Maynard: The data is in: being double vaccinated reduces your risk of catching COVID-19 by up to 60 percent and your risk of dying by more than 85 percent. And so naturally tens of thousands of people have done the sensible thing and ... totally rejected the vaccine in favor of scarfing down obscene quantities of foul-tasting goo designed to kill parasitic worms inside horses.

Maynard: Thousands of conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers have gone to extreme lengths in recent months to get hold of ivermectin, a medication for diseases caused by parasites in horses. The idea is that this will cure or prevent COVID-19, an illness that is notably not caused by a parasite and affects horses very differently to humans.

Maynard: It's got so bad that the FDA has had to issue a reminder that people are not horses.

Maynard: In fact, now the universe itself seems to have weighed in, with some of the conspiracists who managed to choke down the disgusting paste developing a nasty case of pooping themselves in public. Ignoring even this hint that maybe their chosen curative might not be the wonder drug they’d been told, ivermectin true believers have continued dosing themselves with dangerous levels of horse de-wormer – and while their COVID-19 is probably no better, some have noticed another side effect: the appearance of “rope worms”.

Maynard: “Might be a stupid question but has anyone pooped out worms from taking ivermectin?” one woman asked a Facebook group devoted to the horse medicine. “[I’m] just curious.”

Maynard: “Yes,” replied a fellow equine de-wormer aficionado. “[I’ve] been expelling rope worms with coffee enemas for a while now [but] it’s different with [ivermectin] … I got this tummy rumbling like I had to go with diarrhea … so I go to the pot and out comes a bile dump with full rope worms heads and all!”

Maynard: when the ivermectin people say they are "expelling rope worms" what they really mean is that they are shitting out their intestinal lining.

UncleJesse: Drop a coil?

UncleJesse: Does anyone have any leaches, I want to try some blood letting to ward off Covid?

Riverrat: The ones that I find amusing are the ones that get covid, go to the hospital and then insist that the doctor give them ivermectin. And of course when the doctor refuses they go to court to try and force the doctor to give them ivermectin. Which of course the court won't do because it isn't approved. If they know so much more about treating covid then the doctors why didn't they just stay home and buy some ivermectin over the interweb and treat themselves.

HechoAmano: There is a pill form of ivermectin for human consumption and treatment of parasites. I think I read it's usually a 40mg pill. Much lower dosage than people shoving a caulking gun in the mouth and squeezing the trigger.