What’s a cheap, common, effective drug that not only treats but prevents COVID-19, has been in use for 40 years, has full approval of the FDA, and is on the World Health Organization’s list of “Essential Medicines”?

The answer is ivermectin, a drug that is considered so important that the doctors who discovered it won a Nobel Prize in medicine.

While used primarily as an anti-parasitic, several studies have demonstrated that it has powerful anti-viral and anti-inflammatory effects as well.

Don’t take my word for it. Read the comprehensive analysis about ivermectin compiled by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.

When it comes to COVID treatment, however, ivermectin has been controversial, with the WHO, the FDA, and the NIH either recommending it only be used in clinical trials, recommending it not be used at all, or refusing to make a recommendation.

In the middle of a global pandemic, the three-letter health agencies should be empowering us with a list of safe and available therapeutic drugs for treatment, and instead they’re doing mental gymnastics.

Here’s why.

The FDA has given Emergency Use Authorization for three COVID vaccines in the U.S., but in order to legally issue an EUA, “there must be no adequate, approved, and available alternative to the candidate product for diagnosing, preventing, or treating the disease or condition.”

In other words, if the FDA knew there was an effective therapeutic treatment, it would be impossible to issue an EUA for vaccines.

The folks at the WHO are so committed to pushing the shiny new vaccines that they briefly deleted naturally acquired immunity from their definition of “herd immunity” to emphasize vaccination as the preferred route.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that the powers-that-be have deliberately ignored ivermectin and other early treatment drugs (remember hydroxychloroquine?), in favor of vaccinating the world and padding the pockets of Big Pharma companies.

And don’t kid yourself thinking the three-letter agencies have no financial interests here. A simple Google search about funding pulls up multiple examples of big health orgs taking money directly from pharma companies, or funneling pharma money through patient groups and other organizations.

Drugs like ivermectin that have been around a long time and are no longer under patent aren’t the financial windfall new products are.

The dark side of this is that lives are being lost by prioritizing profits over patients.

How many COVID deaths could have been avoided by using early interventions like ivermectin?

Dr. Peter McCullough of Baylor University is one of several physicians who testified before the U.S. Senate last year about the efficacy of early treatments. He estimated that the U.S. “could have saved half the lives lost” if therapeutic treatments had been recommended and made widely available.

As of this writing, there have been an estimated 583,596 people who have died with COVID in the U.S.

That’s a lot of blood on the hands of health authorities.

But don’t expect them to change their ways anytime soon, or at least until the vaccines have achieved full FDA approval.