Several mainstream media personalities and outlets were quick to jump on the bandwagon about a false story about Oklahoma ERs being overwhelmed with patients reportedly overdosing on Ivermectin, a parasite-fighting medication hailed as a COVID cure in other countries.
The story was initially reported in a local Oklahoma TV news outlet and quoted a certain Dr. Jason McElyea, who reported rural hospitals in Oklahoma overrun with patients overdosing on the drug, causing gunshot victims to wait to be treated.
However, the Northeastern Hospital System later revealed that no one was actually treated for Ivermectin overdose and that Dr. McElyea was not even employed at one of the hospitals for months.
According to Fox News, several left wing media reporters shared misinformation about Ivermectin overdoses in Oklahoma ERs. This includes MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and Rolling Stone, which both reported on the false story to millions of their viewers and followers.
Unsurprisingly, Twitter did not take down any of their posts in the name of misinformation like they do with posts about COVID.
"We've got to talk about the Rolling Stone invermectin (sic) article. Turns out the story about rural hospitals so flooded with ODs that they couldn't treat other patients was made up, entirely invented," journalist Drew Holden took to Twitter to point out. "A lot of people took the bait, and I've got the screenshots."
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We’ve got to talk about the Rolling Stone invermectin article. Turns out the story about rural hospitals so flooded with ODs that they couldn’t treat other patients was made up, entirely invented.
A lot of people took the bait, and I’ve got the screenshots.— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021
Holden then proceeded to share screenshots of left wing media sharing misinformation about the Ivermectin overdoses in Oklahoma ERs. He called out several left wing media personalities like Maddow, podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen, and MSNBC executive producer Lauren Peikoff and other writers and contributors who spread the misinformation about the unverified Ivermectin overdoses.
"[Maddow] had a tweet about it that went viral. She's got an audience of millions of people and couldn't be bothered to even look into a story that pretty obviously doesn't pass the sniff test," Holden wrote. Maddow's tweet, as well as those from several left wing media companies, remains published on Big Tech giant Twitter.
Holden called out several media outlets for further spreading misinformation, such as Business Insider, The Guardian, the Daily Mail, and Daily Kos, saying that they picked up the story "with no additional sourcing or research."
Holden argued that these left wing media companies, which he described as "seemingly real news outlets," "didn't bother to even look into this story before they pushed this narrative? Didn't it sound odd? Wasn't it worth investigating? Maybe a single phone call?" He also called out Newsweek, New York Daily News, and The Hill.
Insider updated their story on Sunday "to reflect a new statement from Northeastern Health System Sequoyah" that reported that there were no patients with complications from Ivermectin overdoses who were treated and no one had been turned away due to overcrowding. It admitted that while the story was "widely covered by news outlets," they were "unable to independently verify McElyea's claims."
