Why are US anti-vaxxers touting a horse dewormer as a cure for Covid?

Republican congressman Louie Gohmert, a loyal Washington ally of former US president Donald Trump, drew a round of applause during a speech in Texas on Friday in which he endorsed the use of ivermectin – an anti-parasitic drug commonly deployed to treat intestinal worms and lice in livestock – as a cure for Covid-19 in humans.

“The trouble is, these vaccines, they were only approved for emergency use,” Gohmert told a crowd at the Texas Youth Summit in Conroe, an event at which fellow MAGA luminaries Ted Cruz, Kayleigh McEnany, Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk were also speaking.

“Now you have Pfizer that’s been approved, but there’s so much long-term they don’t know.”

He continued: “I don’t know if y’all saw, but a month after President Trump left office, The American Journal of Medicine came out with a great article that they had discovered a regimen of medication that when taken together early in Covid that – you may have heard of it: hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, a Z-Pak azithromycin, zinc.”