August 25, 2021
Uttar Pradesh, which was widely derided for its alleged mismanagement of the Covid situation in the second wave, on the other hand, is emerging triumphant. Let’s look at the contrasting picture. Kerala with its 3.5 crore (I crore is 10M, so 3.5 crore is 35,000,000) population, on August 25 reported 31,445 new cases, a bulk of the total cases reported in the country. Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state with a population of nearly 24 crore, (240,000,000) meanwhile reported just 22 cases in the same period. Two days ago, just seven fresh positive cases were reported from Uttar Pradesh. Kerala reported 215 deaths on August 25 while Uttar Pradesh only reported two deaths. In fact, no deaths have been reported from Uttar Pradesh in recent days. There are only 345 active cases in Uttar Pradesh now while Kerala’s figure is at 1.7 lakh.
...Kerala has done a much better job in vaccination coverage with 56% of its population being vaccinated with one dose and 20% of the population being fully vaccinated with a total of 2.66 crore doses being administered. Uttar Pradesh had given over 6.5 crore doses, the maximum in the country, but only 25% of people have got their first dose while less than 5% of people are fully vaccinated. Given the present Covid numbers, Uttar Pradesh seems to be trumping Kerala for the tag of the most successful model against Covid. August 25, 2021 https://www.news18.com/news/india/tale-of-two-states-kerala-uttar-pradesh-paint-a-contrasting-picture-of-covid-19-4127714.html
THE WHO CONGRATULATES UTTAR PRADESH
Under the title Uttar Pradesh going the last mile to stop COVID-19, the WHO praises UP, explaining how it was that it achieved its magnificent success.
The Uttar Pradesh state government has initiated house-to-house active case finding of COVID-19 in rural areas to contain transmission by testing people with symptoms for rapid isolation, disease management and contact tracing.
Government teams are moving across 97,941 villages in 75 districts over five days for this activity, which began on 5 May in India’s most populous state with a population of 230 million.
The state government has deployed 141,610 teams and 21,242 supervisors from the state health department for this activity to ensure all rural areas are covered. Each monitoring team has two members, who visit homes in villages and remote hamlets to test everyone with symptoms of COVID-19 using Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) kits. Those who test positive are quickly isolated and given a medicine kit with advice on disease management. https://www.who.int/india/news/feature-stories/detail/uttar-pradesh-going-the-last-mile-to-stop-covid-19
HOW DID THEY DO IT, IN UTTAR PRADESH?
A most remarkable success. So they drive around on motor bikes looking for symptomatics and telling them to isolate, in the most unlikely case the person involved has a big house. How is that different from what other states are doing? The motor bikes? The RAT kits? The vaccine? No, they have only 5% full vaccinations. Could it be some magic talisman, that they put in that medicinal kit? No, magic potions can be as expensive as remdesivir.
Yet, those who know, tell us there is no medication for covid, except for very expensive and pretty useless stuff: remdesivir or molnupiravir, the new $900 pill from Merck. How could Uttar Pradesh come up with the billions needed to give remdesivir to its millions of infected patients--and to their families, as prophylaxis? Looks like there is in those kits a secret ingredient, so secret, that neither News18 nor the WHO dares mentioning it.
A NOBEL PRIZE WINNER REVEALS THE SECRET: IT'S SNAKE OIL
For the truth, we must appeal to someone who knows, like a Nobel Prize winner. Not Satoshi Ōmura, the discoverer of the bacterium Streptomyces avermitilis nor William Campbell, who isolated avermectin from the bacterial culture. Together, they won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015--their discoveries saved hundreds of millions from horrible, deadly diseases like river blindness.
Alfred Nobel's testament, in his 1895 will, created the Nobel Foundation, that finances yearly awards to ”those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind,” in five fields: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.
The Nobel Prize winner chosen to reveal the magic ingredient that's saving India is Paul Krugman, who won the Not-Really-Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences; it was created not by Alfred Nobel, but by a bank, to reward clever economists who find ways to explain or rationalise the irrationalities of our twisted economic systems. Krugman revealed our mystery medicine in a New York Times article under the title The Snake Oil Theory of the Modern Right: "Vaccine refusers aren’t just rejecting lifesaving vaccines, they’re also turning to life-threatening alternatives. We’re seeing a surge in sales of — and poisoning by — ivermectin, which is usually used to deworm livestock but has recently been touted on social media and Fox News as a Covid cure.
OK, I didn’t see that coming. But I should have. As the historian Rick Perlstein has pointed out, there’s a long association between peddlers of quack medicine and right-wing extremists...
So it shouldn’t be surprising to find many right-leaning Americans ready to see vaccination as a liberal plot and turn to dubious alternatives — although, again, I didn’t see livestock dewormer coming. The interesting question, however, is to what extent the connection between right-wing politics and snake oil marketing has shaped the political landscape...
So you can see how vaccination became such a flash point. Getting shots in arms is a priority for a Democratic president, which automatically generates intense hostility among people who want to see Joe Biden fail. And such people were already primed to reject medical expertise and believe in quack cures. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/opinion/covid-misinformation-supplements.html
Why would Krugman call ivermectin "snake oil"? He was just trying to lead us to wisdom, by paradox, parable, and association: snake oil, famous snake, cobra snake, India, Uttar Pradesh, ivermectin. Devious, but effective. If he had told us directly that ivermectin cures covid, we would have suspected a deception.
COVID-19 pandemic in India
Research and treatment
By April 2021, the latest treatment guidelines mirrored those of the WHO and the United States with the important exception that, in India, mildly ill patients were allowed to be given Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin.[43]
This potential off-label prescription seems to have taken off in some parts of India: Kavery Nambisan, an Indian surgeon, said that a doctor in Kandivali, Mumbai, has treated thousands of patients with ivermectin.[140]
By 26 August 2021, India has administered at least one dose to over 50% of its population.[182] By the end of August 2021, Himachal Pradesh became the first state to administer at least one dose to its entire 18+ population.[183]
Vaccination policy and distribution
By 26 August 2021, India has administered at least one dose to over 50% of its population.[182] By the end of August 2021, Himachal Pradesh became the first state to administer at least one dose to its entire 18+ population.[183]
This is the only reference to ivermectin that appears in the entire Wikipedia article, even though ivermectin is central to the absence of covid cases in the Indian states that distribute it.
Two three-line paragraphs, that bring us to note [43] and [140] which lead us to two most remarkable articles. The first presents an apocalyptic view of the pandemic and the second is a moving appeal to sanity by two Indian doctors.
This Wikipedia article was written by an honest Indian editor, who was willing to present a horrific view of Indian society's corruption, presenting with patients having to send a suitcase full of cash to get a couple vials of useless/deadly remdesivir. Then the censors arrived, to turn apocalypse into irrelevancy.
The original Wikipedia editor then mentioned the heartfelt appeal to reason by a famous and successful doctor; but the censors arrived, to turn that into a faint rumours of odd behavior by unknown distant provincial doctors.
[43] As India faces a devastating surge of new coronavirus infections overwhelming its health care system, people are taking desperate measures to try to keep loved ones alive. In some cases they are turning to unproven medical treatments, in others to the black market for life-saving medications that are in short supply.
...Death is so omnipresent that burial grounds are running out of space in many cities and glowing funeral pyres blaze through the night. The few medicines known to help treat COVID-19, such as remdesivir and steroids in hospitalized patients, are scarce. The most basic treatment —oxygen therapy — is also in short supply, leading to unnecessary deaths.
...India’s latest treatment guidelines mirror those of the World Health Organization and the United States with a key exception: India allows mildly ill patients to be given hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, drugs used for certain tropical diseases.
There is little evidence they work against COVID-19, and the WHO strongly recommends against hydroxychloroquine’s use for COVID-19 of any severity and against using ivermectin except in studies.
Black market prices for remdesivir, which is produced by several Indian companies, have increased up to 20-fold to about $1,000 for a single vial, said Siddhant Sarang... With demand high, black market dealers are insisting on cash upfront... “People are going to dealers with 200,000 to 300,000 rupees ($2,700-$4,000) in a suitcase,” he said.
Censorship is so effective in Wikipedia, that the major event of the pandemic in India was simply canceled: the competition between WHO-influenced authoritiess and ivermectin insurgent doctors, resulting in a divide between covid-failed Indian states and covid-successful Indian states.
India and Bangladesh began using ivermectin in the spring of 2020. There was opposition, but since ivermectin already had widespread usage and since India is a major pharmaceutical manufacturer, it was hard to stamp out.
In April 2021, the national government decided to follow WHO orders, and tried to sabotage states' efforts, in favour of vaccination. On June 7, 2021, www.indiatoday.in announced that "the Union Health Ministry and Family Welfare's directorate general of health services (DGHS) has issued revised guidelines to stop the use of Ivermectin and Doxycycline in Covid-19 treatment... dropped all medicines, except antipyretic and antitussive, for asymptomatic and mild cases.
However, there seems to be a split in opinion about the new directives as the Indian Council for Medical Research, the country's leading health agency in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, has not yet approved the revised guidelines...
At a time when India is seeing a dip in its tally of new cases every day, the revised guidelines have also dropped drugs such as hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, doxycycline, zinc and multivitamins, that were earlier prescribed by doctors to treat asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic Covid-19 patients.
The problem was that the dip in cases was due to the massive ivermectin intervention of certain states, as you can see in the above charts.
By September, however, Pharma-oriented doctors announced that "India’s apex medical research body, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), revised its ‘Clinical Guidelines’ for COVID-19... it removed mention of two drugs that a panoply of experts and non-experts had widely used and promoted both in India and worldwide, and which had also been ceaseless sources of controversy: ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)." The title of the article was "As ICMR Revises COVID Guidelines, India Can Exit the Thrall of Ivermectin, HCQ"
Will India's doctors (and pharmacists) obey orders?
.[140] Drug control authorities around the world chose to dismiss or stay indifferent to the sustained efficacy of Ivermectin despite studies showing its effectiveness
As the news of this drug being effective in treating Covid spread, hundreds and then thousands of doctors began to use it all over the world. The results were extraordinary: When given in the early stage of viral replication (first five days) and along with other supportive vitamins, Ivermectin is far more effective than other more expensive drugs. In later stages of the disease also it works because of its anti-inflammatory properties that help avoid serious complications.
By August 2020, Ivermectin was being used in Bangladesh, Mexico, South Africa, Israel, Spain, Italy, Slovakia and Japan, besides in the US, UK and many countries in Europe. In India, a doctor in Deoria district of Uttar Pradesh has treated over 4,000 patients; another in Kandivali, Mumbai, has treated 6,000 (most of them from corporate houses) and a professor of ENT working in Mangaluru has treated over 4,000 patients. There are many others who have treated patients in large numbers. Those of us who work in smaller towns and rural areas have experience with several hundreds.
...In fact, Ivermectin should be given to all those who are not vaccinated or are partially vaccinated. After the initial three tablets given on three consecutive days, a once-weekly dose of 12 mg provides enough protection against the virus. When a drug that is safe and cheaply available can work effectively during the waiting period for the vaccine, is there any reason not to use it? Mass prophylaxis is a sure way of stopping transmission.
...However, there is one dilemma: Major pharmaceutical companies around the world have invested trillions of dollars in the manufacture of vaccines. One can understand their need to recover costs and make profits by selling vaccines to every country. But it should not mean that we sacrifice millions of lives in order to make it okay for the companies. Sadly, this is happening. Drug control authorities around the world and (ironically) WHO itself chose to dismiss or stay indifferent to the sustained efficacy of Ivermectin.
...If patients can recover quickly with a tablet that can be taken at home, we can undo lockdowns, open up business and tourism, and run colleges and schools without waiting until the whole world is vaccinated. None of this is to say that vaccinations are not necessary. What we are trying to reinforce is that we should use the simpler, safer, quicker method of mass prophylaxis with Ivermectin as soon as possible. If properly planned, it can be done in a matter of days.
To put it simply, it makes very good sense to Ivermectinise the world while going ahead with vaccinations at the same time. Given the crumbling economy of many poor countries, universal vaccination is a long way off. Every single Covid patient is a risk to herself and the rest of the world.
If patients can recover quickly with a tablet that can be taken at home, we can undo lockdowns, open up business and tourism, and run colleges and schools without waiting until the whole world is vaccinated. None of this is to say that vaccinations are not necessary. What we are trying to reinforce is that we should use the simpler, safer, quicker method of mass prophylaxis with Ivermectin as soon as possible. If properly planned, it can be done in a matter of days.
To put it simply, it makes very good sense to Ivermectinise the world while going ahead with vaccinations at the same time. Given the crumbling economy of many poor countries, universal vaccination is a long way off. Every single Covid patient is a risk to herself and the rest of the world.
Dr Kavery Nambisan
Surgeon and writer, practising in Kodagu district, Karnataka
(This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
Dr Darrell Demello
Leading telemedicine practitioner from Kandivali, Mumbai
(This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2021/jun/30/how-to-prevent-a-third-wave-of-covid-19-2323222.html ALSO WATCH | How Mumbai, India's most crowded city, beat the odds, and the coronavirus:
One of the two authors of the [140] article, Dr. De Mello, has published his own ivermectin-based protocol, and is often seen on the YouTube channel of Dr. Mobeen. Asked about the response that doctors will give to the ICMR, Dr. De Mello said:
Arrogant? No, simply corageous. Arrogant are the corrupt politicians and medical authorities who
Impact
Displacement of migrant workers
The 2020 lockdown left tens of millions of migrant workers unemployed.[299][300] With factories and workplaces shut down, many migrant workers were left with no livelihood.[301] They thus decided to walk hundreds of kilometres to go back to their native villages, accompanied by their families in many cases.[302][303] In response, the central and state governments took various measures to help them.[304][305] The central government then announced that it had asked state governments to set up immediate relief camps for the migrant workers returning to their native states,[306] and later issued orders protecting the rights of the migrants.[307][308]
In its report to the Supreme Court of India on 30 March 2020, the central government stated that the migrant workers, apprehensive about their survival, moved in the panic created by fake news that the lockdown would last for more than three months.[309][310] In early May, the central government permitted the Indian Railways to launch "Shramik Special" trains for the migrant workers and others stranded,[311] but this move had its own complications.[312] On 26 May, the Supreme Court admitted that the problems of the migrants had still not been solved and ordered the Centre and States to provide free food, shelter and transport to stranded migrant workers.[313]