Cable news may be a bad example if we're talking about positive value delivered to society. But how much of the health benefits from modern sanitation are modern pharmaceuticals taking credit for? It seems an unreliable value proposition, particularly given how many new medications study-shop when comparing against existing ones.

I'm more concerned with the practical effects of the number than with its moral weight. There is a whiff of corruption about USA's response to covid, among other health challenges. I refer not to covid's murky origin, although more investigation of that is probably warranted. I refer to the fact that although we spend more on healthcare than anyone else, our covid performance was the worst in the world, except for Peru, Brazil, and portions of Eastern Europe. There isn't only one reason for this, but "more spending for worse results" is a strong indicator of corruption.

Why has e.g. Nigeria had fourteen covid deaths per million population while we have had 3100? Differences in reporting probably explain some of that. Some would blame the stingy level of primary care that our government provides to the poor. Others, including expensive private physicians who care for the rich, have noticed how common ivermectin use is in Nigeria. It is possible that ivermectin is of no use against covid (which is a virus not a living protostome), but we don't know that.

Not only has research been throttled, but mere discussion of such research has been throttled on most popular corporate media. What was so terrible about ivermectin, that not only could we not discuss it, but the little discussion that did occur inspired extreme and fairly dishonest official reactions like the many weeks of "You're not a horse!" media campaigns we endured? It's simple. Ivermectin is a cheap, widely-available drug with decades of safe human use. If it had been found to treat covid, there would have been less justification for novel mRNA vaccines with exceptionally curtailed safety tests (the details of which were to be kept under wraps for 75 years). That justification would have seemed even thinner after it became clear that the disease-preventing performance these "vaccines" required a redefinition of the word. If we had an open society that welcomed honest discussion of various possible covid treatments, vaccination could have been concentrated on the elderly and obese, and these firms might have seen e.g. $20B profits rather than $35B.

Now forget about ivermectin (...vitamin D, etc.), and consider the similar treatment received by the Great Barrington Declaration and its signatories, who in retrospect were absolutely right in every respect. Did these experts' message ever show up on cable news? Hmm... why did I mention their yearly revenue? Deluded "unicorn" fans might sniff at $35B (the important number, revenue, is about twice that; more competitive industries see larger such multipliers than two), but it is large enough to totally swamp the self-interest of other industries, such as cable news, politics, and others who influence opinions and governance. Have you ever watched CNN in USA for twenty minutes (yeah, I know) and not seen multiple advertisements for pharmaceuticals? (A similar analysis obtains for the military-industrial complex.)