When it comes to the treatment of COVID-19, many Western nations have been hobbled by the politicization of medicine. Throughout 2020, media and many public health experts warned against the use of hydroxychloroquine, despite the fact that many practicing doctors were praising its ability to save patients. Many of them were silenced through online censorship. Some even lost their jobs for the “sin” of publicly sharing their successes with the drug.

Another decades-old antiparasitic drug that offers great hope is ivermectin, but it too is being hushed up by mainstream media. Trial Site News¹ tells the story of a 77-year-old Indian couple, both of whom became ill with COVID-19. One successfully recuperated following treatment with hydroxychloroquine. The other with ivermectin.

While ivermectin certainly appears to be a useful strategy, which is why I am covering it, please understand it is not my primary recommendation. If you are looking at this as a magic bullet, think again. You are far better off first optimizing your vitamin D levels as I have discussed in dozens of previous articles that you can easily find in the search engine at the top of the page.

Remember, you need vitamin D for a wide variety of functions in your body in addition to optimizing your immune response. Although ivermectin is a relatively safe drug, it is still an unnatural synthetic chemical that can have side effects. Vitamin D is something your body absolutely requires for optimal health, which is why I would encourage you to focus on vitamin D first.

Inexpensive Treatment Responsible for India’s Success?

Getting back to ivermectin, Trial Site News reported² that “Ten months into its battle with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, India is on track to become an unexpected warrior in the fight against this global pandemic. Although the densely-populated nation has four times the population of the U.S., India has less than half the U.S. COVID deaths.”

While India had a daily positive test rate of nearly 100,000 back in September 2020, by the end of December 2020, the infection rate had dropped by 75%. While this rapid decline is by and large being attributed to strict lockdowns, universal mask wearing and extensive contact tracing and testing, the availability and use of effective treatments likely plays a pivotal role.

In late March 2020, India added hydroxychloroquine to its national treatment guidelines, urging the drug be used “as early in the disease course as possible.” It was not recommended for those hospitalized with severe illness. 

Then, in August 2020, India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, which has some 230 million residents, added ivermectin to its recommendations and distributed the drug for home care free of charge. The state of Bihar, which has 128 million residents, also started recommending ivermectin, and by the end of 2020, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh had the lowest and second-lowest COVID-19 fatality rates in all of India. 

Uttar Pradesh, however, took it a step further than Bihar. They also used ivermectin as a prophylactic, first among health care workers and then among people who had come in contact with a person who tested positive. 

This drug makes far more sense in India as the vast majority of the population indeed suffer with parasites as a result of largely contaminated municipal water supplies.

Frontline Doctors Call for Adoption of Ivermectin

In the U.S., the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) is now calling for widespread adoption of Ivermectin, both as a prophylactic and for the treatment of all phases of COVID-19.^3,4

December 8, 2020, FLCCC president Dr. Pierre Kory, former professor of medicine at St. Luke’s Aurora Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where he reviewed the evidence supporting the use of the drug. (He resigned from St. Luke’s shortly after giving this testimony, saying the medical center wanted to restrict his freedom of speech.⁵) As noted on the FLCCC website:⁶

“The data shows the ability of the drug Ivermectin to prevent COVID-19, to keep those with early symptoms from progressing to the hyper-inflammatory phase of the disease, and even to help critically ill patients recover. 

Dr. Kory testified that Ivermectin is effectively a ‘miracle drug’ against COVID-19 and called upon the government’s medical authorities — the NIH, CDC, and FDA — to urgently review the latest data and then issue guidelines for physicians, nurse-practitioners, and physician assistants to prescribe Ivermectin for COVID-19.”

January 6, 2020, Kory and Dr. Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia — both are founding members of FLCCC — also presented evidence to the National Institutes of Health COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel, which is working to update NIH guidance.⁷ The NIH panel is expected to update treatment guidelines by early February 2021. According to the FLCCC:⁸

“Numerous clinical studies — including peer-reviewed randomized controlled trials — showed large magnitude benefits of Ivermectin in prophylaxis, early treatment and also in late-stage disease. Taken together … dozens of clinical trials that have now emerged from around the world are substantial enough to reliably assess clinical efficacy. 

Data from 18 randomized controlled trials that included over 2,100 patients … demonstrated that Ivermectin produces faster viral clearance, faster time to hospital discharge, faster time to clinical recovery, and a 75% reduction in mortality rates.”

A one-page summary⁹ of the clinical trial evidence for Ivermectin can be downloaded from the FLCCC website. A more comprehensive review¹⁰ of trials data has been published in the journal Frontiers of Pharmacology. A listing of all the Ivermectin trials done to date, with links to the published studies, can be found on c19Ivermectin.com.¹¹