HCQ and Ivermectin for Covid-19 By Debbie Maimon - Feb 3, 2021

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https://yated.com/hcq-and-ivermectin-for-covid-19/

HCQ and Ivermectin for Covid-19
By
Debbie Maimon -
Feb 3, 2021

Hints of a Changing Climate

Nearly all Covid patients can be successfully treated in the early stage without hospital admission, and avoid the devastating organ damage and blood-clotting that can occur if the disease is allowed to progress.

For the second time in a month, strong positions taken against early outpatient drug treatment for Covid-19 by federal agencies and the medical establishment have quietly been withdrawn. This suggests a long-awaited turning point in the battle against the disease, many believe.

Three weeks ago, the NIH withdrew its opposition to “wonder-drug” ivermectin as a treatment for both outpatient and hospitalized Covid patients. Prior to that, the federal agency also dropped its negative stance on monoclonal antibodies infusion (laboratory-created blood plasma) and its disapproval of corticosteroids in the treatment of Covid.

The buildup to these positive changes was generated in part by Senate Homeland Security hearings in May, November and December, led by Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wis. There, a panel of doctors offered eloquent testimony about the benefits of HCQ and ivermectin in treating Covid disease.

In powerful presentations, they drove home the vital importance of early outpatient intervention.

With mounting pressure on the NIH to revisit its opposition to ivermectin, the agency backed down earlier this month, granting physicians the right to determine whether to use the drug in their treatment of Covid-19 patients.

That move may have profoundly affected the outcome of two striking incidents in Buffalo and New Orleans County in Western New York, in which state judges, a week apart, ruled on cases concerning elderly Covid patients on respirators.

After the patients, both women, began to rapidly decline, their families pleaded with doctors to try ivermectin as a last-ditch effort at saving their lives. In both cases, the hospitals complied but refused to continue giving IVM once the patients showed dramatic improvement and were transferred out of the ICU.

Seeing their patients deteriorate without the medication, the families went to court to force hospital officials to continue the life-saving therapeutics. In each case, a state supreme court judge ruled that hospital officials must resume ivermectin treatment, as prescribed by the patient’s private physician.

Soon after treatment was reinstated, both patients began to noticeably improve and were transferred out of the ICU. One of the patients, an 80-year old woman, has been discharged and is continuing her recovery in rehab. The other is still hospitalized but improving.

It is all too easy to picture very different scenarios had the incidents played out before the NIH revised its stance on ivermectin.

HCQ Articles Previously Censored Are ‘Revisited’

In another sign of subtle “climate-change” regarding early-stage Covid medication, a leading U.S. medical journal last week republished an article citing the research of numerous experts, showing that HCQ can reduce mortality when administered early in correct dosages.

Titled “Anti-malarials as Anti-virals for Covid-19: Believe it or Not!” the article was first published in the American Journal of Medical Science in August 2020, but abruptly censored shortly after publication.

As barriers to early Covid treatment are slowly beginning to fall, the article with its vital information can now be accessed.

Another groundbreaking article that had no traction when it was published many months ago but is receiving fresh attention is “Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin (AZ) as a Treatment for Covid-19, Revisited.” This article can be found today on the official website of the NIH.

Authored by leading French doctors including the renowned Dr. Didier Raoult, the experts described how “early treatment with HCQ-AZ was associated with a decreased risk of transfer to ICU or death, in a study conducted in our institute on 3,737 Covid-19 patients.”

“HCQ-AZ treatment should be administered as early as possible in the course of the disease, before the onset of pneumonia symptoms,” the authors urged.

Not Just About HCQ

Outpatient treatment is not “just about HCQ,” wrote epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch of the Yale School of Public Health in December. “It is finding the combination and sequence of medications that is optimal for the specific patient.”

“In delivering this care, physicians must be able to recommend, and patients free to choose, courses of treatment from within all approved medications, based on best available evidence,” he said.

Risch is part of an international collaboration of physicians that has just published an “Updated Covid-19 Protocol” for early at-home treatment of Covid-19, which recognizes the disease has three key stages.

Nearly all Covid patients can be successfully treated in the early stage without hospital admission, and avoid the devastating organ damage and blood clotting that can occur if the disease is allowed to progress, the authors state.

These physicians, led by Baylor cardiologist Peter McCullough, M.D., propose urgent early intervention with sequenced, multidrug therapy (SMDT).

This approach utilizes the early window of opportunity to prevent viral replication, rather than squandering fateful time with a “wait and see” approach which is akin to what critics call “therapeutic nihilism” – “do nothing because nothing can help.”

Passiveness in the face of an insidious disease can cause a mild case to progress to pneumonia, blood clotting and other potentially deadly complications, the authors note.

Many countries around the world encourage early treatment, in contrast to the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Western Europe, and some South American countries, where lifesaving information may be censored, the protocol says.

NJ Senator Joe Pennacchio: ‘So Many Lives Needlessly Lost’

A just-released study by Hackensack Meridian Health, a New Jersey-based system, indicates that patients with mild symptoms of the virus who received HCQ are “significantly less likely to end up in the hospital.”

The report was not mocked and belittled by the media as “misinformation,” or “false claims” as were earlier studies with similar conclusions.

“This doesn’t come as a surprise to me, but it is troubling that we had to wait almost a year to get to this point,” said New Jersey Senator Joe Pennacchio to New Jersey Insider. As early as March, Pennachhio and dozens of doctors and medical experts had urged the federal and state governments to authorize doctors to use HCQ to help control the spread of Covid.

“In the desperation of the early days of the pandemic, with Covid spreading like wildfire in areas of North Jersey and New York, hydroxychloroquine was the only treatment showing promise,” Pennacchio said. “HCQ got a bad rap because of politics, and its off-label use as a Covid treatment was blocked.”

The new study from Hackensack Meridian Health stated that from March to mid-May, physicians used HCQ to treat outpatients whose symptoms were not yet severe, with only a small percentage ending up in the hospital. “The drug also appeared to be safe, with no reports of cardiac arrhythmia” or other side effects, the report said.

“Politicians effectively blocked the use of HCQ and prevented further studies,” said Pennacchio. “They robbed the desperate public of a potential medical option when they were so desperate for any reason for hope. So many lives needlessly lost. So heartbreaking.”

How President Trump’s Plan to Make HCQ Available to All Americans Was Sabotaged

Statements affirming HCQ’s benefits just a few months ago tended to elicit scorn and condemnation from the media and federal health agencies for circulating “false hope” and “misinformation.”

Repeated claims that HCQ is harmful and can cause death became the norm. “It can kill you—let me be very clear—this drug can kill you!” exhorted Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto in March 2020.

When President Trump in early April ordered the distribution of 23 million HCQ tablets from the National Stockpile to a dozen states—enough pills for 1.4 million Covid-19 patients—he was pilloried by the media for bypassing the FDA’s March 28 “emergency use authorization” of the tablets. The EUA restricted the use of “dangerous” HCQ to hospitals and clinical drug trials.

Trump wanted the medicine to be available to the American people.

The White House ordered more than a third of the tablets sent to the three major drug distributors in the United States, with instructions to deliver them not only to hospitals but also retail pharmacies in U.S. cities hard hit by the virus, including NYC, Detroit, Chicago, and New Orleans,” reported the Washington Post.

The Department of Health, which oversees the stockpile, “confirmed in an email to The Post that the pills were supposed to go to retail pharmacies, but that the agency does not know where the pills ultimately ended up,” the article said.

The FDA withdrew its emergency authorization in June, claiming HCQ “had led to hundreds of deaths in Covid patients.” Just two months later, “health officials told holders of the pills in a general notice they could destroy them,” the Post article stated.

Thus was an ambitious plan to make a life-saving drug swiftly available to as many Americans as possible, neatly sabotaged.

No longer do dire warnings about HCQ flood the airwaves as well as print and social media. Facebook recently admitted “it made a mistake” when it censored studies showing HCQ saves lives.

Could it be because they increasingly recognize that they are guilty, and if there is any justice in the world could be tried Nuremberg style, for crimes against humanity?

One can only marvel at how such “a mistake” was made repeatedly time after time, month after month, regarding reputable studies from respected leaders in many medical fields and institutions.

‘Wonder Drug’ Ivermectin

Ivermectin, too, has taken its share of abuse.

Dr. Paul Marik, a professor of medicine and chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia, notes that apart from being an effective anti-parasitic drug, ivermectin also has broad-spectrum anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties.

“All of these properties make it the ideal drug to use for the coronavirus,” he said in an interview with High Plains Journal.

Yet, according to Marik, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website “lists ivermectin as a dangerous drug that causes hepatitis, drug reactions, comas and seizures.” He said 3.7 billion people have used it (since its use began in the 1970s) and the safety issue is nothing more than lies and propaganda. People just need to look at the literature to validate that claim.”

“To date,” he said, “there are 18 randomized control trials that have been published, which show Ivermectin’s great impact on Covid disease. The mortality of the ivermectin groups in these studies was 2.3% as opposed to 10% in the control group. That’s a difference of huge magnitude. There is absolutely no doubt this drug decreases viral replication, improves symptom resolution and increases survival.”

Marik’s colleague, Dr. Pierre Kory, professor of medicine at Aurora Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and founding member of the FLCCC Alliance, testified twice in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on the effectiveness of Ivermectin as both a prophylaxis and a treatment for Covid patients.

“The most profound evidence we have is in the hospitalized patients,” Kory told the Senate panel in December “We have four randomized control trials there, all showing the same thing: patients will not die or they will die at much, much lower rates. These are statistically significant, large magnitude results. It is proving to be a wonder drug and it is critical for its use in this disease.”

Reducing Risk of Transmission

In addition, Marik said studies of ivermectin as a prophylaxis show a dramatic effect in reducing the risk of infection when the person is exposed.

“If one person in your household contracts the virus you have about a 50% chance of getting Covid-19,” Marik explained. “Based on the randomized trials, if you take ivermectin, you can reduce the risk from about 50% to about 6%.”

Marik said if the health care system was to focus on prevention and early treatment with ivermectin, “hospitals would empty, the risk of dying would decrease and that would allow the economy to open.”

“Any further deaths are going to be needless deaths,” Kory said.

Marik said the NIH’s policy in not recommending any early treatments for patients with coronavirus is incomprehensible.

“I get hundreds of emails and the typical message goes, ‘Dr., I have Covid, I contacted my doctor. He said there is nothing I can do. I must stay at home until I turn blue and can’t breathe, and only then go to the emergency room.’”

“That is the current recommendation of the NIH. The only treatment they recommend is remdesivir, which has been removed by the WHO because it has been deemed ineffective.”

Fear that federal approval of anti-malarial and anti-inflammatory drugs for Covid might undermine the need for a vaccine is not warranted, Dr. Marik said.

“I’ve taken the first round of the vaccine myself,” he said, adding that he plans to continue his 15 milligrams of ivermectin every two weeks as a prophylaxis, until he is fully protected by the vaccine.

“The point is, we have thousands of people dying every day. I think the vaccine has a role, but whether it is going to be enduring we don’t know. Vaccinations alone are not going to stop the deaths right now, but ivermectin in our protocol could do so.”

“It’s going to take a long time for 60% to 70% of the entire world’s population to be vaccinated and we achieve herd immunity,” he added. “We need to do something in the meantime.”

*****

A Tale of Two Covid Patients and the Judges Who Saved Their Lives

New York State Supreme Court Justice Frank Caruso last week ordered Rochester General Hospital to continue ivermectin treatments to Glenna Dickinson, 65, of Orleans County. The woman had been in RGH since Jan. 12 with Covid-19, and had been put on a ventilator Jan. 17, according to the Buffalo News.

She had shown “no improvement” and her prognosis steadily worsened until Jan. 20, when her family convinced an intensive care unit doctor to treat her with ivermectin, said Dickinson’s attorneys, Ralph Lorigo and Jon Minear.

After receiving the two doses of ivermectin, Dickinson’s condition improved, her ventilator was turned down, and doctors were starting the process of trying to bring her out of a medically induced coma. The hospital, however, was reluctant to continue giving her Ivermectin,” Lorigo said.

Then an order was issued from Judge Caruso directing Rochester General Hospital to “comply” with a prescription for ivermectin issued by the patient’s private physician, Dr. Thomas Madejski.

The judge may well have saved this woman’s life,” attorney Lorigo told the Buffalo News reporter, noting that Dickinson is no longer critical and is recovering in the hospital.

Lorigo said Dickinson’s case is “very similar” to that of Judith Smentkiewicz, 80, of Buffalo, who was “on a ventilator and in real distress” but did a dramatic turnaround while taking ivermectin. Her family also went to court to compel the hospital to continue ivermectin treatment when she was out of the ICU but still in dire need of the medication.

Lorigo argued that case as well. State Supreme Court Judge Henry Nowak ordered officials of Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital to reinstate ivermectin treatment.

Smentkiewicz has since been released from the hospital and is recuperating in a rehabilitation facility, the Buffalo News article said.

*****

Bending the Law to Save A Life

A poignant article in the High Plains Journal, recounts a life and death drama playing out in an ICU unit in an Oklahoma hospital, as a Covid patient lay in a hospital bed struggling to breathe. Her family paced the floors at home praying she would not be placed on a ventilator by morning.

Several relatives had been felled by the virus in previous weeks and the family feared their mother, Mrs. Debbie Summers, would be next. Then, a friend of her son, Kaleb, reached out, urging him to try a drug called Ivermectin that had helped many people he knew.

Kaleb bought a bottle of Ivermectin, started administering it to his family members and began to formulate a way to deliver a dose to his gravely ill mother. The following day, however, the hospital began administering convalescent plasma to Mrs. Summers. Contrary to everyone’s hopes, she reacted badly to it, prompting doctors to move her to the intensive care unit.

“She was tanking fast. I called my brother-in-law and said we’ve got to think fast and find a way to get her the ivermectin,” Kaleb told the High Plains Journal.

With a no visitor policy in place at the hospital, the Summers family devised a plan to deliver the drug secretly. They were successful and within the first 48 hours after taking the drug, Mrs. Summers’ vital statistics stopped dropping.

At this point the hospital, unaware of the clandestine Ivermectin treatment, had started to discuss putting Mrs. Summers on a ventilator. The family knew they had to come clean. Kaleb confided in a doctor friend who agreed to call in a prescription of ivermectin pills, but hospital management refused to let her take the pills, arguing it wasn’t FDA-approved drug for coronavirus.

Exhausted from grief and frustration, Kaleb made calls until he reached the hospital’s head of risk management, who threw up additional roadblocks. In despair, Kaleb threw out the argument that Oklahoma is a Right to Try State, meaning patients diagnosed with life-threatening conditions who have tried all other treatment options to no avail, can gain access to unapproved treatment.

The phone call ended without a clear-cut answer and the Summers family awaited the hospital’s decision with dread. To their relief, by morning the hospital released Mrs. Summers into the care of their doctor friend. After signing numerous waivers and taking her second dose of ivermectin, the patient’s condition began to show improvement by the end of the day.

“Several days later she was moved out of the ICU and into a step-down unit,” recounts the article. “She continued to improve and was discharged after 24 days in the hospital. She is now recovering from home. She has a long road to recuperation ahead, but her prognosis is good.”

“I believe my mom’s case opened the floodgates for ivermectin into that hospital,” her son said. “As crazy as it was, had we not bent the law to smuggle that first round into her, I don’t think she would be with us today.”

https://yated.com/hcq-and-ivermectin-for-covid-19/