just demonetized both DarkHorse channels, wiping out more than half our family income. Their message: Drop the science and stick to the narrative—or else.” DarkHorse is Weinstein’s podcast, the “science” is promotion of alternative Covid treatments and vaccine skepticism, and the “narrative” is an all-purpose concept that Weinstein increasingly uses to describe public health agencies like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), major media outlets, and a huge cross-section of other institutions in the public and private sectors that are allegedly trying to suppress vital health information about the pandemic.

Consider ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug used to treat helminthiases, scabies, and other tropical diseases. According to Weinstein, it’s also a drug that could “drive SARS‑CoV‑2 to extinction”—that is, if information about it wasn’t being relentlessly suppressed. During a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience alongside Dr. Pierre Kory, Weinstein argued that “ivermectin shows itself to be about 86 percent effective at preventing contraction of Covid.” He continued: “If you get 70 percent of the population to take the prophylaxis … that level of prophylaxis is more than sufficient by a lot to drive this to extinction.” In other words, a widely available, cheap, safe drug that’s commonly used in the United States to treat or prevent parasites in animals might be a miracle cure for the deadliest pandemic in a century. “The tool you need is right in front of you,” Weinstein claims. It’s a “gift to humanity,” gushes Kory. And yet, ivermectin hasn’t been approved by the FDA, the World Health Organization (WHO) says it should “only be used within clinical trials,” and many other regulatory agencies say the same.

It’s impossible to overstate Kory’s enthusiasm for ivermectin: he believes it’s “showing really strong efficacy” in alleviating the symptoms of “long Covid” (long-term effects of the disease such as fatigue and brain fog)—the first patient he treated with long Covid symptoms was, according to Kory, “crying for joy.” He says ivermectin is anti-viral and anti-inflammatory, and that it improves “post-vaccine syndromes.” When Rogan asked if ivermectin is effective against Covid variants, Kory jumped in: “We do know this epidemiologically—if you look at India, lots of Delta variant. From looking at the epidemiology of what happened there, ivermectin was slaying the Delta variant. South Africa and Zimbabwe, especially Zimbabwe—when they were getting hurt earlier in this year—they basically eradicated Covid with widespread adoption of ivermectin. They were dealing with the South African variant.” How about the P.1 variant in Brazil? “Totally susceptible to ivermectin,” Kory says. And the U.K. variant? “Same thing,” according to Kory. At this point, Rogan said, “This sounds like a gigantic ivermectin infomercial, sponsored by ivermectin.” But he instantly reeled in those suspicions: “This is one of the best examples of something that—it’s almost too good to be true, but turns out actually to be true.”

Is it true? Not according to…

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