By Rud Istvan

When ctm enabled the very first of my now several guest posts on this topic, it was partly because of my explicit analogies to climate change. As we delved further in subsequent posts, the climate analogies became less obvious. #6 was all about technical CoViD-19 antibody testing specificity and thrombosis, with no climate analogies at all. This #7 rumination returns to the original climate analogy theme, concerning the possible CoViD-19 therapy Ivermectin. (Much such stuff is now on various blogs, especially in Australia where it is a common anti-parasitic sheep dip.) I did some more basic research, which follows as #7.

Ivermectin is a semisynthetic derivative of a soil organism molecule originally found in Japan in 1981. So it is similar to many other ‘naturally occurring’ anti-somethings going back to Fleming’s penicillin blue mold in 1926, then its better semisynthetic derivative amoxicillin in 1972. Ivermectin is primarily an antiparasitic, and the original FDA approved indication was against African River Blindness in 1988. It has long been WHO classed as one of the three “wonder drugs” along with penicillin(s) and aspirin.

Old and off patent Ivermectin is now being toughted as a possible COVID-19 therapy. There are two adamantly irreconcilable sides, just as with climate change.

On the one side, Antiviral Research 178:104787 (2020) just published in vitro results that Ivermectin reduced Wohan coronavirus expression 5000x in 48 hours. Now that would be good news, since Ivermectin is another old generic drug with well-established safety profiles. BUT, no reason given as to why an old anti-parasitic (meaning against eukaryotic organisms) drug also has antiviral properties– just ‘is’ if to be believed. No replication study is yet available.

And on the same side, a newly ‘published’ Thailand study from 2014-2017 suggests Ivermectin has antiviral ‘nuclear transport inhibitory activity’. This would be encouraging, EXCEPT for the incontrovertible fact that Wuhan did NOT emerge until about 12/1019. So any virus, or just this virus? ‘Junk’ internet science is now on very public display. Like with climate science.

Does Ivermectin work against CoViD-19? We dunno yet. But the most recent ‘science’ at www.sciencedirect.org/antiviral research/faq/covid suggests maybe yes, it does, for reasons we dunno– while ONLY citing the Antiviral Research article cited above, so circular reasoning like in climate science is on full display.

Now on the other side, the FDA just issued a warning (see www. FDA.gov/product safety information/faq/covid) saying DO NOT use Ivermectin for CoVid-19—despite a decades long safety profile in humans and animals!

Now, that FDA false safety warning will surely discourage some properly designed clinical trials to sort out the truth. Just like the climate paleo hockey stick gang that got after Steve McIntyre, and then lost.