First, access to hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine was restricted. The chloroquine drugs only work during active viral replication. While extremely safe at prescribed doses, and used daily for years by hundreds of thousands of patients with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, overdose can be fatal.
Awareness of these facts led to the FDA restricting the use of hydroxy Clora Quinn to only hospitalized patients, in whom it would no longer be effective. 3 large multi Center, multi nation clinical trials were designed to give patients excessive amounts of hydroxychloroquine, leading to predictable increased arrhythmias and probably deaths. Most of the early and large clinical trials were flawed deliberately by either using the drug too late or using too much. That's how the initial literature supported avoiding hydroxychloroquine for Covid. Later studies that used appropriate doses and gave the drug to patients early during the first week of illness showed almost uniformly excellent results.
Congruent with controlling much of the research, FDA and about 30 states imposed other restrictions. Maine has one of the least severe restricts, but still not good enough. In my state I can prescribe HCQ for early treatment but not for prophylaxis, even though the prophylactic dose is only about 1/6 of the treatment dose for lupus, and therefore extremely safe.
Like hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin is also a licensed drug in the United States which physicians can (supposedly) prescribe freely. Fortunately, unlike HCQ, it is not toxic when given much more frequently than is necessary for parasites--which often require only one dose. It has been used over 3 billion times since 1987, without a prescription, for parasitic diseases. It is derived from a streptomycetes soil bacterium. According to Wikipedia:
Streptomycetes... produce over two-thirds of the clinically useful antibiotics of natural origin, e.g., neomycin, cypemycin, grisemycin, bottromycins and chloramphenicol. The antibiotic streptomycin takes its name directly from Streptomyces.
Ivermectin not only works during viral replication, but also is effective later in the illness. This meant that the tricks that had been used to make hydroxychloroquine look bad would not be effective for ivermectin. Furthermore, there have been dozens of independent studies showing the drug's safety and effectiveness for Covid. The powers that be had not gotten into the game early to suppress it. Furthermore, there have been dozens of independent studies showing the drug's safety and effectiveness for Covid. The powers that be had not gotten into the game early with fake studies and fake publications. I have previously linked to a metanalysis by Bryant, Lawrie et al., and another by Pierre Kory et al.
I suspect the powers that be, like Fauci, were also somewhat gun-shy about trying their tricks to stop the public getting effective treatment for Covid again. Would they be outed by media this time around?
As more and more people began to obtain ivermectin, and thereby were able to discard their fear of Covid, also discarding any desire for vaccination, the bad guys apparently decided that despite the risk, they had to act.
This time a very concerted movement of FDA, CDC, Pharmacy chains, state medical boards, and drug wholesalers occurred together, beginning around August 25, 2021. I wrote about this earlier in a piece titled "The Mess Media." Let me lay out and expand on what happened.
At least 4 doctors in 3 states were suddenly publicly charged by their medical boards for prescribing ivermectin for Covid, and this made national news. Immediately thereafter the CDC sent out an Emergency memo titled Severe Reactions to Ivermectin. However the 4 papes said absolutely nothing about any adverse reactions to ivermectin prescribed by doctors. Instead, it was claimed that one internet purchaser and one consumer of veterinary ivermectin developed neurologic symptoms and were hospitalized.
FDA produced a famous tweet: "You are not a horse" about people taking veterinary ivermectin, and put up a warning on its website. FDA has yet to acknowledge reviewing the literature on ivermectin for the treatment of Covid.
Then lies about the huge number of calls to poison control centers were disseminated nationally. The Associated Press reported that 70% of calls to Mississippi's poison center were for ivermectin. Soon the AP corrected itself, when Mississippi's chief epidemiologist sait it was only "about 2%."
An actual Oklahoma doctor was interviewed by a TV station and claimed that there were so many ivermectin overdoses coming to ERs that people arriving with gunshot wounds were having to wait. This story made the international news, was covered by tweets from Rachel Maddow, and Rolling Stone did a story about it--using a photo of a long line of patients, allegedly waiting to be seen in an ER.
This story apparently had too many legs. One hospital where the doctor worked issued a statement that it had seen absolutely zero ivermectin overdoses, and there were no lines of patients waiting for care. The story was a complete fabrication, harking back to the Lancet paper on the dangers of the chloroquine drugs.
Within a few days, Walgreens' and CVS' corporate offices told their staff to stop filling ivermectin scripts. Cardinal Health, a distributor for many pharmacies, told those pharmacies (including my local Hannaford's) the drug was on backorder and Cardinal had no idea when it would be available. Cardinal formed a business relationship with CVS in 2014. I do not know if that is relevant or not.
Amerisource-Bergen and McKesson are the two other large drug wholesaler-distributors in the US. In 2018 they controlled 95% of the US market.
I just bit the bullet and drove around surveying local pharmacists. McKesson is not making ivermectin available to Osco or Walmart pharmacies. No one local seems to source ivermectin through Amerisource.
I do understand how multiple pharmacists expressed concerns about losing their license were they to fill the script. What a sad situation. The Big Lie wins, at least for now.
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