Which is the handed out like candy?  Birth control pills.

May I just cite a few statistics from the scientific literature?

In a separate study published in The Lancet, researchers determined that the excess risk for nonfatal VTEs linked to this new generation of OCPs to be 16/100,000 woman years. 

16/100,000 significant adverse event risk for this one specific condition, venous thrombosis.

But.... we're just getting started!  Use of the pill among smoking women, well....

Older women who smoke have excess risk associated with OCPs (400/100,000 woman-years). 

Oh my.  So now if you smoke and are a bit older it's 416/100,000.

But what if you're don't?

They found that there were fifteen unexpected idiopathic cardiovascular deaths in the following proportions: 4.3/100,000 for levonorgestrel OCPs, 1.5/100,000 for desogestrel OCPs, and 4.8/100,000 for gestodene OCPs.

Well now that's a lot more-reasonable.  Now we're into the roughly 3/100,000 range.  But remember -- these are additive, so we're around 20/100,000, more or less, assuming you don't smoke and aren't too old (but still of child-bearing age.)

Breast cancer, incidentally, happens all the time whether you use birth control pills or not.  In fact the data is that a risk of 123/100,000 woman-years exists.  Cervical cancer in the US is about 8/100,000.

How many of these are caused by birth control pills?  Not known.  But the rates have gone up a lot, and unfortunately the odds ratio is 1.52, which, while not proof, strongly associates a whole lot of these cancers with birth control pill use.  Indeed, it appears to roughly double the risk from the literature assuming the woman in question started using said contraceptives before they were 20.

There's even worse news in that if, as a woman, you use HRT once you reach menopause the risk is additive.  Lots of women do to manage the symptomology of menopause, which can be quite life-impacting on its own.

I could keep going from other scientific literature, but I don't need to.  I will note that these risks are in fact modest and thus considered acceptable -- unless, of course you happen to be one of the people who gets nailed by them.  Then all the odds ratios in the world don't matter.

Now let's compare with what we're not doing right now with Covid-19.  You see, there is evidence that Ivermectin is effective.  We first knew this in the spring and the evidence has gotten stronger, becoming quite clear by mid summer 2020.  There are now over two dozen studies of varying quality showing that it works during all phases of the disease including as prophylaxis with effectiveness averaging over 80% which is statistically identical to that of a vaccine.

Why has there not been a series of very large random controlled trials?  They cost money and being off-patent nobody is doing them because there's no profit in it.  You'd think the NIH or other public health agency would fork up the money and do very large random controlled trials immediately on this and many other drugs that show potential promise -- you'd be wrong.  These "agencies" are simply adjuncts of the pharmaceutical industry; they are not public interest entities at all, which is clearly evidenced not only by this disease but by many others over the decades, including the 1980s when AIDS was originally ravaging the land. 

But I digress, so let's get back to the topic at hand.

Like oral contraceptives Ivermectin has been used for decades in humans as an anti-parasitic.  Those doctors claiming it has no other effect are liars; among other things we know it works for Rosacea, which is not a parasitic disease.  Indeed, Rosacea is believed to be immune system related, which is very strong evidence that Ivermectin has immune modulating effects.  That is a sufficient mechanism of action to explain why it would be effective as an immune modulator that inhibits the immune system dysregulation that occurs in severe Covid-19 patients.  When you look at the data on clinical trials you see effectiveness; what you need is a mechanism that can explain this.  We have that.

No drug is without risk.  But note that oral birth control is available over the counter, without a prescription, in most nations.  The US is one of the very few exceptions, and the obvious reason for this is simple: It forces you to spend money at the doctor's office in addition to the drug itself.  However, despite that if a woman demands it from a doctor she will get it -- even if she smokes.

Yes, Ivermectin has risks -- but so does aspirin.  All drugs have risk.

So let's quantify the significant adverse event risk of Ivermectin.

You know, what I just got done giving you information on for birth control pills which are given to any woman who demands them?

But before we do that, can we agree on one thing?  Getting pregnant is potentially dangerous as is dying from Covid.  However, pregnancy is not a pathology.  It carries risk, of course; in fact if you are pregnant in the US the risk of death was about 9/100,000 in 1986 -- but now is nearly double that.  Why?  Because people are fat pigs as a direct result of their lifestyle choices and those choices have roughly doubled the risk of dying from the simple, natural and ordinary process of pregnancy.

Yeah that sucks folks, but you did it to yourselves just as the very same behavior makes you more likely to die from Covid-19.  Is it my responsibility that you are more likely to die by getting pregnant because you ate yourself half-to-death?  Intellectual consistency much folks?

And remember, birth control pills have a roughly 20/100,000 significant (not fatal) adverse event risk in women.  Pregnancy is roughly equal but the risk there is of death, not significant adverse event.

So what is the significant adverse event risk for using Ivermectin?  It would have to be much more dangerous to forbid its common use as a prophylaxis against Covid-19 than birth control pills used as prophylaxis against pregnancy, right?

You'd be wrong.  In fact, you'd be very wrong.

There's a very large study out of the DRC where the drug is used routinely as  prophylaxis for loiasis and onchocerciasis, both parasitic infestations.  Across a population of 15 million the significant adverse event risk was 6/100,000 with most of those occurring in people who had active loasis.  In other words while the quantifiable risk of using Ivermectin absent active parasitic infection is not known it is materially less than 6/100,000.

Or, to be more precise, less than one third of the risk of taking birth control pills which are routinely taken to prevent a natural, non-pathogenic condition.

Yet one we have no quarrel giving to any woman who asks for them while the other, despite hard scientific evidence of effectiveness both as prophylaxis and treatment for Covid-19 we are refusing to use widely under informed consent by persons so-infected or at high risk of becoming infected (e.g. household members of someone who has the virus, nursing home residents, etc.)

Yes, you can argue that the evidence is not conclusive and find flaws in the studies.  But we are talking about a drug that has a much lower risk of adverse events than using birth control pills which we hand out like candy to young women on demand and pregnancy, unlike Covid-19, is not a disease -- it is a natural function that people desire from time to time to prevent.

Access to birth control pills is considered a civil right.

Refusing to offer the other is manslaughter - to the tune of well north of 200,000 counts since this became known likely effective thus far, including more than 70 in my county alone.

When do we start locking people up?