Do you ever feel like the message coming from the mainstream media is something like: If you get COVID, you’re going to die, but don’t dare try any mitigation techniques that aren’t approved by our “fact-checkers”? That’s essentially what happened with the recent story about popular podcast host Joe Rogan and a drug called Ivermectin. Well, as Nobel Prize recipient Richard Feynman said a half century ago, “There is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science.”

We’re not here to say that Ivermectin is or isn’t effective against the coronavirus. But Rogan told his 13.1 million followers that it was part of a regimen of treatments he took when he tested positive for COVID, and he claimed to “feel great” after taking the cocktail of medications.

The two scientists who developed Ivermectin received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015. But because Ivermectin is used to treat a variety of parasites like head lice and scabies in humans and is also used to treat horses and cows, and because the FDA currently frowns upon its use for COVID, Rogan was mercilessly mocked by the media for taking something meant for deworming horses.

The trouble is that the media got basic facts wrong.

Based on erroneous local reporting, Rolling Stone reported that so many people in Oklahoma were overdosing on Ivermectin that hospital emergency rooms were overwhelmed to the point of running out of ambulances and turning away gunshot victims. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and a whole bunch of other outlets ran with the story too. It was utterly false, and Rolling Stone was forced to issue a correction. As we go to press, Maddow still hasn’t deleted her tweet of the story.

Similarly, the Associated Press had to issue a massive correction to an article falsely claiming “that 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center were from people who had ingested ivermectin to try to treat COVID-19.” The real number? 2%.

Rolling Stone originally asserted that people are making “false claims” that Ivermectin “could fight COVID-19.” Never mind that researchers are still studying that. Shouldn’t we wait for their findings before some keyboard jockey at a culture magazine settles the science?

We’d say these yahoos ought to know better, but the people who really ought to know better are the ones who take these “journalists” seriously. Rolling Stone is infamous for its completely botched reporting on rape allegations at the University of Virginia. And Maddow had egg on her face for her supposed blockbuster on Donald Trump’s tax returns. That doesn’t scratch the surface of fake news over the last five years.

Anyone reporting or analyzing the news is going to make a mistake at some point. The problem is that these aren’t just mistakes; they’re deliberate lies aimed at enforcing the narrative while smearing regular Americans as idiots.

Indeed, the real story here is that the Leftmedia is peddling the only acceptable line of thinking, while Big Tech’s social media censors are blocking and “fact-checking” anyone with a different opinion. You must mask up, vaccinate, and, if infected, use ventilators, but you must not even think about questioning those things, much less considering Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, or any other alternative. Shouldn’t decisions on treatment of a virus remain between a patient and his or her doctor?