SpiritDragon

My wife and I took Ivermectin while we had Covid.

https://www.deseret.com/2021/8/30/22648358/byutv-byu-sports-nation-host-spencer-linton-shares-experience-with-severe-covid-19
Today I read yet another of what has recently seemed to be an endless series of Covid-19 victim stories in the Deseret News. What frustrates me about each of these stories is that nowhere is it mentioned that the unfortunate patients could have easily been treated with Ivermectin, which carries a risk profile roughly on the order of a doctor telling you to take two ibuprofen and call them in the morning. Most Covid-19 patients are told by their doctors to go home and head to a hospital if things get worse. Why not at least offer some possible low-risk help in the interim?  I can't guarantee it will work, but who wouldn't take some aspirin each day if it might help?
Even if you are a doctor that doesn't believe it works, isn't it enough that critical care doctors at hospitals all over the United States use it to treat Covid patients every single day, and they swear by it?  ( FLCCC Alliance )  If there is little to no risk, and your patient is suffering, doesn't your Hippocratic Oath at least motivate you to try something that other doctors use to successfully treat their patients? What's the worst that can happen? Maybe it doesn't work, but by day 15 shouldn't you have tried it?
Patients all over the country have sued their hospitals to get access, and have won the right to take Ivermectin. Then they get better, and post their stories in videos that are censored as "misinformation". But even more frustrating is that the hospitals rarely acknowledge they were wrong, turn a blind eye to the patients getting better, and keep denying patients the right to be treated with this simple and safe medicine.
To me, this dereliction of medical duty almost borders on abuse! You don't have to believe that something works in order to try it, especially when you have no other options to offer your patients and the health risk is near zero.
Sometimes I have to remember that the medical establishment ridiculed Australian doctors J. Robin Warren and Barry Marshall for decades before admitting that Helicobacter pylori was the bacterial cause of peptic ulcer disease and began prescribing antibiotics. Unfortunately, IMHO the media is needlessly helping to inflict suffering upon Covid-19 patients by actively censoring the patient successes of Ivermectin treatment. It's not hard to find successes - if the media would seek, they would find. Then they could present a more balanced view to the public.

You object to me comparing pedophilia with homosexuality, ignoring the fact that both are real sexual orientations. The homosexual lobby has made a great deal over the past few decades about how homosexuality is perfectly natural and an immutable characteristic. Yet these hypocrites show no sympathy for pedophiles, who doubtless have every bit as much claim to an immutable sexual orientation as do the homosexuals. (The legitimacy of such claims are, of course, close to zero. But whatever glimmer of truth there is to that claim about homosexuality applies equally to pedophilia.)
That is quite obviously my central point, yet you keep avoiding it. I would rather you address it in an honest and straightforward manner.

On a related tangent this reminds me of an argument I come across from time to time against pro-lifers. If they care so much about life why then do they also so often support capital punishment? I can only speak for myself, but suspect I'm not alone in my reasoning, is that those that I favour the idea of consequences for actions to those with the greatest responsibility in driving the decisions (i.e. if lady doesn't want a baby she shouldn't be sleeping around, and if a person doesn't want the death penalty they shouldn't kill or commit capital offences in their respective jurisdiction). The unborn are innocent and did not have a decision in the process that brought about the circumstance for which they are being terminated, the criminal did. 

Of course, that is just the logic side of my reasoning, but what trumps that is the fact that God has taught in favour against abortion and in favour of capital punishment under certain circumstances.
 

I got a kick out of seeing that the first time as well. The sad part is it may not be as far-fetched as we want to believe with boosters and vaccine passports being pushed all over the place.
 

I agree 100%.  "Excluded" was probably the wrong word to use.   Maybe unintentionally making things more difficult?  

It's a very difficult subject, and I'm sure I'm off in my thinking in some ways. But it strikes me that a lot of "middle ground" is a good way to inadvertently increase the problems rather than help in the overall grand scheme of things. There's a simple principle of the gospel. You cannot stand with one foot in the kingdom of God and one foot in Babylon. You can't be lukewarm. No one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. Etc., etc.
To me these sorts of ideas make the response of the church via policy very difficult. It's a balance between allowing wheat and tares to grow together, lest you inadvertently destroy some of the wheat while trying to remove the tares, and setting standards that clearly dictate the need to get on board and commit and to get both feet out of Babylon. Middle ground policies, to my thinking, run the risk of teaching people that it's okay to fence sit. It's okay to dabble in Babylon. It's okay to let your minds and hearts be of the world, rather than just in the world.
Additionally, no one has ever been excluded from coming to Christ. Not by harsh policies. Not by His commandments. Not by temporal restrictions. None of those sorts of things have ever restricted anyone from humbling themselves and turning with full purpose to Christ. Every time there is a "middle ground" policy change to accommodate people under the idea that they are being excluded otherwise, a false principle is, perhaps, inadvertently being taught -- that you don't have to humble yourself and come to Christ with full purpose of heart. Just complain, rant, and rave enough and then the church will change to accommodate you. But that's not how Christ's gospel really works. He stands with open arms. But we must come to Him. We must knock. We must ask. We must humble ourselves. We must choose to obey. We must endue to the end.
So to me, when people are struggling to humble themselves and the church's response is, "Oh...you poor baby...let's change things then so you don't have to humble yourself" it doesn't strike me as necessarily a good thing.
But as I said, I'm sure I'm off in my thinking in some ways. And it's not my purview whatsoever. And I trust the leadership of the church to guide it by revelation. So...we'll see. It'll be interesting to see what they do with BYU and church guidelines moving forward.

I guarantee you that not everyone agrees that such things are wrong.

Oh, I think for every person that has a problem with the vaccine, there are 50 people who have a bigger problem with government overreach and infringements on liberties.   Trump falls squarely in the latter camp, although nobody believes it.  He rammed through Operation Warp Speed to get vaccines into the arms of his constituents in record speed.  He's on record multiple places urging folks to get vaccinated.  I listened last week to an interview where he's even ok with the booster shot, and is considering getting one himself even though he's actually had COVID.  But nobody can hear any of that, because the other 80% of stuff he's yelling about it, is how government can't force people to take it. 
The larger issue is, of course, in how the principle of government force is applied.  If you break the law in ways so evil/abhorrently that police arrest you, courts and juries and judges try/convict/sentence you, of breaking laws that legislators voted would be punishable by death, and the executive branch doesn't use their pardon power, then yes, the government gets to remove your agency, by force if necessary.
The federal government, with it's divinely inspired constitution, of course, does not have the power to apply such force in matters of vaccines and public health.
I'm sure you can see the difference.

This isn't necessarily a reply...just sharing more thoughts on the matter.
The problem with the whole "gay" ideology (and I'm talking specifically in the church where we, theoretically understand sex and love and commitment and relationships and all that stuff from an eternal perspective) is that it tends to claim something that isn't really ultimately true for anyone. It's like this special case that applies to gay people but no to one else. That claim is of two parts. That they need to be "attracted" to be sexually fulfilled, and that they cannot be happy if they aren't sexually fulfilled.
Like this is the party line: Heterosexual Latter-day Saints get to be sexually fulfilled but homosexual Latter-day Saints have to not be and commit to never being fulfilled that way for the rest of their lives.
But when you consider that it falls apart really quickly. First, what is "fulfilled"? I mean what does that even mean? Sex with someone who's attractive to you? Is that really what fulfillment means? Or can an individual actually have a fulfilling sex life with someone who isn't their idea of attractive? The latter is, actually, true. Myriads of faithful husbands know this. But everyone likes to pretend the first, shallow, meaningless idea of sexual fulfillment is true. But that's not true and never considered requisite in heterosexuality in LDS circles. When some guy goes around saying he'll only marry and stay with someone who REALLY turns him on, everyone knows immediately how shallow and short lived that idea actually is. Heck, even when I was a young man and seeking that super-model ideal, I knew it was shallow and I ought to grow up and consider other things than symmetry and size of facial and body features.
Which brings me to my second point. That stuff is short lived! It's not for the rest of their lives for heterosexuals either. What every man ought to know is that even if he gets lucky enough to actually marry the exact perfect woman that's ideally attractive to him, that doesn't last. That especially doesn't last if one has the priority to procreate and have a family. Babies ruin bodies. Everyone knows that. Stretch marks. Fat. Saggy breasts. Hemorrhoids. Scars. Spider veins. Cellulite. And that's adding to the reality of old age where all of those things might ultimately happen anyhow...not to mention the wrinkles and graying.
But a lot of people know and expects two things in the heterosexual world: 1. Even if your wife gets unattractively fat and wrinkly and has stretch marks and saggy breasts YOU DON'T LEAVE HER OVER THAT! And 2. You can, actually, still have a satisfying and fulfilling sex life even when that becomes the case. You can learn, change and adapt. I'm not saying cellulite and stretch marks become attractive. Maybe...I guess...some guys... shrug. But you can learn to find sexual fulfillment despite those things. That I know to be true.
I don't buy for a second that the theoretical inability to have sexual fulfillment justifies any of the lies being told by that progressive Latter-day Saint crowd. Yeah, not getting what you want sexually can be a struggle. It can be difficult. Get over it and move on. All men who don't will turn into lecherous adulterers.
Nor do I buy the lie that you can't find fulfillment if you aren't being sexually stimulated by what ideally turns you on. I do, very much, understand the challenge of it. I don't accept that because it's a challenge (which fidelity is for ALL men at some level) it justifies any level of infidelity in thought or deed.
Every man ultimately ends up with a wrinkled, unattractive person as their spouse, because eventually they're going to be 80, and what young man looks at an 80 year old woman and thinks, "Oooo baby!?" None of them. Because they aren't attractive unless the man adapts and learns to appreciate (or at least look past) things that aren't necessarily naturally attractive to them. Some men don't adapt and leave their wives for younger models. But everyone kind of knows that 70 year old with a 20-something-year-old on his arm is probably a creep. But in the gay world the idea of leaving someone you've made promises to who doesn't turn you on for someone who does makes you a hero?
The hero is the person who puts their lustful, sexual, shallow, meaningless selves aside for a higher way, and learns sexual fulfillment despite the lack of perfect attraction. The hero is the one who, even when his wife is fat and old, or disabled, or has issues that make arousal difficult so they don't have much of a sex life at all, but they stay true and committed and actually love their wives anyhow! That man walking tenderly and lovingly next to his aged wife, round-bellied, breasts sagging down, hunched over with age, wrinkled and decrepit, spider veins and cellulite everywhere... that man's a hero. That's the man we should all strive to be -- and we all darned well know it!
Yes...men lose their libido and can be, in many cases, less interested in sex, and therefore less concerned about the attractiveness of their spouse when they age up. But that simply argues even more for how short-term and shallow the idea of putting the ideal of perfect sexual fulfillment as a priority in one's life -- especially when one understands the temporary state of this life and what a blip in time it will be in the eternities, and if we just show a bit of willingness to sacrifice and bind our passions what glory and joy can be ours.
So at best one could argue that for a relatively short period of time those with homosexual drives in the LDS world are asked to live differently that those with heterosexual drives. How long that time is won't be consistent. One man might have his wife remain relatively thin and attractive until she's quite old. Another may have his wife get into a disfiguring accident on day 2 of their marriage. Another might be more mature than I was and actually look at things other than looks and marry the chubby girl I never would have taken a second look at because she's awesome, and then learn to find sexual fulfillment with her despite the fact she was not what he'd have chosen as the ideal physically. Etc. etc. 
Worst case, we live a SHORT life. A couple more than a hundred years at best. More likely around 70 to 80.
I understand those outside the gospel having this messed up in their heads. In the church -- it's sad. We should understand these things better. We understand the eternities. We understand life-long marriage and commitment. We understand baby-making and the trials it brings and that it's worth it. We should know better, regardless of what particular natural perversion we have.

It's easy to see how the world can get things so wrong when even with the gospel it can be tough to sort things out. One of the tricky parts of life is that though God has given us a general outline of the roles of men and women we still have to account for the scale of traditionally feminine and masculine qualities along which we each fall at different points. A woman can lean toward the more masculine side of things and not possess as much of a mothering instinct as most women and men likewise can lean more feminine and be less inclined to be the protector and breadwinner. How much of this is nurture verses nature is debatable but at the end of the day physically there is no escaping the fact that only women can have babies and to that extent there is no escaping the intended roles God has defined for us. But that doesn't mean everyone will derive the same satisfaction from them. This can cause problems to arise because people often put their own wants, though often labeled "needs," ahead of God's plan for them. What we label as self-fulfillment is often just the ennobling of selfishness. That's not to say there isn't a time and place to pursue the development of our unique personalities and interests but it must not be done at the cost of our eternal roles as sons and daughters of Heavenly Parents.

True; I was using a broad definition of agency in the same vein as (I thought) @Jane_Doe was.  One could certainly quibble as to whether “agency” was the right word for either of us to do.  

1.  Sure.  And maybe @mikbone’s experience is driven by the fact that it’s human nature for us to complain about wherever we are.  When we’re at work, we complain about work.  When we’re home with the kids, we complain about being home with the kids.  But Mikbone was also, in context of this thread, talking about specific boys who were such louts that for any woman unfortunate to marry them (ie, potentially, his daughter), her working would have been a necessity rather than a choice.
2.  Indeed.  And it’s one thing to marry someone, find out post hoc that they have some kind of chronic illness or disability, and shoulder a disproportionate share of the marital responsibility thereafter out of a sense of love and commitment.  I have some personal experience with that.  
But it’s another thing to see a potential mate and commit to them, knowing from the get-go that marriage is probably going to be harder than it would need to be given a different choice of mate.  Again—props to the people who are willing to make and keep those commitments; but I will maintain to my dying day that a person doesn’t have a moral obligation to do that.  I think Franklin’s old adage about keeping one’s eyes wide open before marriage and half-shut afterwards has bearing here. There’s a bizarre subculture in the Church that leans on single women to “don’t be too picky”, and tells them they should go ahead and accept the advances of whatever doofus happens to be the first one to court them.  LDS women are often shamed for “discriminating” against men who lack the virtues/qualities that have defined “good husbands” in pretty much every culture in global history except our own.  I see @mikbone as having empowered his daughters to push back against that culture, and I admire him for it, and I hang around this thread in the hope that he will teach me his ways.
3.  Does the book say that women shouldn’t even have that kind of knowledge?  Or just that men should offer to step up and do the work when they are actually there and the work needs doing?
And, what talents does the book say men shouldn’t develop?
Here’s an alternate assumption set for the passage you cite:  a) work sucks, b) the kinds of work the author cited are particularly sucky kinds of work, and c) when you love someone, you try to do the suckiest work so that they don’t have to do it.   
I don’t see that paradigm as altering agency.  To the contrary, I see the biggest threat to agency as being stuck with a partner who habitually shunts the dirtiest, most unpleasant work onto someone else (especially: me).

To the contrary, now I pad my bills more than ever!  (Or was it an inverse relationship that he set up between billable and lifespan?  Fetch, I’d better rethink this—
[JAG drops over, dead . . .]
I don’t know that Mikbone has said we shouldn’t be givin’ the wimmin’ none o’ that thar fancy book larnin’.   I read him as suggesting that a) women in the gospel have the privilege of not being expected to work outside the home unless they want to, b) women in the gospel have a right to a husband who will make that happen for them, and c) seen through the lens of the Gospel, a woman’s experience at BYU is worthwhile if it makes her a better mother and wife in the new and everlasting covenant marriage, whether or not she actually gets her academic degree.
The book title page that Mikbone offered, seems to provide a useful bullet list of what his view of healthy masculinity entails.  I’d recommend taking another look at it, if you are truly perplexed as to what kind of vision he’s putting forward here.  I don’t know that I agree with (or perhaps, fully understand) his vision in its entirety; but I think I understand the gist of it and I don’t think it’s fair to characterize it as either inherently harmful, spiritually stunting, or restrictive of agency.  (Yes, patriarchy opens the door to those kinds of abuses . . . but so does parenthood, and so does love, and so does institutional education, and so does government, and so does modern medicine, and so do the structures surrounding competitive sports, and so does media; and none of those institutions get the kind of bad rap that “patriarchy” does.  So we should probably ask why this one institution happens to be the only one of the above that is being almost universally pooh-poohed in our modern society; and whether that singular degree of criticism is related to the fact that that that same institution is a core concept of our temple liturgy and the crowning rituals of the church’s “covenant path”.)
People will naturally speak from their own experiences; but for whatever mine is worth—among the active, temple-recommending Church membership, toxic masculinity is less of an issue than outright misandry.  (Maybe toxic masculinity is more of an issue among that uneducated, rural subset of jack-Mormons who go to a cousin’s baby blessing on Sunday and shoot up with meth on Monday—I’ve known plenty of those through my work—but in my experience those aren’t the ones going to the temple and showing up regularly on Sundays and holding callings and generally making the Church work.)

I remember when the idea of being a "rich lawyer" was a thing.
There's a guy in our ward who was a lawyer. He quit to become a school teacher because he could make better money. A SCHOOL TEACHER TO MAKE BETTER MONEY!
To quote a Sondheim lyric: Smoke on your pipe and put that in.

I think this needs a little more pushback.  “Need”, as @mikbone says, is relative.  I have six kids, and Just_A_Girl hasn’t done paid work since getting pregnant with our first kid sixteen years ago; and my paycheck just climbed above $70K for the first time four years ago.  It was well under $45K for nearly all of the years before that.  We’ve had to embrace a standard of living most of our non-LDS peers wouldn’t be caught dead living; we’ve been blessed with extended family and church supports of a nature that most of our non-LDS peers wouldn’t feel comfortable requesting or receiving (if they even had such extended family supports at all); we had to do some very careful educational and career planning at a very particular stage of our lives.  But it has absolutely been possible—and worth it.
I can sympathize with the argument that as time goes on, one’s financial opportunities become more and more constricted due to choices made (or *not* made) early on.  But for purposes of selecting a marriage partner, which I think is the thrust of Mikbone’s point—the Church provides a pretty solid set of priorities, plans, and resources through which a man (and, in time, his sons) is perfectly capable of becoming a sole breadwinner for his family; and by the early 20s it should be fairly easy for a young lady to discern whether a potential mate has accepted those priorities and plans or not.
LDS women will do what they will do; but I believe it is the responsibility of every LDS husband and father (certainly within the first world) to support his family in such a manner that his wife doesn’t have to work outside of the home unless she wants to.

He literally just said he was not. If you refuse to take his words at face value, why should you expect to have yours so taken?
I heartily disbelieve this. For the past 25 years, I have raised my family on one unimpressive salary (and sometimes no salary for months at a time) in one of the more expensive markets in the nation. We did not live in a huge house. We had three boys sharing a triple bunk bed. We never ate out. When we took the occasional vacation, it was to someplace within a day's drive. We owned used vehicles.
And despite whatever failures you may assign to my efforts to provide for my family, we were and are happy. On one income. In the Seattle area.
So no, I don't buy the weak excuse of "we HAVE to have two incomes just to make ends meet!" For every family who makes that claim truthfully, I can show you ten who simply live above their income.

I have spent a good portion of my life trying to overcome this poisonous philosophy and to teach my sons and daughter that it's a Satanic falsehood. We appear to agree on most matters, but if your summary above is sincere, we certainly disagree on this.

Found this meme to be entertaining:

False equivalency.   I can be pro life and still recognize that living has associated risks.   I don't require people to wear HazMat suits out of fear that they may unknowingly have some illness that might kill me.   

I'm so sick of hearing "potentially deadly disease", too.   For the average, healthy person there is little risk from COVID.   Some demographics are at extreme risk.  Some demographics are at extreme risk of many things.   Those people should take precautions.   Heck, anyone that desires should take precautions.   But it's asinine to suggest that people don't care about the lives of others because they don't vaccinate or wear a face diaper.

99% survival rate.  Some of ya'll act like this is the second coming of the bubonic plague.

It would be nice to actually have the data that was used for approval available to the public for review. But it is not. Pfizer submitted six months of data, without a controlled placebo group (they unblinded the study early on), but not a single page of it has been reviewed by independent experts. The FDA chose to skip the normal process of public hearings and independent review and proceed to approval. By training (and by my nature) I am skeptical of decisions made without transparency, but I still hope for the best rather than the worst.

I'm grateful for everyone who has exercised common sense to limit their exposure, but I do occasionally call hypocrisy on some of the Vazis who are shaming the unvaccinated, but who haven't bothered to shed a single pound of their obesity during the entire pandemic despite it being the #1 comorbidity associated with COVID deaths.

At the end of February (right after the massive blizzard here in Texas that took out the power grid), I got sick for a few days. Exhausted to the point that I was only marginally functional, overly sensitive to the level of salt in what I ate, and with my stomach more sensitive than normal. But in time I was back on my feet, and largely recovered. My dad, however, was down for the better part of two weeks with similar symptoms, and never quite recovered; there are days where he'll just sleep. 
At first, mom suspected that we were dealing with after-effects of the blizzard, especially since we had our fireplace going around the clock; dad and I took turns tending it, so it was possible smoke inhalation combined with everything else. Now, however, she fears that the two of us had Covid (mom was vaccinated before a family trip she and dad took, but dad wasn't), and that my recovering so quickly was because with my history of health issues I've had to learn how to listen to what my body is telling me. 
Since then, I've had both shots. 
The sheer level of exhaustion I felt was greater than anything I dealt with during that period where I was sick, to the point that I spent most of the entire next day afterword asleep. I also had cold sweats, nightmares, and nose bleeds. 
In short, the side effects from the vaccine were worse than what I dealt with when I might have actually had it. 
After this, I'm not getting another one unless I absolutely have to. 

Some years ago, as an exercise in rhetoric/argument and in an effort to explore the ramifications of my thoughts on this issue, I tried to draft a theoretical PR news statement for the church that would change its position on homosexuality while persuasively defending its leaders’ credibility to prospectively speak on behalf of God on other moral issues.  I spent half a day on it, and the final result was trash.
Like @Vort, I never want to box myself into the corner of seeing that “if the church leadership does x, I will leave.”  I always want to leave an opening for receiving further light and knowledge through personal revelation.  But at the same time, I will freely admit: I don’t know how to square that circle.  The church has entrenched itself on the issue of gay marriage far more deeply, and in a way that leaves far less room for future reversal, than it ever did on other issues like polygamy or the priesthood/temple ban on black people.  The old standbys of “well, they always said that might change later“ or “well, it was only one prophet who said that; it wasn’t the united voice of the Q15 speaking in an official capacity and other prophets and apostles were saying this instead“ are not available to us here.
I think, if I stayed at all in such a contingency, the “natural JAG” would be far less willing to inconvenience myself for the church’s sake.  I’d have a hard time teaching; if I slept in on a Sunday If have a hard time hustling to get to church on time (or at all); I’d be sorely tempted to suspend tithing until some other financial priorities had been met.  So . . . yeah.