Is your Minister of Health interested in saving lives, stopping infections or reducing the burden on hospitals? Did they ban ivermectin or study it?

A study in a small Brazillian town suggests that half of all hospitalization of Covid cases and 70% of the deaths could be avoided at a cost of 10 cents a week.

Itajai, Brazil. | Eduardo Marquetti

How super low dose ivermectin still reduced infections by half

A whole town in Brazil of 220,000 people was invited to take part in an ivermectin study. In Itajaí 159,000 people said “Yes” to taking part in a study of a bizarrely low dose infrequent form of ivermectin to see if it prevented people catching Covid. They were asked to take the 0.2mg/kg/day dose two days in a row but only once every two weeks. Since the half-life of ivermectin in humans is only 12–36 hours, those taking it in the study were effectively left unprotected at least half the time. Our livers convert ivermectin into chemical bits and pieces that have half-lives of three days, so those downstream metabolites, if they matter, might kick around a bit longer. More bizarrely, participants were asked not to take […]