Just before Christmas, a right-wing journalist named Ben Bergquam became seriously ill with COVID-19.
“My Christmas gift was losing my [sense of] taste and smell and having a 105-degree fever, and just feeling like garbage,” Bergquam said in a Facebook video that he shot as he lay in a California hospital.
“It’s scary. When you can’t breathe, it’s not a fun place to be,” he said.
Bergquam told his audience he wasn’t vaccinated, despite having had childhood asthma, a potentially dangerous underlying condition. Instead, he held up a bottle of the drug ivermectin. Almost all doctors do not recommend taking ivermectin for COVID, but many individuals on the political right believe that it works.
The details revealed in Bergquam’s video provide a rare view into the prescription of an unproven COVID-19 therapy. Data shows that prescriptions for drugs like ivermectin have surged in the pandemic, but patient-doctor confidentiality often obscures exactly who is handing out the drugs.
Bergquam’s testimonial provides new and troubling details about a small group of physicians who are willing to eschew the best COVID-19 treatments and provide alternative therapies made popular by disinformation — for a price.
Read more at NPR.