Astral Codex Ten

Oklahoma

11 min read

Oklahoma

Article

Oklahoma is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between September 06, 2021 and December 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “local Oklahoma news reported this story”; “Oklahoma hospitals are overcrowded”; “Birthright trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma”. It most often appears alongside Boston, COVID, Cremieux.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 5
  • Issue count: 5
  • First seen: September 06, 2021
  • Last seen: December 31, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Too Good To Check: A Play In Three Acts
September 06, 2021 · Original source
In case you find this hard to follow: ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug that looked promising against COVID in early studies. Later it started looking less promising, and investigators found that a major supporting study was fraudulent. But by this point it had gotten popular among conspiracy theorists as a suppressed coronavirus cure that They Don’t Want You To Know. The media has tried to spread the word that the scientific consensus remains skeptical. In the process, they may have gone a little overboard and portrayed it as the world’s deadliest toxin that will definitely kill you and it will all somehow be Donald Trump’s fault. It turned into the latest culture war issue, and now there’s a whole discourse on (for example) how supposedly-sober fact-checkers keep calling it "a horse dewormer” (it is used to deworm horses, but it’s also FDA-approved for humans, but lots of the people using it are buying the horse version), and probably this is hypocritical in some way. Enter the article above. A doctor named Jason McElyea apparently told local broadcaster KFOR that Oklahoma hospitals are “overwhelmed” with ivermectin poisoning cases, so much so that “gunshot victims” are “left waiting”. Some of the world’s biggest news outlets heard the story and ran with it. The tweet mentions the Rolling Stone version, but the same story, with the same doctor’s testimony, got picked up by The Guardian, the BBC, Yahoo News, etc. Which brings us to the Sequoyah Hospital letter on the right. They released a statement saying that Dr. McElyea hasn’t worked there in two months, they haven’t had any ivermectin overdose cases, and they don’t know what he’s talking about. In the comments, author Virginia Hume sums up the situation nicely: I’ve recently been reading Scout Mindset (expect a review soon), which is kind of the rationalist movement in book form. It focuses on the difference between how we treat ideas that conform to our biases versus those that contradict them. If they conform, we ask “Are we allowed to accept this?” and wave them through, like a small town police chief dealing with a case involving the mayor’s son. If they contradict, we subject them to the harshest inquisition possible, like a small town police chief dealing with a guy named “Abdullah” with a sinister-looking beard. The media was already looking to discredit ivermectin. So the report of one doctor - without even a phone call to confirm - was good enough for Rolling Stone, The Guardian, BBC, etc. It was “too good to check”. II. Did you believe that? I did, briefly. Then I remembered the Law Of Rationalist Irony: the smugger you feel about having caught a bias in someone else, the more likely you are falling victim to that bias right now, in whatever way would be most embarrassing. So, quick check: am I doing this? I notice this story is exactly tailored to appeal to me and people like me. It discredits the media establishment, who I don’t like. It’s a great argument for why we need more rationality, something I’ve been trying to push. It lets me feel superior to everyone: I am properly skeptical of ivermectin, but also I haven’t become a contemptible propagandist who joins in mass media smear campaigns. And I didn’t even take a second to check if it was true! I’m relying entirely on the word of a Twitter bluecheck I’ve never heard of before, whose profile picture is some kind of dog (an Australian sheepdog? maybe some kind of weird collie?) Forget making a phone call to a hospital, I didn’t even read the original article! The story was “too good to check”! So I tried checking, and noticed that the third reply to the original tweet was this: In case you’re as confused as I am, NHS here = “Northeastern Health System”, an Oklahoma health care group. Britain is not involved. This…turns out to be completely true. The story never mentions Sequoyah Hospital! Dr. McElyea has worked at Sequoyah in the past, but he’s a traveling doctor and works lots of places. Plausibly Sequoyah just wanted to clarify that they weren’t like the hospitals in the story, they’re not turning away gunshot victims, and if you happen to be a gunshot victim you’re still welcome to go to Sequoyah and can expect timely care. Apparently I’m not the only person who doesn’t scroll down to the third tweet. The right-wing Washington Examiner has an article on how Rolling Stone’s Ivermectin Fiction Shows Why Republicans Don’t Trust Media. Fox has an article on Rolling Stone Forced To Issue Update After Viral Ivermectin Story Turns Out To Be False. One Redditor puts it more bluntly: “Dr. Jason McElyea, who has been claiming that emergency rooms have been turning away gunshot victims because of Ivermectin overdoses, is a liar.” None of these sources mentioned that the original article had never claimed Sequoyah Hospital was involved. Their story was - I guess - too good to check. III. Did you believe that? I mean, that’s also a pretty cool story, isn’t it? Right-wing news outlets accuse the so-called “liberal media” of bias, then get hoist on their own petard? Seems a bit too cute. Have you clicked through to any of the links yet? No? Not even after I admitted I’m probably biased here? Sequoyah Hospital might not be the particular hospital that the doctor in the story was thinking of. But isn’t it suspicious that other hospitals are so packed with ivermectin cases that they have to delay care to gunshot victims, yet Sequoyah says that it “has not treated any patients due to complications of treating ivermectin”? Seems weird for there to be that much difference. Okay, this time I promise I’m not trying to psych you out. Here’s what I’ve actually been able to figure out about this situation: Rolling Stone seems to think that the Sequoyah Hospital statement casts doubt on their account. They changed the title of their article to “One Hospital Denies Oklahoma Doctor’s Story…” and edited in a long prologue about the hospital’s statement in a way that suggests they feel bad about their reporting. They say that they have reached out to various relevant doctors and hospitals for comments but have not heard back from them - which I guess is good, because if your hospital is so busy that you don’t have time to treat gunshot victims, you really shouldn’t have time to give interviews to Rolling Stone.
Inline links: the, The Guardian, the BBC, Yahoo News, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!50Ju!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6a65950a-1232-4977-ace5-71b13c4ab83f_726x156.png, Scout Mindset, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cSE3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe530cd25-fde9-4b98-b7d8-a1143ee0e026_722x187.png, Rolling Stone’s Ivermectin Fiction Shows Why Republicans Don’t Trust Media, Rolling Stone Forced To Issue Update After Viral Ivermectin Story Turns Out To Be False, puts it more bluntly
Rolling Stone seems to think that the Sequoyah Hospital statement casts doubt on their account. They changed the title of their article to “One Hospital Denies Oklahoma Doctor’s Story…” and edited in a long prologue about the hospital’s statement in a way that suggests they feel bad about their reporting. They say that they have reached out to various relevant doctors and hospitals for comments but have not heard back from them - which I guess is good, because if your hospital is so busy that you don’t have time to treat gunshot victims, you really shouldn’t have time to give interviews to Rolling Stone.
Inline links: One Hospital Denies Oklahoma Doctor’s Story
In an unrelated issue, the photo on top of their article was previously a bunch of Oklahoman-looking people standing in a long line outside a building. This had a caption, in small print, saying that it was of Oklahomans waiting for the COVID vaccine. Critics pointed out that in context, people would have interpreted it as being a picture of people waiting outside a hospital which had long lines because it was too full of ivermectin victims. Whether or not that criticism was fair, Rolling Stone has taken down that photo and replaced it with a photo of ivermectin pills.
Links For April 2023
April 20, 2023 · Original source
28: Trevor Klee’s “Birthright” trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa has some oil billionaires fighting to keep it a good place to live while the rest of the Midwest hollows out, apparently successfully. In particular, two of the billionaires are Jewish and want to preserve Tulsa’s Jewish community. They’re offering very lucrative packages of benefits (including guaranteed cushy jobs at their nonprofits, or extraordinary levels of financial support for creative/business projects) to Jews who move to Tulsa.
Inline links: Trevor Klee’s “Birthright” trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Kevin Contact Info: Lesswrong[period]dayton[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, April 12th, 03:00 PM Location: 10 E Main Street, Fairborn 45324 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86FQRXCH+GQF Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/lesswrong-dayton/ Oklahoma OKLAHOMA CITY Contact: bean Contact Info: battleshipbean[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, April 05th, 01:00 PM Location: Pavilion by the planes at the 45th infantry division museum. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8674GG5G+8H Notes: I will be wearing a USS Iowa hat.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/86FQRXCH+GQF, https://plus.codes/8674GG5G+8H
Links For October 2025
October 30, 2025 · Original source
29: More great family lore: JS Bach had twenty children, of whom five were sons who survived to adulthood; four of those five became notable composers themselves. His bloodline was originally believed to have died out, but was later traced through an illegitimate child to a surviving lineage in Oklahoma.
Inline links: great family, JS Bach had twenty children
Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession
December 31, 2025 · Original source
I was a doomer when I graduated in 2014 because that’s what my parents and literally every single media outlet and professor were preaching to me, then I got a job right out of a college with a mediocre (3.6) GPA from a state school and went to work as an analyst at a midsized regional bank, got promoted internally a few times and lived very frugally with my wife (met at work), now I’m able to be a stay at home dad with our kid while she works from home. We live in Oklahoma; we bought new construction last year for $200k with some spare cash I had laying around in a brokerage account. So I am pretty fully cured of the doomerism, success is trivial. My bosses and coworkers constantly praised the fact that I approached my job with gratitude and focused on identifying the goals and achieving them efficiently and optimally from 9-5 every day. That’s it. No late hours, no connections or networking or anything else fancy.