The designation of "ivermectin" vs "non-ivermectin" countries is based on Mass Drug Administration campaigns (MDAs), which are used in Africa to combat endemic parasitic diseases
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Those MDAs are aimed at eliminating river blindness, and are amazingly effective. They use (among other things) 1/2/4-yearly doses of ivermectin which are given to a large % of the countries in questionpic.twitter.com/IFTck7uCxM
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Now, firstly it's worth wondering how a drug with a half-life of about a day could prevent COVID-19 up to 11 months after it was last given. Is this a reasonable thing to argue?
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But perhaps more importantly, these MDA programs were all interrupted by the pandemic. In many countries, ivermectin hasn't been given ~at all~ in this manner since early 2020pic.twitter.com/U24wiiQEzp
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On top of that, this isn't the only reason ivermectin is given in these countries, nor even the only reason it is mass-distributed, as I pointed out earlierhttps://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1436201903788998657?s=20 …
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Meanwhile, we know that the private consumption of ivermectin - people buying it for themselves - has skyrocketed across the world
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In fact, the use of ivermectin for onchocerchiasis cannot possibly explain any variation in COVID-19 death rates in Africa And yet, I bet you that graphic will be shared (as the last one was) many, many times
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Did not they use Ivermectin in South America, including to treat COVID? And yet, South America has a very high death rate - and more curiously, is not in the data they want to look at?
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