Tractor Supply told Managers to pull potential Covid-19 medication... or else get fired

Outside The Beltway
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I have family that manage Tractor Supply stores and yesterday they were told by the CDC to pull a medication called ivermectin off their selves by the end of the day. However, they then told their store managers to pull it immediately and said that if any showed up sold today, they would be fired. One manager said they had a grocery cart completely full it. Why are they so serious about this one?

The issue is that some research came out from Australia that this anti-viral medication ivermectin that is commonly used for scabies and lice and that is already approved by the FDA for humans and sold over the counter in Tractor Supply, is highly effective against Covid-19, something like 98% over 3-days.

So why would they freak out and pull it? Are they just being cautious so that no one horde it? Oddly, they are not turning it over to anyone, the government, the CDC. They are just pulling it from the shelf and holding it. Maybe they want to wait and see if they can change 1000% more or something? Why are they so serious that they are threatening to fire employees over it? Like they can afford to lose managers during this time. Why not sell it today and pull it when the CDC told them to, which would be by 5pm tonight? Is Tractor Supply really more worried about people hording it than the CDC?

I’m not saying they are doing anything wrong. I just find it interesting and maybe unethical. Their approach seems a bit odd.I hope that they a valid explanation for their actions.

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Ivermectin requires a subscription. Why would Tractor Supply have it on their shelves?

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Maybe Tractor Supply is able to sell it over the counter for animals. I recall they mentioned it is used for horses.

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It sounds like some sort of government mandate where they will secure it from Tractor Supply and send it to other parts of the country where they determine it’s most needed…would be my guess?

Maybe it’s just me? :sunglasses:

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Yes, it looks like it is available over the counter in medications for farm animals. I suspect they don’t want people coming in to buy it for themselves and end up in a situation like the guy who died because he ate fish tank cleaner.

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That…is the negative side of the same coin. The world needs us. :sunglasses:

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Yeah, that may be it. But it is approved for human consumption as well. But as a company, they probably do not want people coming it and getting this stuff and taking it, then having issues and blaming it on Tractor Supply. I agree with that approach. They should have just told the managers why!

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Safety protocols for human consumption are FAR more stringent than for animals, and for good reason. Dogs drink from mud puddles, but if humans did that they would likely get sick. Using animal medicines on humans is fraught with risk.

And I don’t believe for a second that this stuff has 98% cure rate in three days or whatever for covid 19.

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I just looked it up. In an Australian study ivermectin was effective against covid 19 in a PETRI dish. So is bleach.

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Not for human consumption

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I have drank from mud puddles.

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Did you have a choice? Was it on a city street? Not all mud puddles are created equal. :slight_smile:

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So maybe the stuff being used for animals isn’t the same as would be used for humans.

Like the idiots who dosed themselves with aquarium cleaner and died, because it had a similar sounding name to one of those magical cures…

So they just don’t want people killing themselves

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I have used this stuff for years and currently have it on hand. I have used it topically on livestock and on a couple of occasions, topically on people. I would not use the product internally on a person, but it is fine for topical use on people.

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Two things:

a) My guess is the OTC formulation is not for human consumption and therefore there is a worry people will start using it when they shouldn’t…

…because they won’t have researched and found out…

b) The Australian study was an IN VITRO study…i.e. in a culture dish. It has not been tested at all in humans.

Why neither the media nor politicians should hype medicines as cures.

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Back in my day, Fleet Farm, Menards,…etc was the place to go if you were a resourceful teenager operating an underground piercing and tattoo shop for their friends.

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And big old syringes full of penicillin.

don’t ask…………….

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Come on folks. Not everything is a conspiracy.

Ivermectin is a great broad-spectrum anti-parasitic agent (.i.e. Worms) for both veterinary and human use. The concerns about the use of the veterinary packaged versions are that it is designed to be administered as a single dose by volume. Therefore, there is no need to thoroughly mix the active and inactive ingredients during packaging. People who buy equine or bovine size doses of Ivermectin from Tractor Supply, and try to only take a portion of it by weight, may get none or the all of the drug. I don’t think you or your kid really wants to ingest an equine size dose of de-wormer.

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Tractor Supply sells this as a paste, used inside a large syringe injector to deworm horses. You can get it apple flavored. They also sell it as a concentrated dip to be mixed for livestock to ward off parasites. I saw an article that mentioned this but showed Ivermectrin in pill form, so that can be misleading. I can see why they pulled it. If we have Darwin Award contestants in Arizona drinking aquarium cleaner, then there would likely be people taking horse wormer or using the concentrated dip to try and prevent Covid-19. I certainly hope that this is part of many studies on going. I wasn’t familiar with it but checked, and quickly found that it is used to treat scabies and lice…but also has been successful in stopping / slowing HIV, dengue, influenza, and Zika.

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Topical ivermectin is used to treat rosacea (Soolantra 1%) and lice (Sklice) and oral ivermectin (Stromectol) is used to treat scabies and other parasitic infections in humans…