Why Are Health Authorities (and the media) STILL Ignoring the Evidence for Ivermectin?

The war on early treatments for covid

SEPT 2021

Disclaimer. I just want to state that the following is just my opinion and does not represent the opinion of any organization I may be affiliated with, nor does it constitute medical advice of any kind. It is just my humble opinion based on my own investigation and research.

Given the rather late start to the vaccine rollout in Australia, (about 30% people in Australia have been fully vaccinated, to date) it is no surprise that there has been growing interest in treatments for Covid-19. Or has there? For most patients who test positive for coronavirus and experience mild symptoms the advice is simply to isolate, “get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids and eat well”, according to the RACGP’s handout. The Australian state governments’ response to this latest outbreak is to just order everyone to stay home and wear a mask, indoors and out. Exposure sites' are updated daily and are growing exponentially, and the advice for anyone who has been to one of these sites in the last 14 days is either to test immediately and isolate for 14 days, or test and isolate until they get a negative result. But when it comes to treatments for Covid-19 or preventative measures, the mainstream media and our heath authorities have been largely silent. Based on the media rhetoric, the daily case numbers, and the mounting pressure to ‘get the jab’ – one would reasonably conclude that the only measures we have to fight this virus outside of hospital, it appears, are isolation, masks and of course, vaccines.

But what if that were not the whole story? What if there were already treatments that were effective and cheaply available, and in particular one that was safe to use and had minimal (if any) side effects when used correctly? Something that could be used as both a prophylactic and as an ‘at home’ treatment for mild to moderate cases?

Something that has been shown to reduce symptom severity, viral load and decrease recovery time? Something that was already approved for use in the general population for other illnesses and that could be re-purposed and quickly distributed to the population through primary health care providers? This ‘something’ would not be a replacement for vaccines, but it could be an adjunct, and it would mean that cases were less severe, people would be a lot less likely to need hospital treatment and that ultimately, lives could be saved. It would also mean that state-wide lockdowns could be avoided (such as the ones Victoria, and now New South Whales, have had to endure for the past 12 months). Wouldn’t that be something? Well, apparently this treatment already exists, and it is called Ivermectin.

Ivermectin for the people

I first started hearing about this medication in mid 2020. It sounded promising so I was cautiously optimistic. It had been in use for over 40 years, its side effects were minimal, and it had shown great promise in killing the covid virus “in vitro,” that is, in the lab. I thought it would only be a matter of time until more research was done and so, I waited, and waited, to hear more about it in the news. Nothing. There has been, to date, very little to no interest in exploring ivermectin, or other early treatment options by the media, our health authorities, and our politicians.

During the Victorian May lockdown of 2021 I started researching further again and found, to my surprise, that since the aforementioned in-vitro study, quite a lot more research had been done. So much so that in December 2020 the Front Line Covid-19 Clinical Care Alliance (FLCCC), comprised of front-line doctors and researchers from the US, had published a summary of the emerging research on Ivermectin on their website. They had even come up with treatment protocols to guide physicians. Interestingly, there was no media coverage of this development at all. And, even more confusingly, I discovered that YouTube had removed the video of senate testimony in December 2020 for ‘misinformation’. You read that correctly, senate testimony by well-respected researchers and physicians is now considered ‘misinformation’? (I have linked to the complete senate hearing which has found its way back on to the platform, for now anyway.)

This summary published by the FLCCC was essentially part of a literature review which summarised and analysed the research around the world on ivermectin’s use in treatment for Covid-19 to date. (This has since been peer-reviewed and published in the May/June edition of the American Journal of Therapeutics, 2021). In it, the authors concluded that “Meta-analyses based on 18 randomised controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance.” This review, as well as the meta-analysis conducted by the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) group, showed that broad-scale use of Ivermectin could safely reduce both the spread and the mortality rate of the virus, and could essentially end this pandemic, or at the very least knock some serious wind out of its sails. There is more research underway, but both the FLCCC and BIRD group are of the opinion that there is enough research and clinical data supporting its use already, and to hold off approval pending ‘further research’ would be unethical.

So why are the Victorian and the NSW governments not doing everything they possibly can to ‘curb the spread’ by endorsing the cautious use of this promising treatment, thus avoiding damaging and demoralising lockdowns? Dr. Tess Lawrie who has previously consulted for the WHO, has tried to get the message out to the relevant health authorities in the U.K. and elsewhere, as has Dr. Pierre Kory of the FLCCC, but this seems to be falling on deaf ears.

The latest research ignored

When asked about ivermectin at one of the press conferences at the height of Victoria’s ‘second wave’ lockdown in August 2020, Brett Sutton, the Victorian Chief Health Officer, summarily dismissed Ivermectin based on the aforementioned in-vitro study. He stated, quite glibly, that it would be “toxic” to humans at the levels suggested by this study. To most of us this sounds like an authoritative statement on the topic — and it is essentially what the main news media and certain ‘experts’ have repeated ever since; that there is “no evidence”, or at best insufficient evidence to support ivermectin’s efficacy for Covid-19. The media repeatedly state this erroneously as fact, whilst simultaneously failing to cite the mountain of research on ivermectin that has been published by peer-review since. Surely, our health authorities have been keeping abreast of this latest research? We are in a pandemic after all. Yet the Department of Health’s page on Covid-19 treatments, updated on June 3rd, 2021, is still insisting there is “insufficient evidence” for the use of ivermectin. The above review I mentioned was published months ago, yet the media both here and abroad have barely covered it. More so, many articles that are published in the mainstream media are increasingly negatively slanted against ivermectin, despite the available and ongoing evidence. Many of these ‘news’ stories fail to mention the positive research and clinical evidence, conflate human grade ivermectin with the veterinary preparation and even worse, label the drug ‘right wing’ or infer that all ivermectin advocates are crazy conspiracy theorists or “anti-vaxxers” in an increasingly desperate effort, it would seem, to discredit the treatment.

There has also been very little interest in what other countries are doing with Ivermectin. Countries such as India and Mexico, which have seen a marked reduction in both covid- 19 cases and deaths since an ivermectin test and treat program was introduced. But this information has been ignored, downplayed or marginalised as ‘misinformation’. The Australian media has even failed to report on what some (formerly) respected Australian doctors and researchers have said about ivermectin for months. Yet, none of this has been reported on by any of our most trusted news sources. It’s as if they have all received the same memo….

Big Pharma to the Rescue

I admit, the increasing level of disinformation and bias against ivermectin has made me suspicious. Has ivermectin’s use has been suppressed for more nefarious reasons? This is something I did not want to consider. However, when I read a Nine News article on Merck’s new ‘anti-viral’ treatment, a ‘new’ pill that could be used to treat covid-19, well it kind of started to make more sense to me. You see, there is little money to be made from a generic drug, especially when compared to a new one. (For those that don’t know, Merck was the former manufacturer and patent holder for ivermectin. Ivermectin is no longer under patent and is now classed as a generic drug which means that any pharmaceutical manufacturer can produce it without a licence.)

The evidence is quite clear, to me anyway, ivermectin works as both a prophylaxis and as an effective treatment for Covid-19, and ultimately, reduces harm. Of course, it is not a ‘miracle drug’. There is no such thing. But cheap, ineffective treatments could make a huge difference in the way we think and manage this pandemic. Vaccines alone are not the answer. This is becoming quite clear now given their reduced efficacy over time. However, and I want to state this clearly, this is not about discounting the vaccines.

Vaccines are beneficial but, new vaccines usually take years of research, testing and trials to be developed. The current batch of vaccines for Covid-19 utilize largely brand-new technology, and were therefore given Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), although some would say they were rushed through the approval process. I would argue that this is understandable because we are in a pandemic. However, the same argument could apply for the widespread adoption of re-purposed drugs, well used drugs such as ivermectin, fluvoxamine and even hydroxychloroquine, especially with the amount of data which we now have to support their use. Yet, our health authorities, the media and the government seem to be colluding to minimise, deny and obfuscate the evidence for early treatments in favour of novel vaccines with limited data to support their broad-scale use, in my opinion. My only conclusion is that early treatment, especially using repurposed drugs, has been suppressed initially in favour of supporting the vaccine rollout, and subsequently, in order to buy time for ‘big pharma’ to come up with “new” treatments, which they can sell to governments for a much higher profit margin. Maybe I am chasing at straws here, but it sure does seem to me that both the health authorities, the media and government seem to be heavily biased in the direction of the pharmaceutical companies. That is just my opinion.

Safe and Effective

Safety and efficacy are important. Vaccines seem to be one way to fight covid, but they are far from proven to be both or either in the medium to long term. When there are also existing treatments that are proven to be safe, effective and could potentially be administered quickly and cheaply, and when half a nation is in lockdown and not allowed to leave their homes, go to work or run their businesses, I really do not understand why a novel vaccine, never before used in the human population at large is given emergency authorisation, yet a safe, generic drug that has been used for decades is given such rigorous, suspicious and forensic scrutiny.

Well, as much as it pains me to point this out, this disparity in the treatment by the health authorities, the establishment media and our government bodies only begins to make sense when one looks up the FDA’s own guidelines, available on their website, regarding EUA rules. I have linked to it above but to directly quote the website it says, the “FDA may authorize unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical products to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions caused by CBRN threat agents when certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.”

So, what is one to make of this? Well, let’s follow the logic that the above statement infers. If a treatment, such as ivermectin, shown to be effective as both prevention and treatment of covid-19 were to be approved for use, then it would mean that the emergency use authorization for vaccines would have to be rescinded. That would also mean that the worldwide push to vaccinate would need to be halted, or that the vaccines would need to be returned to their unauthorized status whilst they go through the required testing and trial processes. Or, people would be given the choice to receive the vaccination with full disclosure of the risks and benefits, and given full, transparent and informed consent. There would be no case for vaccine mandates in this scenario.

If the EUA was suspended however, that could also mean that the millions (or is it billions) of doses already produced would need to be either destroyed or returned to the manufacturer. That would mean that a tonne of money has been wasted by our governments on the vaccines and that the pharmaceutical companies would either make a loss or would need to be compensated someway. (Some poor billionaires would have to go back to being just millionaires.) Some certain authoritative health figures would have at best, egg on their faces and at worst, some people could theoretically get into a lot of trouble. We might learn that lockdowns, at least beyond 2020, were never necessary. People would be, understandably, pretty angry. It would be a mess.

That is why I can’t see any of that happening. There is too much money at stake and too many reputations. We will have to wait until the “new” anti-viral pills are approved by the various regulatory bodies and everyone will forget about ivermectin. Perhaps history will reveal the truth of the matter or perhaps, sooner or later, enough people will start to see through the false narrative and discern fact from fiction themselves. One can only hope.