Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake is now also a witch doctor and witch hunter

Voodoo politics.

There’s no other way to put it.

We have seen some very strange election strategies in Arizona over the years, but this is a first.

Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake at a recent campaign event seemed to make her case for holding the state’s highest elected office by pushing her bona fides as both a witch doctor and a witch hunter.

And proving in the process that she’s as incompetent at those two occupations as she would be as governor.

At the event Lake promoted the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin as a cure for COVID-19.

It … is … not.

And she also called for the arrest of Dr. Anthony Fauci for keeping the drug from Americans.

He … did … not.

Ivermectin is the 'wonder drug' that isn't

Lake says in part, “It (ivermectin) works … I’ve taken it. It’s a wonder drug. And it’s outrageous they kept that from us. And it was Anthony Fauci who kept that from us. I’m encouraging any lawman here, and I’m talking about sheriffs … to issue a warrant for Anthony Fauci’s arrest out of Arizona.”

Let’s review.

Just recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, the most respected in its field, published an article about the latest, most expansive study of ivermectin and its use for treating COVID-19.

It was the “largest randomized double-blind” trial yet conducted on the drug, and it found that when it comes to COVID-19 the drug ivermectin does, essentially, nothing.

It doesn’t reduce the risk of hospitalization or death. Doesn’t speed recovery. Doesn’t do anything.

The treatments that work for COVID-19 are vaccines, boosters and an anti-viral drug that actually DOES reduce symptoms and aid in recovery called Paxlovid. It has been shown to do so in clinical trials.

Anthony Fauci is the drug denier who isn't

Which, by the way, are something Dr. Fauci has nothing to do with.

The good doctor is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

That particular organization does not do drug approvals. That is the job of the Food and Drug Administration, which points out on its website that its job is to “evaluate new drugs before they can be sold.” Something that “prevents quackery.”

It does not, however, prevent quacks like Lake from morphing into the chief magistrate at the Court of Oyer and Terminer at the Salem witch trials and calling for Fauci’s arrest.

As if such a bizarre thing could happen.

Perhaps at her next rally Lake will tout a COVID-19 remedy even better than ivermectin, something she discovered hidden (by the Biden administration, no doubt) in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.”

A medicinal concoction some clever ladies in the play came up with that consists of “eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog …”.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: GOP candidate Kari Lake is now a witch doctor and witch hunter