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Ivermectin is an effective COVID-19 drug, doctors attest

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On the 8th of December there was "Breaking" World News:

Physician Tells Senate, Ivermectin Is a COVID 'Wonder Drug;' 'If You Take It, You Will Not Get Sick'

CNS News reported: In an impassioned presentation, Dr. Pierre Kory, a physician at Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center in Milwaukee, begged the National Institutes of Health to review his study of Ivermectin, a drug that's been around for decades and is used to treat parasites.

I didn't hear about it then, and, perhaps, neither did you! But could it be true? Could an already worldwide available drug be a "wonder drug" against COVID-19?

If true, this matter would be extremely urgent and timely as many countries are going through a new Corona crisis right now, with risk of a more infectious virus strain taking hold.

But an AP "fact check" article quickly put a damper on it:

No evidence ivermectin is a miracle drug against COVID-19.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: [...] There’s no evidence ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.

So, which is it? Which is correct and which is false?

Intuitively you may tend to believe one or the other depending on your political preferences, personal appeal, or appeal to authority. From experience, sensational articles often turn out to be wrong, and fact check articles usually have it right. But, amazingly, the "fact checker" article claims that there is "zero evidence" without giving any basis for their claim. In contrast, the sensational news article refers to dozens of scientific studies that -supposedly- are unanimous about the evidence!

Here are a few excerpts of the US Hearing including the emotional witness by Dr. Rajter and Kory.

Dr. Rajter 0:00
Dr. Kory 6:40

The full testimony with references of Dr Kory is easy to find, for example here.

To make sure who is telling the truth, we can sample a few of the references in Kory's written testimony and check that they are not a joke but real scientific studies that back up the incredible sounding claim.

Here's my arbitrary pick of reference numbers for different treatments (on purpose I type this before checking):

Group 1 Prophylaxis: - ref. 34, 54
Group 2 Early treatment - ref. 40, 54
Group 3 Hospitalized - ref. 43, 63
Group 4 Regional evidence - ref. 46, 47, 48 (I can have a quick look at all three)

I started with reference 63, a study from Iran, not peer reviewed (by the way, neither was the Pfizer vaccine trial). A 45-days randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter, phase 2 clinical trial was designed at five hospitals. A total number of 180 mild to severe hospitalized patients with confirmed PCR and chest image tests were enrolled.

The outcome is a bit complex, but overall they found an impressive reduction in mortality with ivermectin. Even so impressive I'd say, that it could be immoral -even criminal- to ask for another such study!

Reference 54: Egypt. Test of transmission of infection with a large group of COVID-19 infected people and contacts. They compared in fact Ivermectin (IMT) vs medium dosage hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). As a reminder from my last blog post, HCQ appears to be beneficial compared to placebo in early treatment. Their outcomes of IMT vs HCQ:

- 2 infections with IMT, vs 10 infections with HCQ -> IMT seems to be an EFFECTIVE PROPHYLACTIC.
- an approximately tenfold reduced mortality(!), however it seems they didn't wait for final outcomes for all patients

That suffices to conclude that the Associated Press "fact check" is faulty (to put it mildly).

I took a further look, at the other selected articles; see the Annex for my first impressions. On trialsitenews I found a pertinent commentary that matches mine, with in addition an analysis of "AP's hit job"; also some of the comments there are interesting. An extremely compact summary result of all known studies can be seen here: https://c19ivermectin.com

I think that it's safe to assume that this "wonder medicine" has a more substantiated test record than the miraculously fast developed vaccines such as the one by Pfeizer, and which was approved for the EU this week. Compare a NewScientist description of that vaccine : https://www.newscientist.com/article/2261805-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine/ : "In total, 170 people fell ill with covid-19. Only eight of them were in the vaccine group; 162 had received the placebo". Apparently Pfeizer did a single study, without any way to test or verify any reduction in COVID-19 deaths. Such a reduction in deaths is likely but not sure. And its long term safety is unknown.

And so, that makes it all the more shocking to hear from Dr. Kory:

Our group held a press conference this past Friday, December 4th at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, issuing a “Call to Action". The press conference was broadcast via the Associated Press and Univision to nearly every country globally. [emphasis mine]

A reliable source informed us that, among others, reporters of CNN, local NBC and Agence France-Presse were watching that broadcast.
But I don't recall hearing any such breaking news at that time; as a matter of fact, neither did the doctors hear back from any of those news organisations! Do I need to point out that this is not normal? Even extremely unusual?

Today the EMA, the agency for drug approval of the EU gave its OK for the new Pfizer vaccin, which is of course good news, and the speaker even mentioned that they expect to be looking into approving drugs early next year; listen here, it's very short:

I thought, great, it shows that things are finally moving - until I realised that it's doubtful that she was talking of repurposed safe and effective treatments such as with ivermectin. Is her thinking perhaps conditioned by the pharmaceutical industry? I searched EMA's website on which I could not find a trace of ivermectin. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are mentioned (without a sign of rapid approval for this use) and Remdesivir - which is probably the worst of all - seems to be authorised.

But there's also good news, a number of countries especially in South America have already included ivermectin or are in the process of including it. See a full interview with Dr. Carvallo here, or watch this shortened summary video:

It seems that ivermectine treatments (for prophylaxis as well as against infection and for inflammation) are being stonewalled by important institutions and organisations that are cosy with the pharmaceutical industry. See also this commentary: https://trialsitenews.com/introducing-the-physicians-for-civil-defense-prominent-doctors-know-ivermectin-can-help-treat-covid-19-will-anyone-listen/

In conclusion, I do think that this is genuine world news; with enough production capacity this could end the pandemic crisis right now (assuming that those studies are reliable).
However, it seems that in Western countries nobody of influence is interested to even look at the data, let alone recommend it to governments for emergency implementation.

[edits: a few remaining typo's corrected, press conference link added and the Annex moved to a separate page]


Comments and suggestions are welcome!
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Admin

39 months ago
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A first comment, received by email:

Interesting, thanks. This is written in a much more emotional style than usual, which does not help to make it more credible. Also more typos than usual: Pfeizer/Pfeiser It is also a proper conspiracy theory. The first that I don't immediately dismiss, after having heard about so many this year.

That politicians favour big pharma companies does not seem unlikely. But why did not more researchers and doctors pick this up?
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Admin

39 months ago
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Thanks - the typo is herewith corrected, indeed I was tired when finishing it. I reported in a less emotional style than Dr. Kory; what matters is the facts which are quite disturbing, despite the good news. And I don't see any reason for inventing a conspiracy theory. The real world situation with which we are confronted again and again - as recently as with the B737MAX scandal - is that authorities are too much in bed with companies and that most news organisations are commercially dependent on companies, few are truly independent.

In order to pick up news, people must first hear of it. There was extremely little international reporting about it, except for a few negative ones like the faulty fact check that has been exposed here. I think that the well known problems with powerful lobbies, spheres of influence and financial relationships go a far way to explain the observed facts.
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Lausianne

39 months ago
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There may have been little reporting, and there are relations between politicians, media and lobbyists, no doubt. It is easy to claim that lobbyists are the only reason why this drug is not pushed more, but claim is not enough, it needs proof. What I'd be interested in is who's behind Ivermectin. Is it a small community project run by volunteers, so it can be suppressed easily? Wikipedia gives reasons why Ivermectin should not be used against Covid. Are those fake?
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Admin

39 months ago
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Probably an important peace of the puzzle is the extremely polarized and politicized discussion environment in the USA and Europe, as also exposed at the bottom in the last link as well as in comments there https://tria...yone-listen/
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Lausianne

39 months ago
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Truely worth inquiring why there has not been more public discussion about Ivermectin. At least it is not completely ignored or suppressed: https://www....i=ivermectin https://de.w...-2-Forschung (wikimedia mentions made up data as well as a successful trial)

In English: https://en.w...n#SARS-CoV-2 "Ivermectin has antiviral effects against several distinct positive-sense single-strand RNA viruses, including SARS-CoV-2." but: several reasons why it's not viable are mentioned. Maybe worth looking into a bit further.
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Admin

39 months ago
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Interesting site, thanks! Pharmawiki says to be independent, just as Trialsitenews.
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Admin

39 months ago
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Here's a link to the massively unreported news conference:
https://tria...ive-coverage
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Admin

39 months ago
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@ Lausianne, I didn't claim any unique cause for the total of events. The main point of this blog post was to find out if the doctor's alliance presented promising looking clinical trial results or if they didn't present any evidence as was claimed. It turned out that the doctors were not pretending but instead the fact checker was pretending to be a fact checker. Consequently, I support those doctor's cause that for the sake of us all, their test results should be fast-tracked for quick review by governmental specialists, just as was done with Pfizer's test results. Technically it's not even necessary as the medicine has been available for decades, but it could lead the way to more large scale medicine distribution campaigns. The task of encyclopedias is to report on such findings as well as eventual different opinions of specialists. And we know that Wikipedia doesn't always do a good job on that. By the way, this is really funny: did you notice ref.98 in the Wikipedia article on Ivermectin?
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Admin

39 months ago
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One more comment, "But why did not more researchers and doctors pick this up". In fact, many doctors and researchers picked it up and worked on it - that's the huge amount of clinical study data that the press conference in the USA summarized! Also a news station in Australia picked it up, interviewing an Australian doctor : https://www....=wdq9Z6S3t_g

And of course, on Internet we can find more doctors who had picked up on it, see here's one doctor explaining the evidence up to October:

https://www....=V4fEBK1inj4
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Admin

39 months ago
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Yesterday's Wikipedia's ref.98 is today ref.99, IP telling that "there's no evidence". In hindthought, I find it mind-boggling that one week after a press event that was broadcast via the Associated Press, that same AP first failed to broadcast or even report on the event, and then mentions about a following Senate hearing: "Clips of Kory’s comments on ivermectin during the hearing were shared widely on social media".

I now put thewords "Associated press" in bold in the above blog post.
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Admin

39 months ago
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PS In my last remark, the doctor explaining the evidence up to October, from 29:00 he also reviews the paper by Dr. Carvallo who appears in the last video clip in my blog post:

https://yout...1inj4?t=1745
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Anonymous user #1

39 months ago
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I totally loved this sentence: “Even so impressive I'd say, that it could be immoral -even criminal- to ask for another such study!” It makes me wonder how effective it could have been if the authors (all who claim the effectiveness or uselessness of certain drugs in critical situation such as now) were asked for another experiment, proving their method’s reproducibility, before their works were published. Regardless of all these claims and the vaccines that different companies are working on, I don’t consider myself someone who would jump in the line to get vaccinated.

Also, I agree with the first comment, this time I could see emotions running through the lines! :)
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Admin

39 months ago
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Anonymous, thanks for that interesting thought. :) as you may know, the standard way to do science is that when experiments seem promising, others are asked to independently verify the results, preferably by repeating it with more precision. In this case, multiple independent studies confirmed the hypothesis that ivermectin is effective. However, in emergency situations it's considered immoral to fail to give help that very likely will safe lives, even when it's not yet formally proven.

As a matter of fact fact, that's just what is being done at this very moment with the Pfizer vaccine, but at an extremely large scale. Pfizer is not asked to redo their experiment or even to publish their results, or to show that it helps to reduce infection or death toll. Instead, emergency authorization has been given to the vaccine and it is immediately being rolled out at large scale. By means of population statistics one may be able to infer after some time how much it helps and how safe it is. I just hope that those massive amounts of volunteers understand that it is still very much experimental...
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Lausianne

24 months ago
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Meanwhile there have been more studies and publications, Sorry, I'm not going back now to find the links. But the results were that Ivermectin seems to work well in some countries and not at all in others. Reason: it is effective against parasites. Parasites are a high additionial risk for covid patients. So if these are treated against parasites, it helps them to survive covid. In countries where a large part of the population is affected by parasites, Ivermectin is therefore indeed helpful. As would any other anti parasite treatment be.
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Admin

14 months ago
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That's an interesting thought, thanks!

To my knowledge, ivermectin was successfully tested in countries in which populations are not particularly affected by parasites. For a comprehensive list, see https://c19ivm.org/
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