March 8, 2021
The “H” Drug And The “I” Drug
By Michael D. Shaw
In an era when Dr. Seuss is canceled, and clueless social media executives, along with other feckless corporate titans, seek to impose Nazi/Stalinist type censorship, it is no surprise that we need to be coy with drug names. The initials, of course, stand for Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, two drugs long established to be safe. Yet, if you mention these on YouTube, your video can be deleted. Much like what happened to the pioneering physician who dared to suggest that ventilators might not be the best way to treat COVID-19. He was right, but he too got canceled.
The easiest way to understand how two established drugs could become demonized is to look at the big picture. You might recall that the initial reaction to COVID-19 was that it should not be too much of a problem for the US. Soon after, though, “cases” began to soar and seemingly every single death that occurred was because of COVID-19. A “case” was generally defined as a positive result on PCR tests, which were shown to produce a number of false positives, based on the excessive number of PCR cycles.
Here’s how the Nobel Prize winning inventor of PCR, Kary Mullis, felt about all of this. Full marks if you note that such false positives also jack up the efficacy rate of the vaccine, since some supposedly “infected” test subjects were actually not.
Note also that the entire frantic notion of testing, except if it were to be applied to a short-term occupancy such as commercial aircraft (where it was not typically done), or for an immediate medical procedure, is of questionable utility. Considering how contagious the SARS-CoV-2 is, a negative result could be rendered meaningless minutes after the testing.
However, testing could certainly gin up fear and a sense of panic. Combine that with sketchy cause of death reporting guidelines and the disastrous lockdowns, and you would have to be naïve in the extreme to not recognize that a massive political operation was underway.
If you still have doubts, recall that good results for hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) were being reported by Didier Raoult and others. However, the randomized clinical trial fanboys reminded the public that Raoult’s work was not a proper RCT design, fulfilling a gold standard (in their minds, at least). There are several problems with this line of thinking.
For one, to insist on a RCT in the midst of a pandemic is unethical on its face. For another, in the case of many new candidate drugs, the notion of a true placebo and double-blinding is a fantasy since subjects can easily tell if a treatment is effective or not on their own. And, since most drugs have side effects, if the subject observes none, he will conclude that he is on a placebo.
These same fanboys have also floated the notion of side-effect causing placebos. How do you like those ethics?
But, never mind the RCT stuff. Once Donald Trump came out in favor of HCQ, it was game over. The attack dogs came out in full force, and that included an expensive WHO study, apparently purpose-designed to make HCQ look bad, since it focused on very sick patients. And, the drug was administered at a potentially fatal dose. But, it was a randomized clinical trial! Contrast this with the very favorable results from India. I guess the HCQ helps…a lot. Look at the number of deaths for a population nearly four times that of the US.
As to Ivermectin, one of its top advocates, critical-care specialist Dr. Pierre Kory, gave compelling testimony to the US Senate on December 8, 2020, only to have his YouTube video removed. There is plenty of supportive data to be found, but the brain trusts at YouTube couldn’t care less. Kory went so far as to call Ivermectin a “miracle drug” for COVID-19.
Now, it looks like the people who actually deal with patients—as opposed to the federal cadre of pointy-headed academics and bureaucrats (you know who you are) are getting the last laugh. Even the folks at NIH have moved away from being dead set against Ivermectin. I guess the wheels of swallowing your pride turn slowly.
More’s the pity that NIH’s “neutral” position is unscientific and simply wrong-headed.
Welcome to big-time government regulated healthcare, where hundreds of millions of healthy people can be vaccinated based on an Emergency Use Authorization, but can’t be treated with drugs fully approved decades ago, and being dispensed safely in untold numbers.