Amid dozens of articles that ensued,
Rolling Stone told of Oklahoma hospitals so jammed with
ivermectin overdoses that gunshot victims had to wait for care—
except it wasn’t true. Twice,
The New York Times printed
corrections of the same
false information from Mississippi, which it described in one article and later removed, as “
a staggering number of calls.” The
Associated Press,
Washington Post and, twice, the
The Guardian in London also corrected its reporting on the alert.
The
Times’ correction summed it up: “This article misstated the percentage of recent calls to the Mississippi poison control center related to ivermectin. It was 2 percent, not 70 percent.” (The
Times and
Post both made corrections in direct response to our reporting for this article.)
In real numbers, six calls were received for ingestion of ivermectin. Four were for the antiparasitic drug given to livestock.
If ivermectin reports had indeed been 70 percent of calls in the twenty days covered by the alert, about 800 would have flooded the poison control line. Instead, eight came in. Two callers sought information. Five had mild symptoms. One was advised to seek further care, according to data from the Mississippi Poison Control Center.