What if someone told you to take rat poison to combat high blood pressure? Or a 19^th century  mining explosive to treat your angina? Crazy, but for decades, both warfarin (aka rat poison) and nitroglycerin (makes very big bangs) have been used for precisely those purposes. So when the president of the USA announced that a chemical similar to one used for cleaning fish tanks was showing promise in reducing Covid morbidity, it should have raised no eyebrows. But sufferers from Trump Derangement Syndrome are not the brightest bunch…

One strange consequence of the widespread embrace of the Covid catastrophe narrative- has been the determination shown by those who fell for it in the first place not to allow the public airing of anything that might call into question the seriousness of the ‘plague’. After all, nobody likes to feel that they’ve been a bit of a silly billy, and when most of the population, including the entire Mainstream Media and most of the political class have been silly billies, they’re in a pretty good position to keep a lid on dissent, and thereby save face.

That doesn’t make it right, though, particularly when, as with Covid, the threat to society is a real one, albeit nowhere near as serious as it was painted up to be. One of the most striking results of this mass outbreak of hand-waving is in the matter of therapies for treating Covid sufferers. The founding narrative of Covid included the terrifying insistence that there was no effective treatment for it. The cooler heads among the medical profession found this a bit odd, and began suggesting -and trying – drugs and combinations of drugs which quickly showed promise.

Unfortunately, they made the mistake of telling President Trump about it. Now, as we know, to a true Trump-hater, nothing, not even devising an effective treatment for a terrifying disease, should be allowed to stand in the way of discrediting Donald Trump. And since Trump Derangement Syndrome and Covid Derangement Syndrome are roughly demographically coterminous, no sooner had he allowed the word ‘Hydroxychloroquine’ to pass his lips than a campaign began to discredit its therapeutic value and silence anyone who spoke in its favour.

Here in Australia last year, Liberal MP Craig Kelly got himself into hot water, not just with the opposition, but with his own PM, Scott Morrison, whose spine grows feebler with each passing day, for spruiking ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).

Imagine, they chorused, a president so dumb as to recommend a substance used for cleaning fish tanks! How they crowed! It was all just too marvellous! Yet, mirabile dictu, in February of this year we find that veritable citadel of Covid Derangement, the Sydney Morning Herald, reporting that Prof Robert Clancy, emeritus professor of immunology at the University of Newcastle’s School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy endorses Kelly’s claims, and is mystified that more use is not being made of these drugs, which now have solid clinical evidence for their efficacy. He would be less mystified if he read Rebecca Weisser’s excellent coverage of the demonisation of HCQ.

Ivermectin and HCQ combinations are now in widespread use around the world, reducing hospitalisations and deaths. But don’t expect to see Australians enjoying these benefits any time soon. That would involve admitting that you’d got it wrong first time round, and been a bit of a silly-billy. And that would never do.