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Seven anti-vaccine doctors catch Covid at Florida ‘summit’ for alternative treatment

At least 800 people attended the event without following mask and social distancing norms

Shweta Sharma
Wednesday 24 November 2021 03:35 EST
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File: A man holds an anti-vaxx sign as hundreds of anti-mandate demonstrators had rallied outside the Capitol building on 16 November
File: A man holds an anti-vaxx sign as hundreds of anti-mandate demonstrators had rallied outside the Capitol building on 16 November (AP)

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Seven anti-vaccine doctors who attended a “summit” in Florida touting ivermectin and other alternative “treatments” for Covid-19 have contracted the disease.

The doctors gathered for the event on 6 November to discuss “natural immunity”, successful outpatient regimens for the treatment of Covid and obtaining religious and medical exemptions from vaccines, according to the event description.

“I have been on ivermectin for 16 months, my wife and I,” Bruce Boros said at the event which was held at the World Equestrian Centre in Ocala.

“I have never felt healthier in my life.”

The 71-year-old cardiologist and vaccine critic contracted Covid two days later, the event’s lead organiser John Litten told the Daily Beast news outlet.

Dr Littell said six other doctors from the event, that had 800-900 participants, also tested positive for the virus after developing symptoms “within days of the conference”.

“People are considering if it was a superspreader event,” Dr Littell said, but rejected the consideration right after he made the comments, according to the news outlet.

Dr Littell said the attendees had caught the virus before the event, where there were no masks or social distancing among the hundreds of participants.

“I think they had gotten it from New York or Michigan or wherever they were from,” he said. “It was really the people who flew in from other places.”

According to the people close to Dr Boros, the cardiologist has become seriously ill at his Key West home. Dr Littell, however, claimed that “Bruce is doing well”.

Ivermectin is a widely used anti-parasitic drug and it is predominantly used in livestock apart from its some use in humans.

The drug has been controversially touted as a potential treatment for Covid since the earliest stages of the pandemic, even as experts have said it was dangerous to consume in large quantities. The US Food and Drug Administration has said it has no proven use against the disease. Government officials have not approved the drug for Covid treatment.

Dr Boros had said in a 2020 Facebook post that he hoped to proceed “with my ivermectin observational study quickly” and claimed it was working for people and that it was used around the world.

“Fauci is a fraud—big pharma is playing us for suckers,” he said in the same post, condemning Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“It breaks my heart that a town like this has made something so political and hateful. What’s wrong with people? I just want to help patients and keep them from dying,” Dr Boros told local newspaper Florida Keys Weekly in an interview about the criticism that his Facebook post had attracted.

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