Ardis shares a document from the NIH website showing ivermectin as one of the three drugs in a chart titled "Characteristics of Antiviral Agents that are Approved or Under Evaluation for the Treatment of COVID-19." The other drugs in the chart are remdesivir and nitazoxanide.
"It is an extremely important chart. Everybody needs to have it," says Ardis in The Dr. Ardis Show on Brighteon.TV.
If you have a loved one battling COVID-19 at a hospital, Ardis says you can take a copy of that chart and show the doctors that ivermectin is an approved drug to treat the disease. "You will save the life of your loved ones and can hold the hospitals accountable to the doses – the doctors can't tell you they don't know how to use that drug, the NIH tells you how to use that drug," Ardis points out.
That chart could have saved the life of Veronica Wolski, a known patriot from Chicago who died from COVID-19 at AMITA Health Resurrection Medical Center. According to her friend, Nancy Ross, Wolski had been asking the hospital for ivermectin but her requests had been repeatedly denied.
Remdesivir is an antiviral medication that targets a range of viruses. Coronaviruses have genomes made up of ribonucleic acid (RNA). Remdesivir interferes with one of the key enzymes the virus needs to replicate RNA, preventing the virus from multiplying.
However, many patients who received remdesivir have developed multiple organ failure and/or acute kidney failure. Those severe adverse effects are actually listed in the NIH chart.
Ardis shares another document that can help explain why hospitals prefer treating COVID-19 patients with remdesivir. This chart, titled New COVID-19 Treatments Add-On Payment (NCTAP), is from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) website.
Through the NCTAP, the Medicare program provides an enhanced payment for eligible inpatient cases that use certain new products with current Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval or emergency use authorization to treat COVID-19. The only drug that falls under that category is remdesivir.
That enhanced payment refers to a 20 percent bonus payout given to hospitals for all COVID-19 patients they select to treat with remdesivir over any other drug.
"They are actually bribing the hospitals and the doctors to select remdesivir," says Ardis, noting that the CMS is currently paying out $2,400 for a five-day treatment of remdesivir. Meaning, hospitals are getting $480 extra for every patient they put under the remdesivir protocol.
For the sake of comparison, ivermectin is less than $2 per tablet.
For the uninitiated, the only treatment for the disease approved by the FDA involves remdesivir. It is approved for use in adults and children at least 12 years old who weigh at least 88 pounds (40 kilograms).
Severe adverse effects, bribery and huge difference in price aside, Ardis says remdesivir is simply not as effective as ivermectin in treating COVID-19 patients. "Ivermectin is proven safe and effective. It has never killed anybody or caused acute renal failure. This is a very much approved drug."
On June 1, the Desert Review reported that ivermectin significantly reduced the COVID-19 infections in Delhi, India, which has a population of over 30 million.
Delhi health authorities began treating patients with ivermectin on April 20. At the time, it was dealing with nearly 30,000 new cases daily. By the end of May, COVID-19 cases in the metropolitan area plummeted to less than 1,000 new cases per day. (Related: Widespread ivermectin use has caused a 97% drop in coronavirus cases in Delhi, India.)
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a conditional recommendation against the use of remdesivir in hospitalized patients, regardless of disease severity, as there is no evidence that remdesivir improves survival and other outcomes in patients.
The recommendation is part of a living guideline on clinical care for COVID-19. It has been developed by an international guideline development group, which includes 28 clinical care experts, four patient-partners and one ethicist.
Budesonide is another more effective and less risky treatment for COVID-19 compared to remdesivir.
Researchers at the University of Oxford have found that early treatment of inhaled budesonide reduced the need for urgent care and hospitalization in people with COVID-19 by as much as 90 percent. The study has also found that inhaled budesonide given to patients with COVID-19 within seven days of symptoms reduces recovery time.
Participants allocated the budesonide inhaler has had a quicker resolution of fever, symptoms and fewer persistent symptoms after 28 days. The study has also demonstrated that there's a reduction in persistent symptoms in those who received budesonide.
Doctors have prescribed budesonide for more than 20 years as preventive medicine for asthmatics. Dr. Richard Bartlett, a strong proponent of the drug, has written a paper with case reports describing favorable outcomes for two of his patients with the regimen. A lab study in the U.S. has also shown that budesonide inhibited the ability of a coronavirus to replicate and inflame the airways.
Watch the Sept. 29 episode of The Dr. Ardis Show here:
You can catch new episodes of The Dr. Ardis Show with Dr. Bryan Ardis every Wednesday at 10-11 a.m. on Brighteon.TV.
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Sources include:
Covid19TreatmentGuidelines.NIH.gov