move over hydroxychloroquine we have a new playboy in town ivermectin a drug that was developed in
the 1970s which to this day is still very safe and effective when it comes to treating head lice and
certain parasitic infections but for covid the cdc the fda and the infectious diseases society
of america say that it should not be used for covid unless it's in the clinical trial but that
didn't stop this guy who chose ivermectin over the vaccine captain joe manning 57 years old a georgia
police officer who frequently posted anti-vaxxed messages on facebook died of covid why would some
people want a drug that is not fda approved for covid because it has not been proven to be safe
and effective why would someone choose that over something that has been proven to be safe and
effective in preventing covid whenever we put something into our body whether that's drinking
something eating something taking a pill or getting a jab it's important to know three things
one does it work two is it safe and three at what dose does it work and at what dose is it safe
for example dihydrogen monoxide that's not something you want to ingest too much of
why because it can cause severe hyponatremia which leads to brain swelling and i've seen
people actually die in this manner but on the other hand we can't live without ingesting
dihydrogen monoxide also known as water generally we should drink 10 to 14 cups per day depending
on various factors so of course we need water but do we need ivermectin for covid i wish it were the
miracle drug i wish we could have a cheap safe and effective drug for treating and preventing this
virus or saves lives by minimizing the cytokine storm in the body that's brought on by the virus
well we do kind of have that with dexamethasone aka decadron which is a steroid that is very
similar to prednisone it's the one drug that has the most solid evidence for reducing the severity
of covet illness including reducing mortality and it's cheap too but it's not a miracle drug so how
do we know if ivermectin 1 works 2 if so what dose is required for it to work and 3 what is
the dose that is safe for ingestion the ivermectin hype train left the station back in april of 2020
and i talked about that in this video here it all started with this study that looked at the virus
in a test tube when scientists suffocated the virus with massive doses of ivermectin
and surprise surprise guess what the results showed there was a major drop in viral replication
and that's great right it's a starting point it's saying hey we might have something here but
there's a problem the inhibitory concentration of the drug around 2.5 micromolar is not achievable
in real life humans in fact standard ivermectin dosing achieves blood concentrations of about
25 nanomolar that's 100 fold less than what's needed in vitro based on that one study
lung concentrations are a bit higher than blood concentrations
but still 50 fold less than what's needed to inhibit the virus in cells in the culture
in the test tube but okay maybe it works not necessarily by inhibiting viral replication
maybe can help suppress inflammation from covid so you start doing some observational studies
observational studies are not great studies but they serve a purpose because you want to see if
there's any correlation between ivermectin and its potential to help against covid if you see a
correlation there then that warrants spending more time and money to do a bigger higher quality study
in order to prove or disprove that the drug is safe and effective and the best studies for that
are double-blinded randomized placebo-controlled trials the more people in the study the more you
can rely on the results that's how you prove cause and effect so you take 30000 people you give half
of them a placebo and then the other half the medicine then you look at the results and that's
how you get your answer if it's safe and effective that's the process that was done with the vaccines
the same cannot be said for ivermectin generally speaking ivermectin when given in doses used to
treat parasitic infections in humans is very safe so we're talking about 200 micrograms per kilogram
so for a 75 kilo person that's around 165 pound person you're looking at a 15 milligram dose
before the pandemic prescriptions for ivermectin in this country were 3600 per week now they're
more than 80000 per week but even more concerning is people getting the drug from livestock supply
centers where it can come in highly concentrated paste or liquid forms sometimes 10 to 15 times
the amount that we give people well guess what mississippi's health department said that 70 percent
of recent calls to the state poison control center had come from people who ingested ivermectin
that came from livestock supply stores and basically the same thing going on in alabama
so what are the common symptoms from ingesting too much ivermectin nausea vomiting diarrhea but
there's also nerve damage that can occur seizures and sometimes death one person drank an injectable
ivermectin formulation intended for use in cattle in an attempt to prevent covid infection this
patient presented to the hospital with confusion drowsiness visual hallucinations tachypnea
meaning breathing fast and tremors the patient recovered after being hospitalized for nine days
another person took ivermectin tablets of unknown strength purchased on the internet the patient
reportedly took five tablets a day for five days to treat covid the patient was disoriented and
had difficulty answering questions and following commands symptoms improved with discontinuation
of ivermectin after hospital admission now i personally have not seen any patients in the
hospital who've had ivermectin toxicity but i've seen hundreds if not thousands of covid patients
i just finished working a 10-day stretch in the hospital in the icu and every day there are more
and more covid cases most of the patients in the icu were not vaccinated and i personally have not
seen any vaccinated person die of covid also in the icu i haven't seen a single case of someone
being hospitalized as a result of the vaccine not saying it hasn't happened but i personally haven't
seen it but that's why we do the studies right we want to get big numbers to analyze it so when it
comes to doing studies as far as ivermectin what do the studies show a randomized control trial
was done this past spring and found the ivermectin at a relatively higher dose of 300 micrograms per
kilogram had no statistically significant effect on reducing the duration of covid symptoms the
study also found that there was no statistically significant increase in adverse events for that
dose the together trial was one of the largest trials studying ivermectin for covid treatment
it enrolled over 1300 patients this study was stopped by the data safety monitoring board on august 6
because the drug had been shown to be no better than a placebo at preventing hospitalization or
prolonged stay in the emergency room dr mills who was the leading author of that study said that
they would have actually discontinued it earlier were not for the level of public interest in
ivermectin but what about this meta-analysis of 24 randomized trials that at first glance looks like
it shows that ivermectin helps against covid this study analyzed over 3300 patients in total
11 out of the 24 trials involved 2000 patients and had a death rate of 3 percent in the
ivermectin group compared to 8.7 percent in the comparator arm this was statistically significant but the
data you get out of a meta-analysis is only as good as the data you put in if a meta-analysis
were a tabletop it's only solid if it has strong legs to stand on and some of these legs and this
meta-analysis are very shaky with significant flaws some of the collected data was from
pre-print servers and some of the collected data was not even published at all that's a big problem
because there's no way to verify the results also individual studies need to be peer reviewed
let's look at one of the legs from this meta-analysis this one out of iran was hosted on
a pre-print server it's a six-arm randomized trial of patients hospitalized with covid but it's wonky
looking at table 1 29 of them were pcr negative for the virus even worse this percentage is much
higher in the two control groups 47 compared to the ivermectin groups of 20 percent and this
is why there needs to be peer-reviewed studies so that these sorts of things get picked up on
but yet here this trial is given equal weight to the rest of the legs of the meta-analysis another
wobbly leg from this meta-analysis is the famous algazar trial out of egypt in which they compared
ivermectin with hydroxychloroquine and 400 people with covid the results were pretty dramatic in
terms of number of deaths in the moderately ill group there were no deaths in ivermectin group and
four deaths in hydroxychloroquine group now in the severely ill group two deaths in the ivermectin
group 20 deaths in the hydroxychloroquine group but combing through the paper revealed multiple
statistically significant imbalances across baseline characteristics mistakes are made all the
time with research and that's why these studies need to be peer reviewed and if you remove the
iran and algazar studies from egypt ivermectin and this meta-analysis it doesn't look so good then
there is a more recent review of 14 ivermectin studies with more than 1600 participants
and it concluded that none provided evidence of the drug's ability to prevent covid
improve patient conditions or reduce mortality the authors of the study wrote based on the current
very low to low certainty evidence we're uncertain about the efficacy and safety of ivermectin used
to treat or prevent covid the completed studies are small and few are considered high quality
several studies are underway that may produce clear answers and review updates
overall the reliable evidence available does not support the use of ivermectin for treatment or
prevention of covid outside of a well-designed randomized trial so the biggest disbelief about
ivermectin as of right now is that some people would opt for this drug over getting the vaccine
and i'm not saying that there's no hope for ivermectin in the future but at this
point the evidence just does not show that it works the good news is that there are multiple
large clinical trials going on right now so soon we'll get a concrete answer one way or another