E46: False Ivermectin narratives, regulatory grift, wartime mentality in solving issues & more

Jake Hal looks like he's going to a Night at the Roxbury. I mean-

Absolutely. (laughs)

(laughs)

What?

He looks like Joe Pesci. Here we go. (laughs)

He looks like Joe Pesci-

Shut the fuck up.

Is it a joke right now or is it, uh-

What, like I'm a joke? (laughs)

... the Saturday Night Live skit? You know?

(laughs)

I mean, you look horrible.

Thank you. (laughs) Thank you, Chamath.

Absolutely fucking horrible.

Okay, appreciate it. (laughs) Wow.

Is that your MC outfit or what?

Here we go. (laughs)

(laughs)

(upbeat music) We're going all in. Don't let your winners ride. Rain man, David Sacks. We're going all in. And I said we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you guys. Queen of quinoa. Going all in.

Thanks for coming. This is the Production Board Symposium 2021. Tell us just a little bit about why we're here, David, and, and what this is and what it represents for the Production Board.

Uh, the Production Board Symposium, second ever. Thank you all for being here. We're excited. We have, uh-

(clapping) Woo!

... an amazing group of, um, science, uh, scientists, engineers, folks from academia, from business, from the investing community, some of our investors. So we're excited to share thoughts and ideas over the next couple of days, um, and thought we would, uh, chase half of you away by hosting the All-In Pod tonight. So, um, here we go.

Great. Uh, okay, so first up in the news, Rolling Stone, uh, amplifies false ivermectin story. You were following this. Chamath, what do you think this, uh, ivermectin controversy and-

You wanna little, give a little summary of what the issue is before we talk about the hypocrisy of it?

Well, on September 1st, Oklahoma News, uh, Station KFOR ran a story and published an article on ivermectin overdoses, uh, backing up rural hospitals. The article was titled Patients, uh, Overdosing on Ivermectin Backing Up Rural Oklahoma Hospital- Hospitals and Ambulances. Uh, first line of the article, quote, "A rural Oklahoma doctor said patients who are taking the home dewormer medication ivermectin to fight COVID-19-"

Jesus.

"... are causing emergency rooms and ambulances to, uh, back up." On September 3rd, Rolling Stone amplified the story in its own article. Uh, the only problem was, uh, they treed- they tweeted it with a picture that featured people lined up in the cold. It turns out the picture was people waiting for vaccine shots back in January-

(laughs)

... not gunshot victims waiting to get into the hospital.

Yeah, the story is totally false. You understand that, right?

Well, I didn't wanna say fake news, but I know-

No, it was beyond fa- it, it, it was beyond f- fake news. This was basically a doctored up conjured article by some person trying to incite a moral mania at Rolling Stone. Look, there, you tell me if the, the science of this is wrong. The whole, the whole premise is r- ridiculous. So ivermectin basically, as far as we know, 'cause we don't know that much, acts on a handful of, uh, specific characteristics. One we know to be glutamate, which we don't really express in the same way as, like, fucking worms. And so, yes, technically it can be used as a dewormer, but there are four or five other ways in which it acts which we don't know anything about because we haven't taken the time to do a broad-based double blind study. So I think the fairest thing to say about ivermectin is we don't know what it is. And so neither the people that propose to use it as a solution for, for COVID nor the people that rail against it aren't really starting from a basis of fact. But then what happens is you have these folks who basically are so turned off by the idea that, you know, people aren't getting vaccines, they're going to use this other thing, they basically doctored up an article. That wouldn't be so bad 'cause nobody reads Rolling Stone, right? It's kind of a, it's, like, it's kind of-