Follow-up of a follow-up on Ivermectin
Revisiting African excess death stats by routine ivermectin use
In a previous Substack, I did a “first-pass” attempt at uncovering what was known by March of 2021 with regard to nations in Africa that routinely use ivermectin, though the trade-name they have for it is Mectizan®.
The strongest champion of ivermectin, arguably, has been
who writes and I just learned that are with us on Substack and they put out a recent article on almost instantaneous benefit of ivermectin.I have two goals for this follow-up Substack:
1) hone in on just those nations who received tons of ivermectin through the Mectizan Donation Program (MDP)
2) pull back on the cutoff end date for accumulated excess death (to before COVID jabs were widespread in Africa)
Who got tons of Ivermectin delivered to them prior to June 2020?
Note: Outside of the United States, a common trade-name for ivermectin is Mectizan®.
The 2020 MDP report shows that in 2019, over 400 million doses were donated to nations which combat “river blindness” (onchocerciasis) and also lymphatic filariasis (LF). Most nations are in Africa, as the image below shows:
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Here is the same image with markings, showing how to identify if a nation was currently receiving tons of ivermectin (Mectizan®) as part of MDP:
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The dot colors tell you if ivermectin was in routine use in mid-2020 when this report came out, and I used that map legend to refine the list of regions using ivermectin.
The acronym, IDA, stands for a triple-therapy of ivermectin [Mectizan®], diethylcarbamazine [DEC], and albendazole.
One Out, and Two More In
Two regions, Madagascar along with Sao Tome & Principe, got moved into the ivermectin group.
One other nation fighting either river blindness or lymphatic filariasis, but missing from the donation program, was Rwanda, and it got removed entirely from my data set. The reason to remove it is because Rwanda “might” be getting ivermectin through other channels besides MDP.
I can’t tell which group Rwanda goes in: routine ivermectin users OR non-ivermectin.
The earlier cutoff date used below comes from tracking “vaccine uptake” in Africa, overall. While arbitrary, a level of 1 total dose administered for every 5,000 people was used as the cutoff:
Prior to that level (prior to 1 Feb 2021) any difference in excess death rates between nations in Africa will be attributable to routine ivermectin use — and not attributed to “vaccine” uptake levels.
After 1 Feb 2021, however, the COVID jabs would be administered at high-enough levels to act as a confounder.
This is the reason that I’m backing off from my previous cutoff date of 8 Mar 2021 — some of the excess death rate movement in March of 2021 would be expected to come from COVID injections, but I want to be able to attribute (virtually) all death differences to differences in ivermectin use only.
What the science said about ivermectin (by 1 Feb 2021)
Here is the worksheet showing what is called a Wilcoxon Rank Sum test, which compares any two groups — even if they are not normally distributed — and looks for statistically-significant differences in the distributions:
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As you can see in the markings, 8 of the top 10 accumulated excess death rates (per 100,000) were in the 20 African nations without routine ivermectin use, and the sum of the ranks for them was 2.3 standard deviations above the mean sum of ranks when comparing any two groups of 20 and 32 — like these two groups.
The routine use of ivermectin helped significantly (see orange-highlighted p-value in cell S17) in preventing the rise in excess death rates. African nations without routine ivermectin use had excess death rates that were 64% higher than those with routine ivermectin use.
Statement-of-the-obvious: A 64% higher average excess death rate is a “big deal.”
The “Experts” Speak Up and Speak Out
But health officials said ivermectin had no evidence behind it — even though the experience of 52 African nations tells a vivid story. By June of 2020, the WHO recommended against the continued donation of ivermectin, advising MDP to temporarily stop delivering it to nations:
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By March of 2021, the WHO was actively recommending against use of ivermectin in anyone not enrolled in a clinical trial. And by August of 2021, Fauci and the FDA had come out against ivermectin, with the FDA making fun of ivermectin users by association with farm animals who are often given ivermectin.
Apparently, a statistically-significant 64% increase in excess death rates isn’t strong enough evidence to recommend ivermectin — because the numbers I ran above all existed on 1 Feb 2021, and anyone at FDA or in the WHO could have run the same test I did — achieving the same, low p-value of 0.01.
Reference
[study, also finding ivermectin protective, which referenced the MDP as a means to differentiate nations by routine ivermectin use] — Guerrero R, Bravo LE, Muñoz E, Ardila EKG, Guerrero E. COVID-19: The Ivermectin African Enigma. Colomb Med (Cali). 2020 Dec 30;51(4):e2014613. doi: 10.25100/cm.v51i4.4613. PMID: 33795896; PMCID: PMC7968425. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7968425/
[MDP report published in 2020] — Mectizan Donation Program. https://mectizan.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/MDP_AH19_051920.pdf
[WHO saying that people shouldn’t be taking ivermectin, unless enrolled in clinical trials] — WHO. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-advises-that-ivermectin-only-be-used-to-treat-covid-19-within-clinical-trials
[Fauci and FDA saying in Aug 2021 that ivermectin didn’t have evidence backing it up] — World Net Daily. https://www.wnd.com/2022/11/governments-big-lie-ivermectin-finally-revealed/
[possibly the first study that “broke the news” of nation-wide protection from routine ivermectin use] — Hellwig MD, Maia A. A COVID-19 prophylaxis? Lower incidence associated with prophylactic administration of ivermectin. Int J Antimicrob Agents. 2021 Jan;57(1):106248. doi: 10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.106248. Epub 2020 Nov 28. PMID: 33259913; PMCID: PMC7698683. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7698683/
[even-handed article by Cato Institute regarding what was proper guidance, and improper guidance, given the evidence levels behind ivermectin (spoiler: US health officials, and those from the WHO, issued improper guidance on ivermectin)] — Cato Institute. https://www.cato.org/regulation/spring-2022/ivermectin-statistical-significance#early-clinical-data