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Something amazing has happened in Uttar Pradesh.
At the end of April in Uttar Pradesh, every day 35,000 people were catching Covid and 350 people were dying. With a population of 240 million people living in high density conditions, and with only 5% vaccinated, all the odds were against it.
This week across the whole state there were only 199 active cases in toto and a trickle of new daily cases.
Ponder that Utter Pradesh has about two thirds of the population of the USA and they’re living in a high density environment with a GDP of about $1,000 per capita, which is one sixtieth as much as the average American. To add some perspective, it was only three years ago that the government finally connected everyone up to electricity.
The richest nations in the world are failing.
33 districts in Uttar Pradesh are now Covid-free
Hindustan Times Sept 10th, 2021
There are no active cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in 33 districts of Uttar Pradesh, the state government informed on Friday. About 67 districts have not reported a single new case of the viral infection in the last 24 hours, the government said, noting the steady improvement of the Covid-19 situation in the state.
Overall, the state has a total of 199 active cases, while the positivity rate came down to less than 0.01 per cent. The recovery rate, meanwhile, has improved to 98.7 per cent. As per the state’s health bulletin, Uttar Pradesh reported only 11 new Covid-19 cases and zero deaths in the last 24 hours.
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It’s always hard to know if places like India are testing enough, and while they definitely weren’t at the peak, they appear to be now. Test positivity in India rose to 15% or more in late April, but by early June was as low as 0.5%.
A test positivity of 15% is not good, but it isn’t the Mexican 60% disaster. Plenty of US states have had similar days.
People may not realize that Ivermectin is not only useful in treating Covid but can also reduce viral loads and thus transmission if it is used early enough. We could be using it to ring-fence Covid — to surround current cases to limit the spread.
Given the safety of ivermectin, why aren’t we doing those trials? What have we got to lose?
If the Minister of Health says “Trust us” on the vaccines, but isn’t acting as though our health was the most important thing. It it was, he’d be allowing doctors to prescribe it to patients and running trials.
If ivermectin had been used in NSW with detailed contact tracing from the beginning, would they still be in lockdown?
An ivermectin success story
Uttar Pradesh is giving people ivermectin, and not only providing it to those who test positive but giving it to everyone else in their house as well to prevent or at least slow the transmission.
India’s Ivermectin Blackout – Part III: The Lesson of Kerala
Justus Hope, The Desert Review, August 23, 2021
Uttar Pradesh has a policy of treating ALL the contacts of an infected patient prophylactically with Ivermectin. In other words, in Uttar Pradesh, everyone in the house gets Ivermectin treatment even if only one is infected. Ivermectin is known to reduce mortality in infected and dramatically lowers the viral load, thereby helping reduce the spread of the virus to others.
Uttar Pradesh government says early use of Ivermectin helped to keep positivity, deaths low
“Uttar Pradesh was the first state in the country to introduce large-scale prophylactic and therapeutic use of Ivermectin. In May-June 2020, a team at Agra led by Dr. Anshul Pareek, administered Ivermectin to all RRT team members in the district on an experimental basis. It was observed that NONE OF THEM developed COVID-19 despite being in daily contact with patients who had tested positive for the virus,” Uttar Pradesh State Surveillance Officer Vikssendu Agrawal said.
The WHO raved about the way Uttar Pradesh was handling things, but didn’t mention what was in the medicine bag. It’s just some mysterious black box, right?
We can see how comprehensive the program was beginning on May 5th:
UTTAR PRADESH Going the last mile to stop COVID-19
WHO, May 7, 2021
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.
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.
The Uttar Pradesh government certainly thinks it was ivermectin:
May 12th 2021
Uttar Pradesh government says early use of Ivermectin helped to keep positivity, deaths low
The Indian Express
“Uttar Pradesh was the first state in the country to introduce large-scale prophylactic and therapeutic use of Ivermectin. In May-June 2020, a team at Agra, led by Dr Anshul Pareek, administered Ivermectin to all RRT team members in the district on an experimental basis. It was observed that none of them developed Covid-19 despite being in daily contact with patients who had tested positive for the virus,” Uttar Pradesh State Surveillance Officer Vikssendu Agrawal said.
Claiming that timely introduction of Ivermectin since the first wave has helped the state maintain a relatively low positivity rate despite its high population density, he said, “Despite being the state with the largest population base and a high population density, we have maintained a relatively low positivity rate and cases per million of population”.
He said that apart from aggressive contact tracing and surveillance, the lower positivity and fatality rates may be attributed to the large-scale use of Ivermectin use in the state, adding that the drug has recently been introduced in the National Protocol for Covid treatment and management.
Kerala took the vaccine route and stopped ivermectin
Compare Uttar Pradesh to the small state of Kerala on the far southern edge of India. Kerala was using ivermectin, but unlike Uttar Pradesh, it increased vaccinations and decreased ivermectin. By early August ivermectin was no longer included in treatment plans. Kerala has a population of 34 million, but currently has about two thirds of all new cases in India.
See the guidelines: Kerala treatment Guidelines April 2021 and August 2021. There are 13 mentions of ivermectin in April, but by August, there are only 2, and they are “contraindications”.
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See also The Gateway Pundit for more.
Spread the word. Big Pharma and Big Government won’t champion the cheap drugs — only the people will!
h/t Craig Kelly, Scott of the Pacific, and ColA on Thursday Unthreaded plus Bill in AZ
CAVEATS:
Be wary of drawing too much from just these single variable graphs alone. Other places show a rise and fall in cases, though few reduce a large caseload to virtally nothing. The details matter, like the timing, how much testing was done, whether there was also a lockdown and whether the ivermectin was available easily. The total number of cases and deaths matters too. The totals in Uttar Pradesh reached 35,000 known cases a day, but the USA reached 350,000 a day (and that wasn’t with Delta). Knowing that we have a mechanism for ivermectin to work, in vitro studies, in vivo studies, meta-studies and the peak of the curve in Uttar Pradesh fits the timing of the their big program to visit homes with “medicine kits” suggests that ivermectin really did change the height of the bell curve and reduce the tail as well.
REFERENCES
Biber et al (2021) Favorable outcome on viral load and culture viability using Ivermectin in early treatment of non-hospitalized patients with mild COVID-19 – A double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.05.31.21258081
Andy Crump and Satoshi Omura (2011) Ivermectin, ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan: the human use perspective ,Proc Jpn Acad Ser B Phys Biol Sci. Feb 10; 87(2): 13–28. doi: 10.2183/pjab.87.13
Bryant, Andrew MSc1,*; Lawrie, Theresa A. MBBCh, PhD2; Dowswell, Therese PhD2; Fordham, Edmund J. PhD2; Mitchell, Scott MBChB, MRCS3; Hill, Sarah R. PhD1; Tham, Tony C. MD, FRCP4 (2021) Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection, A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Trial Sequential Analysis to Inform Clinical Guidelines, American Journal of Therapeutics: June 17, 2021 – Volume Publish Ahead of Print – Issue – doi: 10.1097/MJT.0000000000001402