Don't Look a Grift Horse in the Mouth

Apparently some people don't really understand what a grifter is. I'm here to help.

Of all the many insults hurled at the pro-ivermectin camp during the pandemic—and believe me, there have been boatloads—my favorite has to be “grifter.” Because clearly people like Dr. Pierre Kory, the tireless researcher, brilliant physician, and fearless author of The War on Ivermectin—risk their lives and their livelihoods to promote a cheap, off-patent, life-saving medication out of overpowering, barely-veiled greed.

[Insert string of eyeroll emojis here.]

The internet defines a grifter as, “a person who operates dishonest schemes or cons to deceive and swindle others, often for financial gain.”

For those not in the know, Dr. Kory lost three jobs during the pandemic for daring to decry the carefully constructed narrative. The American Board of Internal Medicine voted to revoke his certification, a painful strike that is not merely offensive but deeply injurious. (ABIM certification implies expertise and credibility and also is critical to a doctor’s ability to enjoy hospital privileges and be reimbursed by insurance companies for services rendered.) He’s been called everything from a fringe doctor to a fraud—two titles that rarely result in generous pay hikes come review time last time I checked.

In a recent Facebook post promoting The War on Ivermectin (which I had the honor of co-authoring), a “friend” felt the need to drop this comment: “I see grifters are still trying to scrounge a few dollars from the ivermectin nuttiness [sideways laugh-cry emoji].” He also included this ironic little meme, which naturally I had to respond to:

Interestingly, the sanctimonious name-callers don’t seem to be even a tiny bit bothered by the $100 billion in revenue Pfizer recorded in 2022, the $2.82 million Dr. Fauci earned the year prior alone, or Bill Gates’ tone-deaf boast that his $10 billion investment in vaccines has seen a twenty to one return. They don’t care that hospitals get hefty bonus payments for every patient listed as having COVID-19 or put on a ventilator (a reality even USA Today’s patently weaponized “fact-checkers” had to admit is true), or get ruffled by the hundreds of millions of federal dollars individual school districts across the country accepted to enforce mask and vaccine requirements on students. Nope, it’s doctors like Kory—for whom incidentally it is a felony to accept monetary compensation for prescribing medications—who are the real pandemic profiteers. (And if you come at me with any sort of “books make people millionaires” ignorance, I’ll gladly torture you with a painful lesson in publishing accounting.)

When I was searching for a title for this post, I came across the expression “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” What struck me as oddest about that phrase is the fact that—as a lifelong word nerd—I’d never pondered its oddness before. It turns out, the proverb dates to the 4^th century and warns of the impoliteness of inspecting the teeth (an indication of age and vitality) of a horse you’ve been given. In other words, someone just gave you a freaking horse! Don’t go poking around looking for signs he’s ready to be put to pasture; that’s tactless. Accept the damned horse gratefully and graciously, even if that toothless nag is teetering on death’s doorstep.

A frightening portion of the planet seems gripped by gift-horse mania. “Look at these shiny new vaccines we’ve been given! They’re safe and effective—the manufacturers say so themselves! Why look for a way to prevent or treat COVID with an inexpensive and undeniably safe medication when Pharma’s generously rolled out a plethora of experimental, disastrously ineffective, insanely profitable, and manifestly dangerous options? How rude.”

To be fair, as my co-author and I painstakingly detail in our book, the pandemic propaganda has been relentless. And while the masses seem to be slowly wakening from their collective stupor (it’s pretty hard to deny the skyrocketing death and disability rates around the globe in the wake of the vaccine rollout, for one thing), we’ve obviously got a long way to go before the most indoctrinated of the flock stop slinging misguided digs at the Korys of the world and get rightfully and righteously furious at the folks doing the real grifting.

As someone I’m not in the habit of quoting once said, we’ve been patient… but our patience is wearing thin. If we could get a world-wide wakeup sometime around yesterday, that’d be great.

The War on Ivermectin is available on Amazon and anywhere else kickass books are sold.