By Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Withholding ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 has entered a new realm: It cannot be defended as medically or morally principled.
Not when a body of strong evidence is amassing in support of the drug.
Not in the fiery throes of a pandemic that is killing roughly 4,000 Americans a day.
Not when ivermectin is a safe, well-tested and inexpensive oral medication.
And certainly not when, as I write this, a tweet comes across my feed from Dr. Ranu Dhillon of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. He implores:
“We have no beds — ICU or otherwise — left & continue to have patients needing admission in our ER…multiple patients with unrelated problems are also testing Covid-positive.”
I have been writing about early treatment for SARS-CoV-2 infection since March, with my first article on ivermectin, a generic anti-parasitic drug, published on Oct. 1. I concluded then and still believe that this drug, effective at multiple stages of the disease, could turn the corner on COVID.
Incomprehensibly, the people we should trust to make the call on ivermectin are paralyzed by indecision and cowardice. For eight months, while hundreds of thousands died, the National Institutes of Health advised against using ivermectin except in clinical trials. Last week, NIH brushed aside evidence of efficacy in several thousand patients who took ivermectin and decreed there was “insufficient data to recommend either for or against.”
