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[–]InvoluntaryHalibut 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There are decades of safety data for low dose prophylactic HCQ for malaria prvention (400 mg/wk) as well as long term HCQ maintenance for management of RA and lupe (SLE) which is usually 200 to 400mg /day. Higher doses of long term HCQ are associated with vision impairment after about 5 years— it is dose dependent and at ~1/4 of that dose (~100mg/day) you wouldn’t be likely to see visual deterioration for 20 yrs. There is also some cardiac risks at higer doses for heart patients and kidney patients. But at 100 mg a day those risks are very low and could be monitored. They used to prescribe ~300 mg of quinine a day to kidney dialysis patients for a long time and I imagine the risk for long QT syndrome would be comparable to that: low.

I believe that a population wide HCQ prophylaxis program in Zambia was linked to one death. Dont quote me on that.

Ivermectin hasn’t killed a human being since its release 50 years ago (that I could find anywhere in the literature and I looked. ) Its been dispensed about a billion times since then. So right away, its safer than the vaccine. There are a handful of overdose case studies in which people took extremely high doses and all seemed to recover fully.

They have tested up to 10x the standard dose of ivermectin on people with no significant adverse side effects. The prophylactic dosage range that has shown to be as effective as vaccine is about 1 to 1.5 doses per month, which means that cumulatively a patient would only receive about 12 to 18 doses over the course of an entire year. So the effective prophylactic dose is very very low. They are probably using comparable quantities in areas where oncoceriasis (river blindness) is endemic.

The interaction of ivermectin with other drugs is basically negligable at one dose which is why it is such an attractive option especially for elderly as a covid treatment. Its safety has been compared to ibuprofen. It is has a blood thinning action similar to aspirin which is one of the reasons it is useful in treating covid.

Ivermectin has been used in very high frequency and as prophylaxis on animals for decades. There are dozens of animals studies on it. All mammals tolerate this drug well except for a handful of dog herding breeds that carry a genetic mutation. It has been shown to cause birth defects in lab animals at about 100x the doses we are talking about, which is why it probably isnt the best choice for pregnant women. Prophylactic HCQ would be a better alternative for pregnant women. Both drugs are non-carcinogenic.

Another drug that has been used prophylactically that could be used as an alternative to these two would be doxycycline. All three of these drugs are safe enough to be sold over the counter and they are in some countries.

Seniors (>65) or people with particular health concerns could decide with their doctor which of these drugs was the best choice for covid prophylaxis. No one else needs to use prophylaxis except maybe healthcare workers. Almost everyone can be cured of covid before they develop the severe form if they get antivirals soon after symptoms. Particularly younger people.

Younger healthy people under 40 or 50 are far better off catching covid and taking an antiviral than getting the vaccine. The severe inflammatory reaction and platelet destruction that occurs in severe covid is occuring in vaccine recipients.

For younger people that would mostly have a mild illness limited to their respiratory tract, they have with the vaccine a systemic inflammatory response occuring in the veins and capillaries of the brain among other places. People complaining of headaches after the vax are experiencing cereberal venous thromboses. That is why they are telling people to stay hydrated after they take the vaccine. They are hoping to reduce one of the main risk factors for thromboses, dehydration. Contraception, pregnancy, diabetes, sickle cell all put people at higher risk for getting a stroke or embolism. This is not safe. So there is no up side for young healthy people.