ICU doctors say a safe, generic drug can prevent COVID-19. Why aren’t we using it?

This coming Saturday, July 24th, is World Ivermectin Day. Its organizers describe it as a time to celebrate a decades-old drug that’s changing the COVID landscape.

For the past 20 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has considered Ivermectin an “essential medicine.” Drugs on this list have been judged by the WHO to be the “most efficacious, safe and cost-effective medicines” known to humanity (bold added).

Originally used to treat parasites in animals, Ivermectin was later found to eradicate parasites in humans. For that reason, its inventors/discoverers were awarded part of the 2015 Nobel Prize in medicine. In the word’s of the Nobel committee:

Ivermectin is used in all parts of the world that are plagued by parasitic diseases. Ivermectin is highly effective against a range of parasites, has limited side effects and is freely available across the globe. The importance of Ivermectin for improving the health and wellbeing of millions of individuals with River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis, primarily in the poorest regions of the world, is immeasurable. Treatment is so successful that these diseases are on the verge of eradication, which would be a major feat in the medical history of humankind. [bold added]

More recently, research has identified Ivermectin’s impressive anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties. This is important, because a serious case of COVID-19 has at least two phases: viral and inflammatory.

But research papers are only a tool. Although they help us identify useful medical treatments, that isn’t sufficient. A few years ago I wrote a report arguing that roughly half of published scientific research is probably wrong. The core idea behind the ‘reproducibility crisis’ is that results that look good on paper don’t necessarily pan out. The findings of nine out of 10 landmark cancer research papers couldn’t be reproduced when a second group of scientists attempted to do so. Of 53 research papers, only 6 passed this test (11%).

Treatments must not only appear promising on paper, they need to work when administered to real patients in the real world. Doctors from around the world report that Ivermectin works against COVID-19. They know it has the power to bring some seriously ill patients back from the brink, after all else has failed.

Many physicians now believe our overall COVID response has focused on the wrong thing. When Ivermectin is prescribed immediately after a test comes back positive, they say, almost no one requires hospitalization. When it’s given to family members of infected people, additional illness is prevented. But rather than treating people early so they never become seriously ill, our focus has been on managing hospital resources such as ICU beds and ventilators.

Over at the Covid19CriticalCare.com website, protocols concerning the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 are downloadable as PDFs in multiple languages that can be printed out and given to our family physicians.

Rather than being drawn up by officials in ivory towers, these protocols have been developed by some of the world’s most accomplished ICU doctors. Doctors who’ve struggled, month after month, to save lives. Doctors familiar with the faces of patients who didn’t make it.

These treatment protocols are the best kind of evidence. Forged in the fire of firsthand experience, they’re our ticket out of this nightmare.

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• visit the World Ivermectin Day website
• visit Covid19CriticalCare.com to see the protocols, read about these highly credentialed doctors, and peruse the videos

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