Why Hydroxycholoquine and Ivermectin Still Matter

Even with a Vaccine, even in the Lucky Covid Country of Australia

While you may not be aware of it in our cosy Covid bubble that is Australia, there is a fierce debate occurring around the previously uncontroversial drugs Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and Ivermectin (IVM) and their potential use as treatments for Covid-19. The truth about these two drugs has been the gateway to a level of corruption in our scientific process that most thought impossible. These two drugs have been, for many people, the final tug that starts to unravel the entire pandemic narrative. 

Such debate and rhetoric might seem a bit overblown down under, where we haven’t had close to the case and death numbers as other Western nations. So why should we care here? Why am I and a handful of other loonies still relentlessly flogging what might seem like a dead horse, with that kid from The Simpsons in the background crying “Stop! Stop! He’s already dead!”.  

The Vax is here after all, like it or not, and this is now the reality we have to deal with if we are to find our way out of the pandemic. 

But is it that simple? Let’s think this entire situation through, using a worst case scenario that any thorough risk assessment must consider and incorporate into its decision making (something we can only hope that vaccine manufacturers are also doing). 

First things first, let us not get complacent: just because Australia is currently in a thousand-fold better position than many other countries, we have no reason to believe it will stay like this. The testing/tracing/quarantine/lockdown combo must surely break down eventually — whether through the incompetence that has already been regularly displayed by those implementing it, or by a gradual social acceptance that we do at some stage need to make a return towards normalcy (especially now that the vaccine is being rolled out). Let us remember that the ‘Zero Covid’ virus elimination movement was never our goal from the start and is rejected by the vast majority of experts today. 

So what happens then, when we eventually find ourselves in a position more in line to what the rest of the world has had to deal with? Let’s play it out. 

Firstly, let’s take the 95% effectiveness from the official Pfizer vaccine clinical trial as gospel. That still leaves 5% who take the vaccine in the expectation of being protected, but who will still end up becoming infected. Surely, we have a duty to explore all potential Covid-19 treatments so that they are available for this group of unfortunates, which is almost certain to rise following the 2 month period that the trial was undertaken in? (That is, of course, not even considering the people who won’t take the vaccine, whether by personal choice or other legitimate health reasons.) 

But even this is an incredibly optimistic scenario. I’m sure everyone has heard about the new variants of the virus that are apparently starting to do the rounds. We even have the infamous British Mutant Strain, which would make a fantastic anti-colonial death metal band name. Whether one fully buys into the relentless fear that is being stirred up about these mutations — which were always completely inevitable and expected — we are obliged to take them seriously in terms of what they mean for the vaccine. And we now have multiple reports from around the world that the various vaccines being employed are proving less effective against these new strains. Not surprising, because this is exactly what happens with the ‘Flu. 

So where does that leave us? Any rational analysis of this situation must surely conclude that we cannot rely just on the vaccine to protect us from Covid-19 and its variants — stuck in a never-ending cat and mouse between mutation and scientific experimentation on an already experimental vaccine. If there are other treatments available — treatments that at the very least show promising results in multiple clinical trials, and that have established safety track records — then it would be nothing short of negligent to ignore them. 

And we have them: two of them, at the very least. And I am in complete agreement with the analysis of Robert Clancy, Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the University of Newcastle Medical School and member of the Australian Academy of Science’s COVID-19 Expert Database: a three-pronged approach between vaccines, HCQ and IVM is the now the clear way forward for re-building our communities.

Why am I and so many others so sure that both HCQ and IVM work as treatments for Covid-19, despite their continued opposition from politicians, health bureaucrats and the mainstream media? Let me try and give you the cliff-notes version. 

In this article, I did my best to guide people through the crap-show that was the early peer-reviewed research around HCQ, showing that it was a series of poorly designed but highly promoted studies that created the false impression that it not only didn’t work but may be dangerous (that's without even considering the repellant effect that a certain Orange ex-President had with his endorsement). This was because many of these studies — namely the largest studies that involved international cooperation — gave toxic doses of the drug to late state patients that in all likelihood directly caused their deaths. 

But I would suggest that is mere noise compared to the real world evidence of its administration, particularly but certainly not limited to the example of Switzerland. I have read many anti-HCQ articles (although, funnily enough, they have very much dried up in the last 6 months) and have yet to read a legitimate challenge to the obvious conclusion that the Swiss data presents: that in perfect time-lagged synchronicity with the withdrawing and subsequent reinstatement of the drug (following the release and retraction of a fraudulent study, of course), the overall case fatality rate rose and then dropped again by statistically significant percentages. 

The same logic can be used to show the effectiveness of IVM. I can point you to the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, and their recently accepted review paper on the emerging evidence of the effectiveness of IVM. If you want to see this research yourself, I can point you to the aggregating site ivmmeta.com, which similarly concludes that every single study to date on IVM’s effectiveness against Covid-19 has found some degree of positive results. Nit pickers could go through and dispute individual interpretations of individual studies, I am sure. They could conceivably find a way to discredit both websites and their researchers as a whole, no doubt leaving them with a smug sense of satisfaction for having dashed again the hopes of so many people that we do actually have a safe and easily available Covid treatment that can be saving people lives. 

But instead, I would just point to this Youtube video discussing events from a nursing home in Toronto. In February last year, the nursing home had a scabies outbreak, resulting in 170 residents being given a dose of IVM (the treatment of scabies being its most widely known use). Almost immediately afterwards, the nursing home also had a Covid-19 outbreak. What transpired was the remarkable outcome of less residents becoming infected with Covid than workers, the latter group having not been given IVM. In fact, on the floor of the home that had been given the highest dose, not a single resident got infected, despite them having an average age of 85 and having multiple chronic underlying health conditions. So, effectively, we had a double blind randomised control study, generally accepted as the gold standard for this type of research, playing out in real life via a series of fortunate events, providing virtually conclusive evidence for a drug’s effectiveness — just like for HCQ in Switzerland.

It is slightly sad to watch this video now, made in the middle of 2020, given the obviously misplaced sense of optimism it holds that these findings would translate into a turning point in the pandemic. That said, when I talk about these two drugs now, I rarely feel sad anymore. I just get a righteous feeling of anger that makes me chuck on my favourite motivational music playlist and try once again to wake even just one more person up to the corruption that is playing out in front of us. 

Hopefully you might be starting to feel the same anger, and hopefully that anger might lead to action. It is not too late to start fighting this most important of battles, because it may just be you and your loved ones that you are soon fighting for.