“I Don’t Know of a Bigger Story in the World” Right Now Than Ivermectin: NY Times Best-Selling Author

So why are journalists not covering it?

Michael Capuzzo, a New York Times best-selling author , has just published an article titled “The Drug That Cracked Covid”. The 15-page article chronicles the gargantuan struggle being waged by frontline doctors on all continents to get ivermectin approved as a Covid-19 treatment, as well as the tireless efforts by reporters, media outlets and social media companies to thwart them.

Because of ivermectin, Capuzzo says, there are “hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying.” Yet media outlets have done all they can to “debunk” the notion that ivermectin may serve as an effective, easily accessible and affordable treatment for Covid-19. They have parroted the arguments laid out by health regulators around the world that there just isn’t enough evidence to justify its use.

For his part, Capuzzo, as a reporter, “saw with [his] own eyes the other side [of the story]” that has gone unreported, of the many patients in the US whose lives have been saved by ivermectin and of five of the doctors that have led the battle to save lives around the world, Paul Marik, Umberto Meduri, José Iglesias, Pierre Kory and Joe Varon. These are all highly decorated doctors. Through their leadership of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance, they have already enhanced our treatment of Covid-19 by discovering and promoting the use of Corticoid steroids against the virus. But their calls for ivermectin to also be used have met with a wall of resistance from healthcare regulators and a wall of silence from media outlets.

“I really wish the world could see both sides,” Capuzzo laments. But unfortunately most reporters are not interested in telling the other side of the story. Even if they were, their publishers would probably refuse to publish it.

That may explain why Capuzzo, a six-time Pulitzer-nominated journalist best known for his New York Times-bestselling nonfiction books Close to Shore and Murder Room, ended up publishing his article on ivermectin in Mountain Home, a monthly local magazine for the of the Pennsylvania mountains and New York Finger Lakes region, of which Capuzzo’s wife is the editor. It’s also the reason why I decided to dedicate today’s post to Capuzzo’s article. Put simply, as many people as possible –particularly journalists — need to read his story.

As Capuzzo himself says, “I don’t know of a bigger story in the world.”

Total News Blackout

On December 8 2020, FLCCC member Dr Pierre Kory gave nine minutes of impassioned testimony to the US Homeland Security Committee Meeting on the potent anti-viral, anti-inflammatory benefits of ivermectin. A total of 9 million people (myself included) saw the video on YouTube before it was taken down by YouTube’s owner, Google. As Capuzzo exhaustively lays out, both traditional and social media have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep people in the dark about ivermectin. So effective has this been that even in some of the countries that have benefited most from its use (such as Mexico and Argentina) many people are completely unaware of its existence. And this is no surprise given how little information is actually seeping out into the public arena.

A news blackout by the world’s leading media came down on Ivermectin like an iron curtain. Reporters who trumpeted the COVID-19 terror in India and Brazil didn’t report that Ivermectin was crushing the P-1 variant in the Brazilian rain forest and killing COVID-19 and all variants in India. That Ivermectin was saving tens of thousands of lives in South America wasn’t news, but mocking the continent’s peasants for taking horse paste was. Journalists denied the world knowledge of the most effective life-saving therapies in the pandemic, Kory said, especially among the elderly, people of color, and the poor, while wringing their hands at the tragedy of their disparate rates of death.
Three days after Kory’s testimony, an Associated Press “fact-check reporter” interviewed Kory “for twenty minutes in which I recounted all of the existing trials evidence (over fifteen randomized and multiple observational trials) all showing dramatic benefits of Ivermectin,” he said. Then she wrote: “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence Ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.” Like many critics, she didn’t explore the Ivermectin data or evidence in any detail, but merely dismissed its “insufficient evidence,” quoting instead the lack of a recommendation by the NIH or WHO. To describe the real evidence in any detail would put the AP and public health agencies in the difficult position of explaining how the lives of thousands of poor people in developing countries don’t count in these matters.
Not just in media but in social media, Ivermectin has inspired a strange new form of Western and pharmaceutical imperialism. On January 12, 2021, the Brazilian Ministry of Health tweeted to its 1.2 million followers not to wait with COVID-19 until it’s too late but “go to a Health Unit and request early treatment,” only to have Twitter take down the official public health pronouncement of the sovereign fifth largest nation in the world for “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information.” (Early treatment is code for Ivermectin.) On January 31, the Slovak Ministry of Health announced its decision on Facebook to allow use of Ivermectin, causing Facebook to take down that post and removed the entire page it was on, the Ivermectin for MDs Team, with 10,200 members from more than 100 countries.
In Argentina, Professor and doctor Hector Carvallo, whose prophylactic studies are renowned by other researchers, says all his scientific documentation for Ivermectin is quickly scrubbed from the Internet. “I am afraid,” he wrote to Marik and his colleagues, “we have affected the most sensitive organ on humans: the wallet…” As Kory’s testimony was climbing toward nine million views, YouTube, owned by Google, erased his official Senate testimony, saying it endangered the community. Kory’s biggest voice was silenced.

“The Most Powerful Entity on Earth”

Malcom X once called the media “the most powerful entity on the earth.” They have, he said, “the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of masses”. Today, that power is now infused with the power of the world’s biggest tech and social media companies. Together social and traditional media have the power to make a medicine that has saved possibly millions of lives during the current pandemic disappear from the conversation. When it is covered, it’s almost always in a negative light. Some media organizations, including the NY Times, have even prefaced mention of the word “ivermectin” — a medicine that has done so much good over its 40-year lifespan that its creators were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015 — with the word “controversial.”

Undeterred, many front-line doctors have tried to persuade their respective health regulators of the unparalleled efficacy and safety of ivermectin as a covid treatment. They include Dr. Tess Lawrie, a prominent independent medical researcher who, as Capuzzo reports, evaluates the safety and efficacy of drugs for the WHO and the National Health Service to set international clinical practice guidelines:

“[She] read all twenty-seven of the Ivermectin studies Kory cited. The resulting evidence is consistent and unequivocal,” she announced, and sent a rapid meta-analysis, an epidemiolocal statistical multi-study review considered the highest form of medical evidence, to the director of the NHS, members of parliament, and a video to Prime Minister Boris Johnson with “the good news… that we now have solid evidence of an effective treatment for COVID-19…” and Ivermectin should immediately “be adopted globally and systematically for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”
Ignored by British leaders and media, Lawrie convened the day-long streaming BIRD conference—British Ivermectin Recommendation Development—with more than sixty researchers and doctors from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, Belgium, Argentina, South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Australia, and Japan. They evaluated the drug using the full “evidence-to-decision framework” that is “the gold standard tool for developing clinical practice guidelines” used by the WHO, and reached the conclusion that Ivermectin should blanket the world.
“Most of all you can trust me because I am also a medical doctor, first and foremost,” Lawrie told the prime minster, “with a moral duty to help people, to do no harm, and to save lives. Please may we start saving lives now.” She heard nothing back.
Ivermectin’s benefits were also corroborated by Dr. Andrew Hill, a renowned University of Liverpool pharmacologist and independent medical researcher, and the senior World Health Organization/UNITAID investigator of potential treatments for COVID-19. Hill’s team of twenty-three researchers in twenty-three countries had reported that, after nine months of looking for a COVID-19 treatment and finding nothing but failures like Remdesivir— “we kissed a lot of frogs”— Ivermectin was the only thing that worked against COVID-19, and its safety and efficacy were astonishing—“blindingly positive,” Hill said, and “transformative.” Ivermectin, the WHO researcher concluded, reduced COVID-19 mortality by 81 percent.

Why All the Foot Dragging?

Yet most health regulators and governments continue to drag their feet. More evidence is needed, they say. All the while, doctors in most countries around the world have no early outpatient medicines to draw upon in their struggle against the worst pandemic in century. Drawing on his own experience, Capuzzo describes the absence of treatments for COVID-19 as a global crisis: 

When my daughter Grace, a vice president at a New York advertising agency, came
down with COVID-19 recently, she was quarantined in a “COVID hotel” in Times Square with homeless people and quarantining travelers. The locks on her room door were removed. Nurses prowled the halls to keep her in her room and wake her up every night to check her
vitals—not to treat her, because there is no approved treatment for COVID-19; only, if her oxygen plummeted, to move her to the hospital, where there is only a single eective approved treatment for COVID-19, steroids that may keep the lungs from failing. 

There are three possible explanations for health regulators’ refusal to allow the use of a highly promising, well-tolerated off-label medicine such as ivermectin:

  • As a generic, ivermectin is cheap and widely available, which means there would be a lot less money to be made by Big Pharma if it became the go-to early-stage treatment against covid.
  • Other pharmaceutical companies are developing their own novel treatments for Covid-19 which would have to compete directly with ivermectin. They include ivermectin’s original manufacturer, Merck, which has an antiviral compound, molnupiravir, in Phase 3 clinical trials for COVID-19. That might explain the company’s recent statement claiming that there is “no scientific basis whatsoever for a potential therapeutic effect of ivermectin against COVID-19. 
  • If approved as a covid-19 treatment, ivermectin could even threaten the emergency use authorisation granted to covid-19 vaccines. One of the basic conditions for the emergency use authorisation granted to the vaccines currently being used against covid is that there are no alternative treatments available for the disease. As such, if ivermectin or some other promising medicine such as fluvoxamine were approved as an effective early treatment for Covid-19, the vaccines could be stripped of authorisation.

This may explain why affordable, readily available and minimally toxic drugs are not repurposed for use against Covid despite the growing mountains of evidence supporting their efficacy. 

Ivermectin has already been approved as a covid-19 treatment in more than 20 countries. They include Mexico where the mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Scheinbaum, recently said that the medicine had reduced hospitalisations by as much as 76%. As of last week, 135,000 of the city’s residents had been treated with the medicine. The government of India — the world’s second most populous country and one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of medicines — has also recommended the use of ivermectin as an early outpatient treatment against covid-19, in direct contravention of WHO’s own advice.

Dr Vikas P. Sukhatme, the dean of Emory School of Medicine, recently wrote in a column for the Times of India that deploying drugs such as ivermectin and fluvoxamine in India is likely to “rapidly reduce the number of COVID-19 patients, reduce the number requiring hospitalization, supplemental oxygen and intensive care and improve outcomes in hospitalized patients.” 

Four weeks after the government included ivermectin and budesonide among its early treatment guidelines, the country has recorded its lowest case count in 40 days.

Imagen

In many of India’s regions the case numbers are plunging in almost vertical fashion. In the capital Delhi, as in Mexico City, hospitalisations have plummeted. In the space of 10 days ICU occupancy fell from 99% to 70%. Deaths are also falling. The test positivity ratio slumped from 35% to 5% in just one month.

One of the outliers of this trend is the state of Tamil Nadu, where cases are still rising steeply. This may have something to do with the fact that the state’s newly elected governor, MK Stalin, decided to exclude ivermectin from the region’s treatment protocol in favor of Remdesivir. The result? Soaring cases. Late last week, Stalin reversed course once again and readopted ivermectin. 

For the moment deaths in India remain extremely high. And there are concerns that the numbers are being under-reported. Yet they may also begin to fall in the coming days. In all of the countries that have used ivermectin widely, fatalities are the last thing to fall, after case numbers and hospitalizations. Of course, there’s no way of definitively proving that these rapid falloffs are due to the use of ivermectin. Correlation, even as consistent as this, is not causation. Other factors such as strict lockdowns and travel restrictions no doubt also play a part.

But a clear pattern across nations and territories has formed that strongly supports ivermectin’s purported efficacy. And that efficacy has been amply demonstrated in three meta-analyses.

India’s decision to adopt ivermectin, including as a prophylaxis in some states, is already a potential game-changer. As I wrote three weeks ago, if case numbers, hospitalizations and fatalities fall in India as precipitously as they have in other countries that have adopted ivermectin, it could even become a watershed moment. But for that to happen, the news must reach enough eyes and ears. And for that to happen, reporters must, as Capuzzo says, begin to do their job and report both sides of this vital story.

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160 comments

  1. fresno dan

    You know, one of the things many people don’t understand is that when FDA approves a drug, it doesn’t have to be better than existing drugs. People have a tendency to equate new with “new and improved.”
    Newly approved certainly doesn’t mean cheaper or more effective – it JUST means that the new drug has some evidence of efficacy. It sets up a dynamic where less effective and more expensive drugs are often prescribed first due to advertising than older, cheaper, more effective drugs…because the newer drugs are more profitable. Clinical trials are seldom designed to compare head to head older drugs against newer drugs, because than it would become too obvious that all this stuff being marketed is a rip off.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/health-drugs-effectiveness/new-drugs-trail-many-old-ones-in-effectiveness-against-disease-idUKL2N0EC1E720130603
    Ask yourself – what profit making company has an incentive to undertake expensive clinical trials to get Ivermectin approved? Any company that has the experience and resources to design and conduct a trial undoubtedly has approved drugs that could be undercut by older, more effective drugs – such companies have no desire to undermine the status quo.

    1. Ricky

      Everyone should check out mountain valley MD as they just cleared a trial on mice with a soluble ivermectin that works excellent.
      They will change the medicine world one day.

      1. Sue Smith

        Unless it’s suppressed by Big Pharma and their controlled media (Wapo, NYT, CNN, MSLSD, etc.) and the Congress they own.

    2. Manuel

      Excellent Article.. Let me comment that Bill Sardi, posting in http://www.LewRockwell.com back in April 2020, more than a year ago wrote this article on curing and preventing Covid with Ivermectin.

      https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/no_author/anti-parasitic-agent-ivermectin-abolishes-coronavirus-particles/

      This article gives excellent protocol for its use which to be more effective should be accompanied by Zinc, a Zinc ionofore such as Selenium and also Quercitin… You can go into http://www.LewRockwell.com and search for the many Bill Sardi posts which give more information.

      Also see https://c19ivermectin.com/ for 92 world wide studies and https://ivmmeta.com/ for a meta-analisis of 42 studies… Most of these have not used Sardi’s Zinc addition which would have improved even more the outcomes,
      see https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/bill-sardi/modern-medicine-ridicules-presidents-coronavirus-drug-plus-zinc-saying-there-is-no-evidence-when-decade-old-study-goes-ignored/

      I have been collecting a Data Base of over a dozen proven cures reported 8 pages with about 200 links of references. One jewel section is the Vitamin D which for a dollar a month prevents deaths from Covid and a study where it cured in one week . If Nick Corbishley wants to contact me for it, I authorize Naked Capitalism to provide him with my e-mail.

      1. marv22

        That if you receive Ivermectin while you have COVID, you’ll at least die de-wormed.

        1. tegnost

          I think if you read the post you will see that you’re not as likely to die, you could be more effectively snarky by saying “That if you receive Ivermectin while you have COVID, you’ll at least be dewormed! See? Still snarky, and doesn’t rely on a falsehood for the punchline!

        2. Senechal

          Sorry, but that’s an uninformed, uneducated and anti-scientific perspective.

          You should educate yourself about the national-level data from hundreds of thousands of clinical reports worldwide.

          Ivermectin is neither “ineffective” nor “lacking sufficient data”.

          The clinical data is overwhelming. Furthermore, the safety data vastly exceeds the safety data from the current crop of experimental treatments. The efficacy, reported from hundreds of thousands of medical field reports is extremely significant. And the financial motivations of Big Pharma to bury Ivermectin are painfully, obviously apparent.

          You can keep snarking from your weak, uninformed position or you can do your own homework and understand that you are being lied to.

          Why?

          Because the profits on the table exceed anything in recorded history.

          If that isn’t enough of a motivation, then quite literally, nothing is.

          Wake up. Follow the science, not the propaganda from serial liars and financially biased sources.

          1. Mike Vanhooser

            When I contracted Covid I asked my doctor of 20 years about a prescription for Ivermectin (I had already done thorough research). She said “That stuff’s bullshit, no reputable doctor would prescribe that”. She is no longer my doctor. I did find a doctor, one of the top pulmonologists in Dallas, who did prescribe it, and it was the miracle drug. I’m almost 70, and had severe fever, chills and body aches, and was beginning to have some respiratory distress, with oxygen count of 87%. I took three doses, one every 48 hours, along with zinc, vitamin C and D, and a Symbicort inhaler twice a day. Within 18 hours of the first dose I was without fever, chills and aches, and my oxygen was up to 92%. In less than 72 hours I was symptom free. I still took the third dose at 72 hours, just to be sure, but by then I was fine and oxygen was at 97%. The real bullshit is the conspiracy to block people from simple, effective and cheap cures. Never has there been a better example of “Follow the Money”.

            1. Kim B

              So glad you are well and KNEW to keep looking. Almost all these deaths from COVID were preventable – it’s been mass murder.

      2. John R Moffett

        Yes, ivermectin works by binding to and disrupting a chloride channel that is present in the nervous system of insects, but not in mammals. It is not something that would ever have an effect on a virus. As far as anyone knows, there is no molecular target for ivermectin in humans. There is no possible explanation for why it would have antiviral properties. Maybe there is something we don’t understand, but my guess is that this is another hydroxychloroquine story. I doubt very highly that this will hold up after research.

        1. Craig Morris

          In order to enter the nucleus Covid 19 needs to bind to a transport molecule. Ivermectin binds to the same transport molecule making it unavailable for the virus.

        2. grochef

          Well Ivermectin:
          1. Disrupts viral ACE2 binding to health cells
          2. Blocks viral importin alpha and beta binding, thereby preventing viral replication in a cell’s nucleus
          3. Disrupts CD-147 binding to red blood cells, preventing clotting

        3. Senechal

          John

          I’ll take your back of the napkin analysis, and counter it with 56 trials conducted by 484 scientists involving 18,447 patients and 28 randomized controlled clinical trials — all of which except for 1 demonstrating significant efficacy.

          https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/

          Science is observable and repeatable.

          What do you have exactly?

          1. TallyHoe

            There are hired trolls on these boards who show up and tell lies about what is really going on, and I’ve seen it on many other blog sites. Understand that when someone says something false, like Ivermectin only works on insects, they need to be called out for the ignorant, uneducated people that they are. And if they aren’t those things, then that leaves “liar”.
            Ivermectin is used by veterinarians ALL THE TIME. Those vets don’t treat insects.

        4. Vincent gulino

          Dear sir
          As a Covid survivor. I Can tell you I was very sick when the doctor put me on Ivermectin for three day along with steroids after three days I was well on the road to recovery if not for this drug I would have been in the hospital for sure. All I can tell you is it works I don’t know how or why it works but it does. In twenty four hours after taking the first dose I could tell it was working!!!!!!!!!!!

          1. Scorpion

            I had a really bad bout of flu last March, probably Covid since I was in a Mexican tourist-beach town at the time, and went out and got HCQ as soon as I heard about it (the next day none was available for any money for 2 months of course) and within 8 hours taking the higher dose levels recommended for those who are already infected (I believe 2,000 mg over 5 days), the flu was basically gone. Put another way, I took the 2 pills before going to bed whilst very ill and when I woke up the next morning I felt fine. One day later I felt great.

            Now that was HCQ + Zinc, not Ivermectin, but the former was similarly vilified despite having a great track record in actual clinics treating actual patients. Looks like Ivermectin is better.

            They have to maintain the emergency use authorization in order to push for widespread vaccination under Emergency Use protocols. Widespread knowledge and acceptance of Ivermectin as an effective prophylactic would entirely undermine their Emergency Use justification.

            And of course this is only 50% a medical emergency. The other 50% has to do with nefarious political schemes involving undermining the foundations of western society. So the word is out on Ivermectin, but nothing will change in countries where Big Tech & Media, Big Government, Big Intelligence and Big Military are all joined together as one.

        5. Covid Survivor

          “Maybe there is something we don’t understand, but my guess is that this is another hydroxychloroquine story. I doubt very highly that this will hold up after research.”

          You are uninformed.

          The American Journal of Medicine has concluded that the inexpensive combination of zinc, Hydroxychloroquine and antibiotics works well against Covid if started within days of infection: https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)30673-2/fulltext

          1. TimothyS

            The story of Hydroxychloroquine is very interesting. The studies which very publicly smeared it, leading to it being banned in several countries (some to this day), which are still cited, have been withdrawn. One as a fraud, and another as an attempt to portray it as dangerous by giving near lethal doses of HCQ.

            Keep in mind that maybe a billion doses of this drug has been given out. The risk profile and safe dose level is well known. It was a strategic and fraudulent sabotage of a viable treatment.
            https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/hydroxychloroquine-morality-tale

            1. Glory

              Lethal doses, or giving it too late. It is well known that anti virals must be used early. Example, Tamiflu directions say it must be taken with 2-3 days of the onset of symptoms. Waiting to give HCQ until a person is so sick that they need to be in the hospital is nonsense, and negative outcomes prove nothing about its use as early treatment.

        6. Franz

          Especially if the research is dione by Pfutzer and Asstra Seneca as the trials handed to the CDC and FDA are, eh?.

        7. Rob

          “There is no possible explanation for why it would have antiviral properties.”. No arrogance in that statement. How about rephrasing to “”I have no explanation for why it would have antiviral properties.” and then look at REALITY. There are literally thousands of highly qualified medical personnel around the globe reporting that they’re observing a significant impact in reducing symptoms and mortality for this disease by using Ivermectin. The fact that you don’t understand the mechanism is your problem. I would suggest spending less time posting “I don’t understand how this could work so it can’t possibly” comments and more time talking to your colleagues who are on the front lines of treatment and can likely provide you some additional insight.

          1. Yves Smith

            As a microbiologist prof pointed out (and he was very involved in the early research to understand and threat AIDS), ivermectin is in the advanced stages of several clinical trials outside the US for HIV and is showing great promise. That’s another antiviral practice.

            It sounds like Moffett is a victim of the classic economists’ joke: “It works in practice. But does it work in theory?”

        8. Glory

          That’s how it works as an anti parasite medicine. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have other mechanisms of action that would help humans in the fight against this virus. Benedryl was initially studied as an antidepressant. It didn’t work well that way, but it made people very sleepy, so now it’s used as a sleep aid. As well, it has antihistamine properties. Minoxidil was initially studied to lower blood pressure. They found in clinical trials that it induced hair growth, so now is used for “male patterned baldness.” Viagra was initially studied to lower blood pressure as well. It does in fact lower blood pressure, but it also helps men with erectile dysfunction. So just because a drug is studied and used for one mechanism of action, doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have other mechanisms of action.

    1. IM Doc

      I am not understanding your point.

      We also give millions of patients with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis plaquenil and that is for malaria.

      We give millions neurontin for pain and that drug is just approved for seizures.

      I am not understanding your point.

      1. cpm

        I think Neurontin is poorly understood and way over prescribed.
        Some docs treat it like aspirin……take 2 now and 2 later.
        There can be some perplexing side effects.

        In the movie The Irishman, the protagonist in prison brings up Neurontin which is widely available to the prisoners via the prison pharmacy.
        He and other prisoners have begun to shun the drug because of how it makes them feel. If long time cons shun a drug while locked up, it can’t have much to recommend it.

        I have sympathy for PCPs. They want to help their patients, but IMHO they have become reps for the pharmaceutical industry. They end up doing as much harm as good.

        1. hoonose

          Well as a recently retired internist, I will have to disagree. I’ve prescribed many patients gabapentin over the years, and it is very safe. I tell patients if the side effects outweigh the benefits, then we stop it. But many patients have benefited, including myself and my cardiologist, who I gave my supply when I no longer needed it. Being able to reduce or eliminate narcotic usage is very important. And I cannot recall ever prescribing the brand name.

          1. mtnwoman

            I 2nd hoonose.
            I’m a 35 yr medical practitioner.
            Neurontin has clear benefit over NSAIDs and opiods for pain.

            And gabapentin is dirt cheap won’t hurt the stomach or liver. It’s not for everyone but if pain relief is needed, it’s one of the 1st things I go to.

        2. Franz

          I see. So, its the docs trying to prescribe a rwo-penny drug (Ivermectina and Hydorxychlor) that are the “Reps of the pharmaceutical industry” and not the ones pushing the toxic experimental ‘jabs’ which will go on forever and impoverish the human race back to the caves, if it does not kill them first. Give us a break!

    2. Hopelb

      It’s also an anti-viral, an anti-inflammatory,won the Nobel Prize, and on the list of essential medicines along with penicillin and aspirin!!!!!

  2. ahimsa

    Yves, this roundup is great.Thank you!
    Have been trying to pull some of these disparate strings together for myself.

    And yes, Capuzzo’s article is very well laid out and should be shared widely.

  3. dimmsdale

    Link to a video interview with Dr. Lawrie (mentioned above) on her study OF the Ivermectin studies, how she became convinced of its efficacy, and how her recitation of the evidence slowly convinces her initially somewhat skeptical interviewer of her findings. I don’t know how it’s possible to refute any of what she says scientifically–clearly something else is going on in the realm of human cognition (in addition to the three possible explanations Mr. Corbishley mentions above) as to why wholesale refutation of a potentially valuable approach to COVID-19 (without actually knowing anything about it) sweeps the world.

      1. dimmsdale

        well, I attached it, it must have gotten scraped off in moderation? let’s try this:

        tinyurl.com/55m648sb

        Does that work?

        1. Jules Dickson

          FYI — I checked and the link was not scraped off by moderators or moderation software, but glad you came back to link it.

  4. cocomaan

    It’s interesting from a media perspective how long the tail is getting. Alternative outlets need to rise to the surface, and fast, because the media is putting people’s safety at risk. It’s idiotic that his work needs to be published in a monthly magazine sent to people in a tourist area.

    Some of the firewall from the big media players is starting to unravel. I don’t know if it’s Bill Gates’s fall into Epstein’s orbit, the Biden admin’s weird masking flip flop, or what. But it feels as if the narrative is fraying at the edges a little more than it was during the depth of the crisis.

    In any case, I know what I’m asking for if I was ever hospitalized with covid.

    1. Mantid

      cocomaan, Yep, spot on. “Unravel” is true, even with the lab origin story being repressed for so long. That story too is falling apart. Here’s 10 minutes with Krystal and Saagar reviewing the latest Fauchi diversion attempt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZniDsuCX5g These two stories, Covid’s origin and IVM are becoming mainstream. Keep the full court press on – pun intended. WHOs heads will roll I wonder?

    2. John Buell

      John Buell,
      If I come down with the disease I will also request Ivermectin. But would any US physician prescribing it be harshly sanctioned? What rights should patients have to request a drug that a regulatory authority deems unsafe even though a fully credentialed minority deems safe and effective?

      1. David

        Contact frontline docs they will prescribe.! Be sure to get the steroid. They Saved my wife’s life.

        1. Rosalie

          What steroid saved your wife’s life…Budesonide? Did she take the steroid along with the Ivermectin?

    3. Syed Zaidi

      No point in waiting till you are hospitalised. It might be too late for Ivermectin to help. It’s very cheap from various companies in India and elsewhere and the drug has no side effects to speak of. Best to look up the prophylaxis and treatment protocols of some of the many doctors who have written about it.

    4. Critical thinker

      Good luck getting a hospital to prescribe it for you. I have a friend recently hospitalized for covid in MN who begged the attending medical staff to prescribe him Ivermectin. They refused. He became very ill, though thankfully, survived and recovered..

      1. Ms100

        There have been multiple cases of patients suing hospitals because they won’t prescribe ivermectin. A lawyer in Buffalo, NY handled the cases. It’s a human rights crime what hospitals are doing.

  5. Lurker

    Thank you for posting this article. The censorship of Ivermectin is a tragedy that has undoubtedly cost lives.

    1. ChrisFromGeorgia

      Frankly I think Facebook has gotten to the point where it could be considered a national security threat to many countries. China has the ability to take it down with the Great Internet Firewall, but many poorer countries lack that capability. Although I do recall during the Arab Spring some ME countries took down twitter and FB.

      Perhaps it will take something on that order to strangle their business model and stop FB from acting like the Ministry of Truth.

      1. Equitable > Equal

        I would also like to point out that Google voluntarily flags cross-referenced accounts (incl ip address, linked payment methods, linked recovery accounts) directly to the surveillance agencies based on content including youtube comments. Overtly this is to prevent actual acts of violence and self-harm, but it shows the level of policing that is now occuring at the big tech firms

  6. John

    If what this article implies is reality, give me a reason to place any trust in government, media, or certain corporations ever again under any circumstances.

    1. jefemt

      Bingo.

      Ask any Parent, Teacher, child or partner about “The Talk” (Not The Other “Talk” ).

      The “Integrity/ Don’t Lie” talk. Trust.

      1. Mantid

        Jefemt, But don’t ask the teachers or students while they’re at school or doing school work from home. google has a throat hold on most American schools via their various software. Student homework, handouts from teachers, written assignments, lessons, attendance, discipline reports, awards, …. so much data are on google docs. This is one reason why it’s so easy to fool people. Student “I googled it and didn’t find anything”. Teacher “Well then it must be a conspiracy theory”. Sad state these United.

  7. Louis Fyne

    the US at its peak hit ~75 cases for 100,000 people. California hit ~110 per 100k. ( https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ )

    Obviously with India there is almost certainly some degree of undercounting. Which magnitude? Have no idea.

    another frustrating aspect that the media doesn’t cover. And you can’t conduct good science without good data.

  8. Hana M

    Thank you for this summary.

    Another example of a tireless group of researchers going where journalists and the rulers of The Academy fear to tread is the Sars Cov2 origin story. Two theses from Chinese researchers have now been translated and published and a deep-dive is available here: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/a-chinese-phd-thesis-sheds-important-new-light-on-the-origin-of-the-covid-19-coronavirus/

    The 2013 masters thesis,is a detailed study of an outbreak of Sars-like pneumonia in six patients who had been shoveling bat guano in a cave in Mojiang. That thesis has now been supplemented with the translation of a 2016 PhD thesis,again from a Chinese researcher. I won’t go into detail here but the whole article is well worth a read.

      1. Hana M

        No, the Latham and Wilson report is related to Intellegencer article but is a much, much more detailed and up-to-date investigation.using primary source scientific material that has only just come to light.

        1. lyman alpha blob

          Yes your link has a much more detailed discussion of the science involved, but both trace the events back to the same incident with workers being infected by bats in a cave from 2012.

  9. JCscown

    Deaths are still rising. If it is a “treatment” to reduce hospitalizations, why are deaths still rising? If I had a family member who was getting sicker and sicker, I would throw anything at them to keep them alive, I think…anything reasonable. The problem here is that if you do a “study” correctly you have half of the people taking a placebo and dying. That is a hard decision to make. Salk and Sabin had a real problem with that kind of thinking during the Polio epidemic back in the ’40s and ’50s. Getting Covid-19 is not a good thing. We have seen long-term effects of the disease. Prevention is a key component to keep people safe. This article “mentions” they are using it as a preventative. Where is that data? The article also states that there may be “other things” bringing down the cases…like staying at home and wearing masks. This is kind of an inflammatory article. It fosters more distrust. Please be careful. Look at our numbers since the onset of vaccinations. One treatment does not preclude another. Look at the mechanism of ivermectin as well. It does a lot of its work in the brain cells.

    1. drsteve0

      Who knows if ivermectin works on COVID, the data is promising. Please don’t spread misinformation. DVM here since the eighties. If ivermectin did it’s work in ‘the brain cells’, everyone that took it would die. Ivermectin’s antiparasitical MoA is as a GABA agonist, only present in mammals in the CNS. Ivermectin usually doesn’t cross the blood brain barrier in mammals, except in rare instances, like Collies. Ivermectin will kill a Collie. The drug works peripherally in parasites. It’s action against COVID probably has nothing to do with GABA, more to do with ivermectin’s long known immune modulating and antiviral properties. Moreover, it has an enviable safety record.

    2. outside observer

      From my understanding the ivermectin policy was re-instituted around May 12, so the drop off in deaths should begin to occur now over the next couple weeks. The interview with Dr Kory by Dr John Campbell is very informative – it seems it’s most effective in the early stages.

    3. Mantid

      JCscown, There are many sentences to address in your comment, so I will focus on a couple> “It does a lot of its work in the brain cells.”. You seem to imply, correct me if I’m wrong, that IVM does negative work in the brain cells. If you can link us to a study confirming that, I will type corrected. Your final sentence could also read “liver cells”, kidney cells”, “bladder cells”. Your comment seems a bit like “an inflammatory article”.

      Lastly “Where is that data?”. It’s here: https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2021/06000/Review_of_the_Emerging_Evidence_Demonstrating_the.4.aspx

      As drsteve0 says below “Please don’t spread misinformation.” ….. unless you can back it up with facts, links, papers, or other means.

  10. pjay

    As I read this article, and the article by Michael Capuzzo cited at the top, I couldn’t help but recall the New York Magazine story in yesterday’s Links — “The Families Torn Apart by Vaccine Politics.” The framing in that article was completely predictable: on one side we have the rational, educated and caring citizens who “trust the science,” and on the other side we have the crazy conspiracy theorist “anti-vaxxer” deplorables who cannot be reasoned with and endanger us all. Why would anyone in their right mind possibly hesitate to do what every *rational* person *knows* is the right thing?

    THIS is why! There has been so much distortion, manipulation, and censorship in the coverage of this pandemic that all trust in the media and its official “experts” has been destroyed for the majority of people. Of course there has been much ignorance and confusion sown by right-wingers for a variety of reasons. But that’s not what this is about.

    Thanks once again for providing a space for informed discussion on a crucial topic.

    1. Skip Intro

      Exactly! I can’t believe wasn’t listed as a reason for the media blackout. Ivermectin was a victim of Trump-panic. Trump mentioned Ivermectin, and it was suddenly the stupidest, wrongest, most dangerous thing in the world since his last statement. At that point, mentioning Ivermectin lead to mockery, and eventually, cancellation.

  11. Jürgen

    Ivermectin is an interesting and probably underutilized drug. Officially it is only approved for treating multicellular parasites (roundworms and ectoparasites), but there are indications of anti-viral, anti-inflamatory, and anti-protozoic effects. I raise free-range turkeys and have been using ivermectin to treat Histomoniasis, a disease caused by a protozoan, Histomonas meleagridis, to excellent effect. Before I started using ivermectin, by the time a turkey showed symptoms he’d die within 3 or 4 days no matter what I tried. Since using ivermectin I haven’t lost one turkey to Histomoniasis. I give them a high dose, 3-5 times the dose recommended (per kg) for anti-helmitic usage, repeated once or twice in intervals of 48 hours, and the birds show no negative effects, only immediate improvement from the symptoms of Histomoniasis… within 24 hours of the first dose they start eating again, for example.

    Of course this is stricly anecdotal, but for me it shows that we have here a very cheap and safe medication that may be effective for a log of things we don’t use it for, but of course there is no money to be made with it, so also no money available to research it further!

    1. IM Doc

      There actually is an ivermectin product FDA approved for another condition.

      Called Soolantra.

      It is for rosacea of the face – WC Fields nose.

      This works very well. It is in a cream form. This works by locally tapering the immune response in the skin.

      So not just for parasites although that is it’s overwhelming use.

      When medical or science reporters write it is just approved for parasites you can know they are willfully lying. It is also FDA approved for this inflammatory condition.

      1. Jürgen

        There actually is an ivermectin product FDA approved for another condition. […] It is for rosacea of the face […] So not just for parasites […]

        Apparently the FDA approved ivermectin for rosacea because it kills Demodex mites which are thought to be a contributing cause of rosacea, so still exoparasites. You may well be right that reduces immune response (or at least inflamation due to immune response), but it seems that’s not why it was approved.

        1. IM Doc

          It is used by dermatologists for all kinds of inflammatory skin conditions having nothing to do with demodex mites – and does very well – the actual indication is for rosacea. This has nothing to do with the original post – but demodex mites are not thought to be a major contributing issue in most cases of either rosacea or these other inflammatory conditions. Many patients yes – most patients no. I just spoke with a dermatologist who specializes in derm issues in people with autoimmune and other inflammatory derm issues – wanting to make certain I was conveying accuracy – and he without hesitation informed me that the main mechanism here is its anti-inflammatory properties. Anti-parasitic creams of other preparations simply do not work well if at all with many of these inflammatory conditions while Soolantra has been a bit of a game-changer for many of them. I have also sat through two non-pharma lectures about the past 3 years – and both discussed this anti-inflammatory property. That is why dermatologists are exploring off label uses with this drug for other medical conditions with inflamed skin. He even informed me that oral ivermectin is now being explored for many inflammatory skin conditions and early research is very positive. In other words it does seem to have anti-inflammatory properties – and this may very well be the reason why if given to early positive COVID patients it prevents them from getting very ill. I have seen this with my own patients and my own practice repeatedly in the past several months since I started using it for that indication.

          1. IM Doc

            And one other thing –
            I have been to two Zoom lectures in the past 6 weeks or so – one a Grand Rounds and the other an Infectious Disease conference at my old academic medical center.

            Both were a discussion of Ivermectin for COVID. As is the usual case right now, both were making the case to debunk its use. So, therefore, you must take that mood into consideration while listening. These lectures were long before all this data coming out of India. I will say the evidence coming out of other parts of the world is compelling and fully available – but largely being avoided or ignored by American academic medicine. I am not sure how they will be able to ignore the Indian data at this point.

            As is often the case with off-label drug usage, we do not really have a good explanation – at least one that is totally confirmed – as to why Ivermectin would have any affect on COVID.

            One theory is that it has a direct negative effect on the spike protein. The other theory is that has a direct effect on the immune system and tamps down the severe reaction to COVID leading people to be less sick and less likely to be admitted to the hospital or die.

            In other words we just do not know. Further information to come I am certain. Stay tuned. As is often the case, we have no idea how it works. It is a very very safe drug. And I will reiterate, with my own eyes I saw how well it worked this winter during our surge.

      2. DorothyT

        Response to IM Doc:

        Soolantra is a prescription cream containing 1% ivermectin. It’s indicated as treatment for the inflammatory lesions of rosacea (Galderma Labs, for US audiences only). Although the manufacturers will not state this, it’s well known among people who have rosacea related to or caused by Demodex mites, especially Demodex folliculitis. The condition is referred to as demodicosis.

        With me, demodicosis appeared as blepharitis, eyes as if ‘glued shut’ with eyebrows and eyelashes gone overnight. Soolantra cannot/should not be used in the eyes or eyelashes, but I found it helpful in using as directed in the skin at the scalp level and elsewhere where these mites were evident. One caveat in my experience, though you are directed to use a tiny amount, even that results in acid reflux with me. I rarely use this cream.

        In simple research online I see that one other often prescribed medication for rosacea is metronidazole. I was prescribed that initially and developed a well known side effect of this antibiotic drug — peripheral neuropathy. Be very careful.

    2. Yves Smith

      Another member of our Covid brain trust reports that Ivermectin is in the late stages of several trials outside the US as an HIV drug and is showing very promising results in all. So that confirms the notion that it has antiviral properties.

      And yes, Ivermectin also has an excellent safety profile.

  12. samhill

    The solid and reliable Dr. John Campbell on YouTube has done several excellent videos reporting on ivermectin.

    1. dimmsdale

      Yeah, that’s his site that I linked to, above. He had Dr. Lawrie on, and she walked him through the various ivermectin efficacy studies she’d looked at in a very nuts-and-bolts kind of way, no exhortations or histrionics, just the science. Dr. Campbell has been a godsend thru all this, at least for me.

    2. Mantid

      (who in the) samhill, Yes. And the interview he did with Dr. Lawrie was “telling”. The first 1/3 of the interview he is a bit skeptical (he had been for a few months) and by the end he was all smiles and convinced. It was excellent to see someone have their mind changed in real time. One hour and nice to see Dr. Campbell in action. It’s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYF8bnmdQfY

    3. Detroit Dan

      Yes. I’ve been following Dr. Campbell. He does a wonderful job — sincere, intelligent, concerned. It has been interesting to see him evolve as someone totally trusting of medical establishment (esp in UK where he lives) and then see him shake his head in disbelief as the ivermectin saga has played out.

  13. Lupemax

    this is a must watch 45 min video with Dr. Peter Mccullough interviewed by Tucker Carlson, who seems these days unafraid to ask important questions that no one else will. https://youtu.be/F7cLxs8fNq8 Mccullough is credentialed up the wazoo… impressive. https://www.cardiometabolichealth.org/peter-mccullough.html

    Here is Dr. John Campbell’s interview with Dr. Pierre Kory (MD, board certified in 3 areas) about covid ‘treatments’ primarily ivermectin. Kory’s website is FLCCC.net. Informative site. He gives a weekly update every Wed. evening on that site.
    Well worth your time
    https://youtu.be/JMeP66gdc4o Part 1
    https://youtu.be/19DPijOoVKE Part 2

    Here is Dr. Kory’s peer-reviewed now published paper on early covid treatment and preventitive care. https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2021/00000/Review_of_the_Emerging_Evidence_Demonstrating_the.4.aspx?WT.mc_id=HPxADx20100319xMP https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2021/00000/Review_of_the_Emerging_Evidence_Demonstrating_the.4.aspx?WT.mc_id=HPxADx20100319xMP

  14. Screwball

    I know of two PMC type, highly educated in the STEM field who are always yapping about following the science.

    One Tweeted a week ago about some doctor in Ohio who was prescribing some “miracle” cure and how he was going to “go to the end of the earth” to make him lose his license. I asked him what the drug was and all he would reply is “nonexistent.” Then called me an anti-vaxxing troll. I assume it was IVM.

    The other guy is still making Fauci and the NIH the end all be all of science and we should kiss their feet for all they have done for humanity.

    Oh brother. These are highly educated people and they think like this? I’m all for the science too, but what about the scientist? One guy is in his 30s, and the other is retired and teaching at a major university we have all heard of.

    I don’t understand how people like this can be so closed minded and naive.

    No wonder we are so screwed.

    1. LyonNightroad

      Many people only learn as much as they need to in order to get the prize. They aren’t learning for the sake of learning. It’s always been like this.

  15. The Rev Kev

    You know that the media and especially social media are pretty bad going by all the stories that are featured here but the censorship and outright lying is costing not only tens of thousands of lives but probably hundreds of thousands of lives here. We had a preview with what happened with Hydroxychloroquine last year which made it impossible to know if it was good, bad or indifferent. But what was beyond dispute was the extreme lengths that the media and medical science (which included The Lancet) went to to mess up the information on if it was effective or not. And now the same is happening to Ivermectin. You know what? It’s no fun to live in a society where you have zero trust in governments, medical authorities or the media. No fun at all.

    1. Carolinian

      It’s their media world and we just live in it. Taibbi has a post up on fact checkers and how their role has come to be distorted. He says media companies have always had fact checkers to back up reporters because the reporter’s job is to write readable copy on deadline rather than be experts on specialized areas like medicine or, in his case, economics (he says the Rolling Stone fact checkers had to clean up some of his articles on the financial crisis).

      https://taibbi.substack.com/p/fact-checking-takes-another-beating

      In other words working journalists really are stenographers much of the time but lately like to cloak themselves in an aura of expertise that they don’t posess.

      Then she wrote: “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence Ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.

      Going out on this kind of limb they rely on groupthink to back them up. It’s about creating a safe (for the journalist) and approved version of events rather than worrying about the long term truth. For them the “first draft of history” is good enough.

    2. Mantid

      Rev and Carol, It’s a well played hand that is being used. Well described vie the
      Union of Concerned Scientists. Same techniques used by big tobacco, Monsanto, et al. A five step process to throw a monkey wrench into any debate. It’s here:
      https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/disinformation-playbook

      The Union of Concerned Scientists are interested in truth and less interested in money than many of the scientists at the helm now: Fauchi and his minion. Over and out.

    3. marku52

      There was a Dr Campbell vid quite a while ago where he reviewed the big UK study on HCQ. He was “Gobsmacked” to note that in the trial they were administering Hydroxychloroquin at 4X the maximum recommended dosage, and “surprised” when the expected and predicted side effects (prolonged QT heart problems) showed up.

      He went back and forth to the UK version of the PDR to show over and over, how deranged their dosing was.

      The study was set up to discredit HCQ. Dr Campbell’s comment “This is a mistake a first year medical student wouldn’t make. I mean, you go to the book and it tells you the dosing. And yet they are doing 4 times that!”

      Then there was the veterans hospital study where HCQ was given to the sickest of patients on ventilators, and found no benefit, even harm. Well, Duh, the mechanism of action suggests it is mostly useful in the early viral infection phase, not in the cytokine storm. Again, the study was designed to fail.

      There has been a media push since day one to insure that no inexpensive treatment will be givin a fair shake.

  16. Tom Stone

    I read this and didn’t blink.
    Then I realized that the fact I am not surprised that profits and prestige are more important than the lives of millions says a great deal about Western “Civilization”, none of it good.
    I have come to understand that the World is run by the insane, if this doesn’t meet the definition of psychopathic behavior, what does?
    It’s going to be an interesting summer…

    1. Ahimsa

      There seem to be two distinct camps of experts..

      PRO:
      Frontline doctors who have administered Ivermectin and have seen results
      plus those who have reviewed the data and are convinced there is significance there.

      AGAINST:
      Doctors offended by the very thought of a simple treatment and proclaiming it can’t possibly work because of x,y,z theory-based reasons
      plus those who research the data and decide it is inadequate or of low quality.

      Note:
      Both of these papers have been accepted for publication:

      Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/

      Ivermectin for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis https://osf.io/k37ft/ (link is to preprint)

    2. pjay

      This reference has been posted here before. As I (and other commenters) noted then, despite its title, “Science Based Medicine” is not an objective source. Rather, it’s a propaganda site that defends dominant medical Establishment narratives and demonizes any challenges to them. While some types of “alternative medicine” are bogus and deserve criticism, this site is completely one-sided. Its role is to portray those who might have legitimate questions about Ivermectin, for example, as ignorant dupes too stupid to understand real “science.”

      1. Bobby Gladd

        Thanks.

        “Explanations for errors of judgment are not hard to come by; finding reasons for judgments is, if anything, easier than finding causes for events. We can always invoke the motives of the people making the judgments. If that is not sufficient, we can blame their incompetence. And another explanation for poor judgments has become common in recent decades: psychological bias.”

        — Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, et al.
        https://a.co/5F8WzOO

          1. Bobby Gladd

            Yes. The new Kahneman book draws significantly on that prior one. I’ve been reading his stuff for more than three decades.

            1. Mitch

              It’s a great book. One i have read twice. It invites you to look inside your own mind’s habits and some of the things you will find may surprise you.

      2. Basil Pesto

        ’twas I that first posted it, not because I agree with it (I find the above article by Corbishley more persuasive, broadly), but in the interests of providing a counter-argument.

        My response now is the same as it was then: an ad hom of “it’s a propaganda site that defends dominant Establishment narratives and demonizes any challenge to them” is fractionally as useful rhetorically as an actual counter-argument, and can devolve into a back and forth along the lines of:

        ~alt~ media site: “it’s a propaganda site that defends dominant Establishment narratives and demonizes any challenge to them”

        pro-mainstream site, commenting on the alt media site’s comment: “it’s a propaganda site that defends dominant Alternative narratives and demonizes any challenge to them”

        in both cases I learn nothing.

        As well as that, as soon as you start invoking certain words like “propaganda”, “Establishment” (capitalised, to boot!), “MSM” and so on, then, for better or worse, the normies who it’s important to convince will tune out as though you were on a soapbox on speaker’s corner. Which you plainly aren’t, but those words have a strong power to induce an eye-roll reflex.

        1. pjay

          Basil,

          Just saw this comment and felt the need to reply, because I appreciate your argument and mostly agree with it.

          Believe me, I don’t use the term “propaganda” loosely, just throwing it at anything with which I don’t agree. Here’s how Wikipedia defines ‘propaganda’:

          “Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence an audience and further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented.”

          This is precisely what ‘Science-based Medicine’ does. It uses appeals to authority, selective presentation of evidence, denigrating language, and emotional manipulation to support its perspective on particular medical issues as the *only* rational or “scientific” position, while contrary claims are portrayed as those of idiots, dupes, or con-men. As I say, many of their targets deserve criticism, but they are anything but open minded. Their function, again, is to support the medical status quo. They are “owned”, I believe, by the New England Skeptical Society. Like many such “skeptical” societies, this group does not represent true skepticism — open mindedness subject to weighing competing empirical evidence and rational arguments. Rather, they are pseudo-skeptics who simply denigrate alternative arguments as irrational and berate those who hold them. In this article, they do not make a balanced presentation of evidence, but rather practice many of the tactics Corbishley describes above.

          There is a lot more I could say about this organization, but that’s the gist. Again, I am not opposed to your basic argument. I should have been more clear about *why* I believe this to be a propaganda site.

  17. Larry Y

    If I have COVID-19, I’d probably ask for ivermectin.

    However, even with it, the virus overran India. While therapeutics are great and will still be needed, still need vaccines because the virus is now endemic globally.

    1. Mantid

      Larry, the reason it overran India is because they stopped using IVM. Vaccines may help (that’s debatable) but IVM works for pennies. Thanks a million.

      1. hoonose

        There is almost no way to hand out and then properly administer a medication like this to large populations in any timely manner. Vaccines are the only humane way through the Pandemic.

        But no doubt there remains much use for these meds even with the vaccines. There are bound to be cases cropping up for some time even after the Pandemic is essentially done. And in those cases the local docs will find ways to use these meds on an individual basis.

        1. Yves Smith

          Totally false. Ivermectin is a fucking PILL that is stable even up to high temps. In Africa, they mail kits with Ivermectin and other goodies to huge #s. This is way easier than administering shots.

      2. Larry Y

        Or, to re-frame the problem: if there’s lots of endemic asymptomatic spread, how would people even know to take therapeutics in the first place?

        There were super spreader events, more contagious variants, and complacency over non-medical interventions (masks, distancing, ventilation). From just the basic math, I think it would overwhelm most therapeutics, especially in a population without sufficient testing.

        Again, I’m not doubting the efficacy of ivermectin…

        1. Detroit Dan

          @Larry Y– Ivermectin is already take as a prophylaxis in many places in Africa and elsewhere, just as hydroxychloroquine is taken as an anti-malarial. You take a pill every couple of weeks. I did that with chloroquine when I was in the Peace Corps in the Philippines 19777-1979. Not hard to do, and I believe that’s what many countries are now doing with ivermectin.

          As a therapeutic, it’s even simpler.

    2. yelladog

      Somebody in my local area sued a hospital into allowing Ivermectin to be used on themselves. Hospital even didn’t comply with the judge’s orders until the local media got hold of it.

    1. marku52

      I would never use WP as a creditable source on anything remotely controversial. How to fight a lithium fire?, sure. But anything controversial, never. As somebody pointed out, it’s just another uncontrolled monopoly.

    2. Detroit Dan

      Agreeing with marku52. Wikipedia is great but has been hopelessly politicized for controversial topics. For Russia and the Syrian White Helmets, for example, there are documented “intelligence” trolls making sure Wikipedia matches the party line.

    3. Carla

      Agree with Marku52 and Detroit Dan. Looked up history of the frigging Blue Ridge Parkway on Wikipedia, and it contains NOTHING about the date the parkway was initiated, or why, or that it was an FDR Civilian Conservation Corps project or ANYTHING, because obviously if FDR did it, it was a Commie plot. The history section of the Blue Ridge Parkway entry manages to say nothing about the history of the damned highway. Wikipedia is becoming entirely useless.

    4. Alfred Neuman

      Anybody can edit articles at Wikipedia. It is well-known that invested parties pay people to monitor and edit articles to match their preferred narrative. Crowd sourcing information seems like a good idea until you consider that the part with the finances and the largest invested interest can easily control the information.

  18. sam

    See also Taibbi’s piece in today’s links re the MSM blackout on discussion of possible lab origin of COVID, Greenwald’s latest re the MSM outrage vs Belarus w/o mention of the US hijacking of Morales, the infamous censorship of the NY Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop – why are we still surprised that the MSM is anything other than the propaganda arm of the establishment. An acquaintance who grew up in the USSR once told me “We never read the newspapers to find out what was really happening, we just looked at them to find out what they wanted us to believe was happening.”

  19. flora

    There’s a revolving door between US govt health agencies and Pharma. For example, Scott Gottleib, MD, was head of the FDA from 2017 – 2019, and since leaving the FDA in 2019 now sits on the board of Pfizer. That’s only one example of the revolving door.

    1. flora

      There are many conflicts of interest reported on over several years.

      This from 2018:
      https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/hidden-conflicts-pharma-payments-fda-advisers-after-drug-approvals-spark-ethical

      This from much earlier, 2002-2003:
      https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/prescription/hazard/independent.html

      One interesting quote from the 2002-3 Frontline piece is this :

      Q. Is the balance of the FDA out of whack, in your opinion?

      A. I think the FDA is so grossly underfunded for its mission that it is out of balance because of user fees. User fees enable the agency to hire people to work for the industry. The other budget has been so limited and so cut — the other budget being that which is there for safety — the number of people hired at the agency to protect, to analyze data and drug safety, is criminal. The number of people required to study 3,000 drugs that are on the market is far more than the 17 or 20 — however many they have now. The teams that are needed to do drug safety are infinitely more than what they’ve got right now. We don’t have a safety system in this country.

      In my opinion, that’s a perfect neoliberal setup to undermine the ability of a federal regulatory agency to do its job in the public’s interest, and also increases the likelihood private monies from the companies its meant to regulate will influence its performance.

      After 20 years this conflict of interest is almost normalized now. I don’t hear any current questions in the MSM about it.

  20. jackman

    I was given Ivermectin in January when I had Covid and despite being very seriously ill–sicker than I’ve ever been–I never developed the dreaded pneumonia, and managed to avoid the hospital. Obviously that doesn’t prove anything. More interesting though is that my doctor had begun giving it to all her Covid patients some many months ago–and she had many cases–and absolutely insists that it works. And she worked in a large corporate practice where no one else prescribed it, and always felt the glare of the institution for stepping out of line. I say ‘worked’ in the past tense deliberately. She quit medicine just last month. She had became disgusted and disillusioned with the way medicine is practiced, ivermectin being a colossal example, and decided to become a farmer. She’s a beautiful soul and a brilliant, courageous doctor–I wish her the best.

    1. hoonose

      What we don’t know is related to the specifics and risks of her patient population. Without more good and solid blinded medical trails/studies, we docs are shooting in the dark in regards to Ivermectin. Her patients may have done just as well with no treatment. I recovered despite being seriously ill, and no treatment. At least the Rx seems to be very safe under these circumstances.

      1. Mad Mel

        You have got to be kidding me. “You docs” have zero problem prescribing toxic, dangerous meds every day of the week and absolutely deny the idea of side effects but oh, that Ivermectin is just too risky to chance using it on Covid patients. There is PLENTY of evidence to support its safety & efficacy, you just refuse to see it. You’ll just tell them to go home & suffer unnecessarily and wait until they’re seriously ill & require hospitalization to get some crap treatment like Remdesivir. What illness have we EVER encountered that has doctors refusing to give their patients any treatment, telling them to just ride it out and hope for the best? I think you’ve all lost your minds. Just a few weeks ago I had a dermatologist prescribe a skin cream and thankfully I researched the side effects before filling it, the list was a mile long and terrifying, including things like “coma!”

        1. Yves Smith

          You are straw manning hoonose, in that he did not depict ivermectin as risky.

          However, there is a large and growing amount of evidence supporting its use, so to depict it as unproven is a stretch. The most compelling comes out of Africa, which has a very low Covid rate and 2/3 of the population takes ivermectin already. And if you map the areas where ivermectin is heavily used v. not, you see a pretty tight correlation (higher Covid rates in areas with lower ivermectin use).

  21. BrianM

    “Ivermectin, the WHO researcher concluded, reduced COVID-19 morality by 81 percent.”

    I’m thinking this could be the most appropriate typo that I have ever seen! Though now I’m wondering how you measure morality…

    1. Nick Corbishley Post author

      Thanks for that, BrianM. And you¡re right, it’s a pretty good ‘un; I’m almost tempted not to change it :-]

  22. Hayek's Heelbiter

    As a trained organic chemist, I’m on the fence regarding IVM’s mechanism of action against Covid, but as a pragmatist, the evidence of its efficacy is irrefutable (unless, of course, you are Big Pharma or one of their lackeys in the MSM).
    I was wondering anybody else has been pondering the peculiar intersection of those two behemoths with the pandemic.
    Who is most likely to catch Covid and die from it? Older, less healthy, poorer, darker people. Endemic in the developing nations, a drain on the economy of more developed ones.
    Who would most likely benefit from a cheap and effective Covid treatment?
    See previous sentence.
    Could the ironclad media suppression of IVM provide pleasing collateral benefits to certain segments of society?
    Just curious.

  23. Phil in KC

    Is it reasonable to be agnostic on this treatment and say that we don’t yet know for sure?

    At this time last year a lot of folks were hot to trot for Hydroxychloroquine, including some of the geniuses of America’s Frontline Doctors. (Remember Dr. Stella?). Now, you don’t hear much about it at all. Maybe because it doesn’t really work. Maybe because one of the more pertinent conclusions of the few clinical studies concluded that Hydroxy actually harmed some patients and there was no definite proof it helped patients. You might also remember that Trump revealed he was taking Hydroxy as a preventative, again with no clinical proof of its efficacy. Not too long after that came out, he stopped taking it on the advice of several doctors who feared it would do much more harm than good. My point is that there’s a lot grasping at straws during a pandemic. Read Defoe on the great plague of 1665.

    WHO recommends using Ivermectin for Covid in clinical trial settings only at this time. Could there be another reason for not touting this treatment while trials are ongoing? Say, not wishing to raise false hopes? And also to remove yet another rationale for not getting vaccinated? (“Why get the shot when there’s a simple remedy available?”).

    Not trolling here, being very sincere. We’ve only been dealing with this disease for 16 months or so. How long did it take us to figure out AIDS, for example? I want to follow science, but at the same time I don’t want to breathe down their necks.

    As for the profit motive, someone has figured out how to charge thousands of dollars to insurance companies and their customers for insulin and it’s legal, so why would you expect anything different? On that front, I am cynical.

    A final thought: if Dr. Campbell finds Ivermectin promising, then I’m impressed as he has been quite reliable during this pandemic.

    1. Hayek's Heelbiter

      Further:

      “When inventor Frederick Banting discovered insulin in 1923, he refused to put his name on the patent. He felt it was unethical for a doctor to profit from a discovery that would save lives. Banting’s co-inventors, James Collip and Charles Best, sold the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for a mere $1. They wanted everyone who needed their medication to be able to afford it.”

    2. IM Doc

      I understand what you are saying about not raising false hopes.

      As a veteran of the AIDS pandemic – I would suggest that your concerns are very understandable – but quite frankly, now like then, we just simply do not have the time.

      A very similar analogue to what is happening now with Ivermectin was Bactrim back in the 1980s – it was absolutely shat all over as a therapy for PCP in AIDS patient by the medical establishment including Dr. Fauci himself. The medical establishment dictated that we had to use Inhaled pentamidine and other toxic therapies – ( with the similar issue that these therapies were also very toxic to the wallet). Bactrim was and is a very cheap antibiotic. I remember one lecture with an NIH speaker back then that laughed out loud – “We cannot treat the plague of the century with little old lady urine pills”.. Not unlike modern times – “Ivermectin – that is just dog flea pills you morons!”. It was only the networking of frontline docs all over the country that eventually changed the course. Today, we do not have nearly the patients with PCP that we did then – but no one would dream of using pentamidine and Bactrim is now the front line agent.

      There are too many patients dying in these hot-spots like India. The safety profile of Ivermectin is so positive that it should be used without delay in these situations. All we are getting from the USA and the EU is stonewalling and deception – not unlike what happened in the 1980s with our medical leaders.

      Go and read “And the Band Played On” – little has changed.

  24. derechos

    From the British Medical Journal
    Misleading clinical evidence and systematic reviews on ivermectin for COVID-19
    https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/04/21/bmjebm-2021-111678
    “Up to February 2021, the (Pan American Health Organization) identified twenty two ivermectin randomised clinical trials through a rapid review of current available literature.34 There is considerable heterogeneity in the population receiving ivermectin, with studies administering it to family contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases as a prophylactic measure and other studies using ivermectin for treatment of mild and moderate infected cases28 or even severe hospitalised patients. Applied dosis (sic) and outcomes of interest were also highly variable. Additionally, patients also received various cointerventions, and control groups received different kinds of comparators ranging from placebo or no intervention to standard care or even hydroxychloroquine. The authors claim that pooled estimates suggest beneficial effects with ivermectin, but the certainty of the evidence was very low due to high risk of bias and small number of events throughout the included studies. Most study results have been made publicly available as preprints or unpublished, with no peer review or formal editorial process. Others incorporated their results only in the clinical trial register, but nearly half of these randomised clinical trials had not been registered.”

    “Concluding, research related to ivermectin in COVID-19 has serious methodological limitations resulting in very low certainty of the evidence, and continues to grow. The use of ivermectin, among others repurposed drugs for prophylaxis or treatment for COVID-19, should be done based on trustable evidence, without conflicts of interest, with proven safety and efficacy in patient-consented, ethically approved, randomised clinical trials.”

    1. IM Doc

      In India – right now – you are seeing a gigantic trial taking place for all of humanity to see. I cannot wait to see how the medical establishment tries to play those data.

      This is so so familiar to those of us in the early days of AIDS.

      1. Phillip Cross

        Almost all the trial data is from tropical, third world areas. Places where there is a huge problem with untreated parasitic infestation because of the lack of clean water and poor sewage systems.

        It stands to reason that if you treat a patient’s parasites with ivermectin, they will become healthier, and more able to fight other infections, such as covid 19.

        1. Basil Pesto

          It doesn’t, however, stand to reason that the vast numbers reportedly seeing a benefit from ivermectin treatment in these ‘tropical, third world areas’ are only doing so because they all had latent parasitic infections. Come on.

          1. Yves Smith

            Please don’t Make Shit Up. About 2/3 of the population in Africa DOES take ivermectin regularly as a prophylactic. From IM Doc:

            Ivermectin is widely used as a prophylactic agent all over the continent – for sleeping sickness and multiple other parasitic agents. Estimated to be more than 2/3 of the population.

            It is called the Sunday, Sunday drug – because they usually take it every other Sunday. It comes in kits supplied by the country’s individual public health service.

            The first article is here – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920304684

            I would direct you to FIG 1 and Fig 3 – the left is the ivermectin group – the middle is the other agent group – and the right is the no agent group – and you can see the results – absolutely striking. The authors do pretzels about the fact that this is retrospective and other things could possibly be going on – but I would say that is pretty striking. And also note – MOST of the continent of Africa is on ivermectin every 2 weeks.

            2nd article – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33795896/

            APOC – is an organization from the UN – the African Program for Onchierasis – so these are the countries that use IVERMECTIN for that purpose – and then compared to the NON-APOC countries –

            The Conclusion – The incidence in mortality rates and number of cases is significantly lower among the APOC countries compared to non-APOC countries. That a mass public health preventive campaign against COVID-19 may have taken place, inadvertently, in some African countries with massive community ivermectin use is an attractive hypothesis. Additional studies are needed to confirm it.

            I love that word inadvertently –

            In brief – I think we must consider Ivermectin as one of the reasons Africa is straddling on the Zero line.

            1. Basil Pesto

              Thanks for sharing this interesting info which I will readily admit I was ignorant of.

              I would only point out that Mr Cross’ post didn’t explicitly say prophylactic treatment – my reading of the post was that it suggested that enormous amounts of patients were presenting with parasitic infections, getting Ivermectin, and as a result Africa was more or less covid free. That, I think, does not stand to reason – but that’s different if Ivermectin is already being taken en masse as prophylaxis – which I admit can fall under the word ‘to treat’ – rather than as needed. But this is an inane semantic point and perhaps I’m full of shit so I’ll stop there. Apologies to Mr Cross for my tone.

  25. Zamfir

    Looking at that graph: how would ivermeticin reduce cases in India? It’s not supposed to stop people from getting covid, or am I missing something?

    I thought it was meant to reduce the severity ofthe disease in diagnosed peoplem but then people who take ivermeticin still get counted as case, I would expect.

    1. marku52

      Yes, it does seem to prevent both infection, and transmission. IM doc has been giving it to households where one person is infected as a way to prevent transmission to others.

      He says it works, other docs at the FLCCC report the same.

  26. Zamfir

    Thanks! I later found an article that says that 2 states in Inda plan to use it for prevention, but it’s written as if that plans still had to start (on May 13th)
    “At least two Indian states have said they plan to dose their populations with the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to protect against severe COVID-19 infections as their hospitals are overrun with patients in critical condition”

    https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/2-indian-states-go-big-on-drug-ivermectin-despite-who-advice-2440954

  27. GM

    As a generic, ivermectin is cheap and widely available, which means there would be a lot less money to be made by Big Pharma if it became the go-to medicine against covid.

    Dexamethasone is even cheaper, also off-patent decades ago, and also widely available, yet there was no conspiracy to withhold it from the public. As soon as its effect of reducing mortality by half was demonstrated, it was adopted, and that has saved millions of lives.

    1. IM Doc

      The difference being is that steroids have been routinely and widely deployed in SARS like illnesses like this for decades. To some benefit and to some detriment. But the point being – medicine was used to thinking of steroids in those terms.

      Ivermectin is out of left field – and the skepticism was high. Including me. Until I started reading the RCT coming in from all over the planet, started using it – and noticing my hospitalization numbers dropping dramatically in the worst of the crisis here in our town.

      What I am saying – docs are used to thinking of steroids in this way – not so much ivermectin. It has a huge hurdle to overcome.

      FYI – dexamethasone is one steroid being used – budesonide – an inhaled steroid – is the one mainly being used here in the USA.

      1. Ahimsa

        Are doctors becoming more like economists?

        spotted on twitter:

        Whenever I say #Ivermectin is working in the real world, friends ref to some study where it was “proved” that it doesn’t work. Reminds me of the economist who said “Sure it works in practice, but does it work in theory?
        In fact, there are many random trials to support Ivermectin

  28. GM

    In many of India’s regions the case numbers are plunging in almost vertical fashion. In the capital Delhi, as in Mexico City, hospitalisations have plummeted. In the space of 10 days ICU occupancy fell from 99% to 70%. Deaths are also falling. The test positivity ratio slumped from 35% to 5% in just one month.

    Mobility is down in India 50-60%, i.e. as much as during a really serious lockdown, and it would have been even if there was no lockdown — when people are being cremated on sidewalks and when a couple million died in a short time span, that tends to scare everyone else into going into hiding.

    On top of that a very large fraction of the population has been infected. So it is natural for the wave to start to subside.

    Until the next one, of course.

    It’s not because of ivermectin. In any case, ivermectin would not reduce cases, it would only reduce the CFR.

  29. rowlf

    I was nearly fell off my couch a few months ago during an over-the-air Atlanta news interview with a US CDC official when the official recommended that everyone take vitamin D3 supplements to bolster their immune systems. Where else in the US media was vitamin D3 ever recommended?

    1. IM Doc

      Thank you for posting this –

      Right up front – this from the abstract – Controls were standard of care [SOC] in five RCTs and placebo in five RCTs.

      My comment here – I would have a hard time distinguishing the difference between a placebo and “standard of care” – basically the standard of care at this point is to send positive patient home – and come to the ER if SOB worsens —- OR be dosed with monoclonal antibodies that cost 15000 dollars – and really does not have good data behind it either.

      But the kicker is when any research or papers are supported by “The Zuckerberg-Chan Initiative” my initial response is to use them for bird cage protection. It is by definition something emanating from the “Ministry of Truth” – I am not sure how much more of that I can take.

  30. Ram

    I don’t know if ivermectin works or not but patient stopped getting ivermectin because government said so is blatantly false. It simply doesn’t work like that in india. I can walk into a pharmacy and buy any drug without prescription (except sleeping pills). So buying ivermectin is not a problem for anyone, Unless there is drug shortage.

    Massive Remdesivir shortage was caused by patients demanding it even though doctor crying hoarse it does not work.

  31. Ahimsa

    Out of curiosity I did a google search of “ivermectin” yesterday. This was the “Top Story” (alongside an FDA link with picture of horse recommending against ;)

    Finnish firm earns US patent for Covid drug containing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine
    The Turku company says its nasal spray delivers low, safe doses of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and aprotinin
    .

    https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnish_firm_earns_us_patent_for_covid_drug_containing_ivermectin_and_hydroxychloroquine/11946611

    1. Sebastian

      Out of curiosity do an #ivermectin search on Twitter. It doesn’t show any tweets about ivermectin, it only looks for corona or covid. Now that is getting evil, and I hope that I did something wrong searching for it. But the weeks before it always worked like a charm.

  32. David

    Bret Weinstein and Heather Haying, both respected biologists, have been covering Ivermectin on their Evolutionary Lens podcast for quite a while now. Here is a segment from last week with latest research..<I

  33. Erika

    I am here alive and well to tell you that I have NO idea how or why it worked, but I AM HERTE ALIVE to tell you…I was dying, 64, could not hold food down, nauseated, with monstrous headaches, high fevers, severe body aches, weak, shaky, with no idea whether I could possibly make it another hour through this! I was perscribed the Ivermectin 3mg tablet, instructed to take 4 tablets at a time each day on an empty stomach each day after taking Zinc on an empty stomach 1st and then the Ivermectin ( along with with some other simple vitamin protocol, THIS IS NO JOKE! I have gotten well again and strong! it seems like a dream, a miracle….I am so grateful! If it doesn’t hold up in the pharmacy approval ratings, or will be be looked at as another hydroxychloroquine hoax, that will be the worst danger to the cure for severe COVID patients EVERYWHERE! THAT will be the worst kind of tragedy imaginable! I am living proof and i was dying proof….no doubts!

  34. Erika Colnick

    In addition to my comment above: I would like to add that I am NOT fully recovered. I am considerably better though, and do not feel like I am dying anymore! Just wanted to set that record straight!

  35. Edlay

    Congratulations on printing this article.

    I have tried to bring ivermectin to the attention of the UK media, the Channel4 news and the Times investigation team and I have asked why it’s
    not part of the Oxford Prevent study.
    Nothing happens. It’s like a black hole.
    But definitely the scandal of this pandemic.
    The industry links to FDA, WHO and Medical media need investigating.

  36. Michael

    Interesting stuff! After drilling down three pages through Duck-Duck-Go I found a reference to a clinical trail conducted by the US gov. While the group sample sizes are very small, ie N=30, as typical with most medical studies, looking at “study results” it appears that the group given Ivermectin showed statistically significantly differences in outcomes in certain areas. I hope somebody with more medical knowledge have look at this study.

    To the moderator and as a comment to my own paranoia I suggest somebody do a screen grab of this study before it disappears.

    https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT04646109

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