The Case for Ivermectin

Godofredo U. Stuart, MD

It has been more than a year since the world declared war on COVID. Quarantines, lock-downs, social distancing, separation and loneliness, masks and face shields. spikes, surges and flattening of the curve, new infections and rising death counts, herd immunity, the new ways of grieving, dying and death—they became the language of the “new normal.”

While the world anxiously waited for the vaccine, while politics battled with science, there was a desperate search for treatments and supplements to stave off the raging virus: hydroxychloroquine saw fleeting use; zinc, D3, and vitamin C continue as popular vitamin/mineral supplements; virgin coconut oil and barley as natural alternative options; prescription colchicene as anti-inflammatory; drugs for re-purposing, compassionate use or off-label use; convalescent plasma for the connected; remdesivir for the rich, leronlimab monoclonal antibody for the richer.

Despite the recent availability of the vaccine, its distribution has been hampered by politics and realities of poor nation status:
the rich and powerful stay in the front of the line, the poor and the lowly at the end. Despite vaccination efforts, the virus is far from being vanquished—it continues to threaten with surges, waves, mutations and variants, and augurs that possibility that it is here to stay, seasonally hibernating, or constantly mutating into variants that are vaccine resistant, that will need a continuing search for therapies that are both preventive and therapeutic.

One such drug with preventive and therapeutic promise for COVID-19 is ivermectin. It didn’t come out from the blue. A repurposed drug, it has been around for 40 years, an FDA-approved antinematode drug, well-studied, off-patent, inexpensive, with an excellent safety profile. (Early records of adverse reactions in the human field tainted its safety profile, but the majority of reactions were attributable to interaction between drug and disease, not the drug itself.) it has been used by more than three billion people, with immeasurable benefits to humankind.

READ ON…

Reinventing EDSA

agree with luis teodoro that “EDSA 1986 was truly revolutionary — and it is for that reason that, though they have never found the words to explicitly say it, the power elite fear it.” it is also why enrile has tried to re-invent it in terms of “military primacy”. i say it’s time we the people reinvent EDSA, level up the non-violent activism, get our acts together, in the run-up to 2022.  #hopespringseternal

 LUIS V. TEODORO

The 35th anniversary of the 1986 civilian-military mutiny known as EDSA I — or as its participant-adherents then called it, the People Power Revolution — that overthrew the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship and forced him and his family to flee to Hawaii, USA came and went this year with hardly anyone noticing.

Feb. 25 has become for most Filipinos just another anniversary of this or that incident in history whose meaning has eluded them for years, or the birth or death date of someone they were told in elementary school did something that made him a hero. Exactly why an incident or a certain date is important is something they haven’t bothered to find out. Jose Rizal? Didn’t he have a girl in every port? Tirad Pass? Is that where that anti-American guy died? And EDSA 1986? Wasn’t that the incident that ended the administration of the best president the Philippines has ever had?

As in previous years, only the usual platitudes and motherhood statements emanated from Malacañang Palace. It was as if the biggest bureaucrats in government feared that saying something meaningful could educate the mass of the citizenry enough for it to harbor such dangerous ideas as that they’re the true sovereigns of this country and that government officials serve at their pleasure. That’s as likely to happen as this country’s making it out of the Medieval Ages and into the 21st century, but one could almost hear President Rodrigo Duterte asking his staff if it’s that time of the year again, and can’t we just forget about EDSA I?

Not that Mr. Duterte has ever given the event any importance. Since 2017 he has studiously avoided attending any ceremony marking its anniversary, thereby pointedly sending his followers the message that it is really nothing to celebrate. It makes perfect sense for a president who counts the surviving Marcoses among his most reliable partisans and closest allies. But beyond the demands of that alliance — and even his declared preference for defeated 2016 vice-presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. to succeed him should he decide not to complete his six-year term — is the fear of an EDSA I repetition, or even of the year 2001’s EDSA II, when another president, Joseph Estrada, was also removed from office through direct people’s action.

Although referred to as a “revolution,” EDSA 1986 was true to that word only in one sense. It certainly was not an economic revolution, since it didn’t transform the economic system. The land tenancy anomaly survived it and even emerged stronger than ever; inviting foreign investments into the country is still the main development strategy of Marcos’ successors as it has been since 1946; and industrialization has never been seriously contemplated as economic policy. Neither was that “revolution” a social upheaval: it did not end the vast inequality, the social injustice, and the poverty that still afflict millions of Filipinos.

But it was a moment of mass empowerment, the precedents of which go back a hundred years to the Reform and Revolutionary periods of Philippine history. For the first time since the country declared its independence, and after decades of tolerating corrupt and incompetent misgovernment from 1946 onwards, some two million Filipinos braved the tanks, the helicopter gunships and the mercenary soldiery of a murderous dictatorship to declare that they had had enough of the human rights violations, the torture, the enforced disappearances and the extrajudicial killings of the regime, and that it was time to end the lies and the deceit of a self-serving kleptocracy that had brought only dishonor to this country and suffering to its people.

It was in that sense that EDSA 1986 was truly revolutionary — and it is for that reason that, though they have never found the words to explicitly say it, the power elite fear it. 

Mr. Duterte is not alone in wishing it and its example away. His predecessors were equally focused on getting the people to forget both EDSAs, and for entirely the same reason.

Although he was one of the leading figures of EDSA 1986, former President Fidel Ramos, for example, repeatedly discouraged its repetition supposedly because the political instability it would signify would discourage foreign investments. Joseph Estrada’s removal from office via EDSA II naturally made him, his family, and his allies leery of anything similar, while Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo allegedly contemplated declaring martial law out of fear that an EDSA III could depose her.

Himself accused of fomenting a military putsch during the coup-plagued presidency of Corazon Aquino, former Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, instead of discouraging the celebration of EDSA I as well as EDSA II, encouraged remembering both differently. Like Ramos, he was, after all, also one of the 1986 event’s leading figures, and apparently believed that something similar could propel him to power. Rather than admit that what overthrew Marcos in 1986 and Estrada in 2001 was the people’s direct action, he declared at some point when he was eying the Presidency that it was the military that had done the deed.

That claim is only partly true, however. Elements of the military were indeed involved in both uprisings, but without the millions massed at Quezon City’s Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) between Camps Crame and Aguinaldo, those rebel units would have been overrun by the superior numbers of Marcos’ military loyalists. It was civilians — nuns and priests and middle-class folk — who faced Marcos’ tanks and shielded Ramos, Enrile, and their military cohorts from being attacked and annihilated in 1986.

It was also an event 14 years in the making. Without the heroic efforts of Church people, journalists, writers, teachers, students, artists and many other sectors to provide the citizenry from day one of martial rule, the information that finally led millions of men, women and even entire families to mass at EDSA from Feb. 22 to 25, the dictatorship would have prevailed. The same commitment of the same sectors was similarly indispensable to the success of EDSA II.

As untenable as Enrile’s re-invention of EDSA I and II may be, it seems that Mr. Duterte is of the same view, although not necessarily because of Enrile’s say-so, and without publicly admitting it. The same assumption of military primacy as Enrile’s is evident in his unending courtship of the officers corps — his packing his government with retired generals, and his putting the interests and welfare of the soldiery above those of everyone else’s in terms of perks and salaries. Rather than the people shielding him from the military, it would seem that Mr. Duterte is anticipating the possibility that the military might have to shield him from the people.

But could he be mistaken in assuming that the military will be true to him no matter what the cost? There are no indications so far that it won’t be. And as for the possibility of something like another People Power uprising occurring, that, too, seems hardly likely. After decades of disinformation and forgetfulness, the Filipino masses have yet to learn the revolutionary lesson as well as the meaning of both EDSA events.

Mr. Duterte and company are in the rare and privileged position of being protected by both the seemingly boundless loyalty of the military and the cluelessness and apathy of the heirs of a generation that brought down a seemingly invincible tyranny. That makes it so much the worse for the future of the interminable work-in-progress that is Philippine democracy.

myanmar, people power, democracy

from veronica pedrosa’s The power of imagination, very brave words from myanmar activists who are bracing for the worst while hoping for the best.

“I want to tell everybody living in Burma that the February revolution is going to be successful. Eventually we’re going to make ourselves the last generation that’s going to witness a military dictatorship as well as a genocide on Burmese soil.”

Confident words spoken by activist Htuu Lou Rae Den as mass demonstrations in Myanmar/Burma reach their height. As I write, millions of people have joined a general strike and brought the biggest cities across the country to a standstill, in scenes that echo those seen in Manila 35 years ago to the day, with the demonstrations that eventually ousted Ferdinand Marcos.

“If we oppose the dictatorship, they might shoot us. Everyone knows it. But we have to oppose dictatorship. It’s our duty,” one strike committee member told Nikkei Asia.

and from alex magno’s Alone :

As the protest actions grow larger and noisier, the military response is bound to become more brutal.

Over the past few days, three demonstrators were killed. All of them by gunshot wounds, one to the head.

The violent military response will unlikely dissuade further protests. But further protests increase the likelihood of more deaths. This situation could spiral until all possible resolutions are untenable.

35 years ago today in manila, the marines defied palace orders to ram through a sea of people regardless of casualties. today in myanmar, the military, while fully in control of government, seems (we wish?) disconcerted, confounded, discombobulated even, by the nationwide non-violent protests.

pierre rousset reports on today’s general strike:

The Civil Disobedience Movement called for this one-day general strike, three weeks after the February 1 coup. Media reports confirm the success: across the country, offices, businesses, markets, shops and restaurants were closed. Neighbourhoods were barricaded, roads were cut.

The military junta had tried to prevent this success by increasing the repression. There were more than 400 arrests. Sometimes, live ammunition was used. In Naypyidaw, the administrative capital, a 19-year-old grocer Mya Thwet Thwet Khine was killed. Her burial was followed by a long motorcade. A protest in her memory was held in Rangoon (Yangon), the business capital and largest city. This assassination radicalized the protest.

Another large protest took place in the port of Mandalay, where security forces shot dead two people, while trying to force strikers refusing to load a ship to work.

On Monday 22 February the military took preventative measures deploying tanks, erecting barricades and positioning military convoys to close access to urban centres. This did not deter the demonstrators who dismantled the barricades or gathered in front of the soldiers.

Right from the start, the resistance to this coup has brought together a wide range of people, with healthcare workers and the educated youth of Generation Z at the forefront. The movement also gathers powerful formal or informal associations of public sector workers, private employees, entrepreneurs and traders. The opposition has spread to new groups and new regions over the last three weeks. A union led by women in an industrial area in Rangoon is helping to amplify protests in the city centre. LGBT groups are very active. A peasant mobilization is taking shape. (Some) police officers side with the demonstrators. Buddhist monks are showing their support (but the religious establishment is not). The demonstrators have chosen non-violence, combining “fluid” actions and massive static gatherings. Overall, despite isolated incidents, there appears to have been no brutal repression to date.

The resistance quickly acquired a framework for coordination: the Civil Disobedience Movement. This aims to ensure the continuation of the struggle over time and in solidarity. Striking in Burma is not without consequences. Even civil servants (public sector employees) find themselves without income; there are no unions and strike funds able to support them. If the struggle fails, it is their job that is at stake. Many local initiatives have been taken, often by well-known personalities, to help strikers’ families by providing accommodation, food, etc. The existence of the MDC has facilitated this mutual aid, even if it is only a partial and temporary answer.

… The 1 February coup shows that the military does not want to give up any of its power. But, faced with the power of popular mobilization, the military might try to play for time rather than unleash a bloodbath. Either way, there is no turning back. The determination of the movement reflects the feeling that there is no acceptable outcome other than victory – and that victory is possible this time!

23 February 2021

COVID daze

Way to live. Way to die. Way to write.

In 2019, when Greta Thunberg, 16, was scolding, thundering at, global leaders about the sorry state of the planet and warning of climate change coming, astrologers were warning of a worrisome conjunction of planets Saturn and Pluto—both malefic in ancient lore, transformative in current thought—culminating in January 2020 in Capricorn yet, the earth sign associated with governments, the global economy, the establishment, the patriarch.

The forecast that most resonated was of a black swan event that would shake world powers-that-be into seeing, acknowledging, that the status quo is NOT sustainable; that the planet, and the poor and the homeless, can take only so much abuse; that CHANGE is inevitable.

I was imagining a sudden escalation in global warming that scientists hadn’t seen coming, a surprise package from mother nature’s deep state with disastrous geopolitical and economic effects worldwide.

But, as it turns out, COVID-19 is no black swan – scientists and fictionists both, and the likes of Bill Gates, too, had been warning of a health pandemic such as this for years.

As it also turns out, the killer virus is only indirectly related to climate change, and more likely directly a consequence of the way we humans have cut down forests with arrogant disregard for our fellow creatures in the wild and the ecology of the whole, all in the name of ‘development,’ because, you know, it’s the economy (that matters) stupid, or so the capitalists preach/ed and practice/d.

Said to have jumped from bats through pangolins to humans, if not custom-made in some lab for biowarfare purposes (as conspiracy theorists insist), the culprit is a tiny replicating beast of a virus that we can’t even see except through a high-powered transmission electron microscope, but which is so contagious a challenge to the human immune system, it has been impossible to downplay the spread and the dead, the dread and the panic, around the globe.

Life is dramatically different, ang daming bawal. We are not to touch our eyes nose mouth in case our hands (wash hands!) are carrying the virus (from something / someone we touched, among other possibilities). It’s not easy because our eyes nose mouth are exposed, and sensitive, to the elements, and it takes a lot of control not to scratch that itch now and then.

Suddenly we have to wear masks and avoid human contact, the idea being to contain and delay the spread of the virus until a cure is found or a vaccine developed that is both safe and efficacious, and the only way is to stay home and keep every other human at arm’s length or two. Even family. Even in the confines of home, in case anyone turns out to be asymptomatic a carrier. Which is all so counter-intuitive for us humans who by nature like to touch, need to touch, thrive on touch, particularly in anxious times like this when the impulse is to huddle and cuddle and hug for strength and comfort. Pa-konsuwelo sa urban poor in cramped hovels, argh.

As if being locked down in our private spaces were not bad enough, it’s been a trial worrying about, problematizing the logistics of, access to food and meds and other essentials. Ang daming nawalan ng trabaho. Worst hit are the majority poor who pre-COVID-19 barely subsisted kahig-tuka from meal-to-meal, day-to-day, a drop here, a trickle there, consequently reduced to lockdown hunger, no kahig, no tuka. Asa na lang sa, hintay na lang ng, manaka-nakang hulog ng langit na madalas ay kakarampot na nga, nananakaw pa. And let me not get started on our overworked healthcare workers who deserve better care and better pay.

The good news, finally, maybe, as 2020 draws to a close, is of vaccines coming, raising hopes that things can go back to normal sooner than later.

I wouldn’t bet on it.

Getting access to enough vaccines for at least 60 (some say 70, some 80) million Filipinos in order for the herd to achieve immunity is going to take some doing. Ang pangako ni Dutz na Pamaskong bakuna, malamang ay sa Semana Santa pa at the earliest.

As above, so below. The year 2020 closes with another important conjunction. Jupiter, (benefic) planet of expansion and imaginative vision, and Saturn, (malefic) planet of structure and discipline, align in the first degree of Aquarius, the air sign associated with higher aspirations, humanitarian concerns, the collective good, ruled by Uranus, the “awakener” who brings unexpected shocks in aid of raising human consciousness.

There will be changes, maybe new beginnings, over the next two, three, years. We will be reminded again and again about the interconnectedness of all things. Ang sakit ng kalingkingan ay sakit ng buong katawan. We will be reminded again and again, over and over, until we get it right, that it IS the economy, stupid, liberal capitalism, to be precise, that has messed up the planet and humanity.

A new socio-economic order is the new grail.

Way to die

There was that video clip on cable TV of an angry, grieving daughter whose father had just died of COVID in hospital: “My dad was a good man, he didn’t deserve to die like that!”

Indeed. No one, except perhaps a jack-the-ripper, deserves to die a painful and lonely COVID death. I would rather die painlessly and happily, in my own good time a la Edward G. Robinson in Soylent Green, but not to be processed into food for the masses please, rather, straight to a crematorium, ashes to ashes.

In that 1973 film of a dystopian future—forests gone, oceans drying up, humidity all year round, the greenhouse effect in full swing—assisted dying is the norm, and Edward G.’s character, after saying goodbye to loved ones, is hygienically dispatched with his choice of music (light classical) playing in the background and film footages of rich green fields flashing on a panoramic screen. The payback: government gets to convert his remains into green wafers to help feed a hungry populace—”Cannibalism!” the critics screamed. So yeah, cremation is good. Dust to dust.

But seriously, when I first read of some conservatives in America saying NO to quarantine and social distancing and YES to just letting the elderly die of COVID-19, even encouraging them to welcome death for the greater good, for the sake of the economy, this senior-cit went WTF! Talaga? E, kung ganoon ang scenario, let the elderly have a choice naman: either to run the risk of dying painfully of COVID, or to die ahead painlessly and in the company of loved ones. To be fair, and humane. Konting puso naman.

It’s life-changing enough, growing old and counting down. The added threat of COVID-19 and the forced early retirement is a monumental hassle, freak-out, bad trip. And given so much time and reason to dwell on things existential, it’s disconcerting, because otherwise taboo, to be talking and thinking about death.

Why nga ba are we discouraged, warned against death-talk, or the mere mention of the word? Sabi ng matatanda noong bata ako, baka kasi akalain ni Kamatayan na tinatawag siya, kaya rin may kasunod dapat na knock-on-wood three times to drive away any evil spirits summoned.

The notion of death as a bad thing. As misfortune. As punishment even. Needs rethinking.

Way to write

When the lockdown happened, I stopped work on a half-done Ninoy Aquino book project because suddenly there was no time. Suddenly the husband and the daughter who were usually out all day if not all night were home 24/7. A whole new world, LOL. Goodbye, solitude.

There was, besides, a scary virus to read up on and avoid catching, pandemic news to keep track of, a non-performing prez to rant at and about, COVID-19 (and other) deaths to mourn, healthcare workers to champion, relief work to help with, there was just no extra time.

I did try to sneak in a blog post, essay a reading of the new normal unfolding, pero hindi ako makabuo-buo, hirap na hirap mag-wrap-up, a measure I suppose of how uncertain I was about everything. Malay ko, baka naman the Inter-Agency Task Force on Covid-19 knew what it was doing, baka naman kayang gawin ang ginagawa sa Vietnam at sa South Korea, baka naman by Christmas ay maayos-ayos na (so to speak) ang buhay-buhay, as the prez promised.

Natauhan ako bandang katapusan ng June. On the 25th nabalita na gustong palitan nina Cong. Paolo Duterte, Lord Allan Velasco, at Eric Yap ang pangalan ng Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), gawing “Pambansang Paliparan ng Pilipinas.” Dapat daw kasi ay pambansang wika ang gamit at dapat daw ay malinaw agad na ito ay nasa Pilipinas.

“We want it to reflect the legacy of the Filipino people, our everyday heroes. The name bears no color, no political agenda. It only signifies our warmth as Filipinos in welcoming our own kababayans and foreign visitors,” sabi ni Pulong.

“House Bill No. 7031 is part of the efforts to reposition the Philippines as a choice tourist destination once the COVID-19 pandemic is over and travel restrictions are lifted,” sabi ni Velasco.

No political agenda. Bola. Clearly the agenda is to deny Ninoy his place in the nation’s and the airport’s history. If we allow this to happen, what’s to prevent them from eventually renaming it FMIA [Ferdinand Marcos International Airport] —in Imelda’s lifetime, they imagine; in a Bongbong presidency, they hope.

Biglang nabalikan ko tuloy si Ninoy. These last months have been all about reviewing and updating the 1980 to 1983 timeline in particular, and reading up on the Agrava fact-finding reports (majority and minority 1984), the Sandiganbayan and Supreme Court rulings (Marcos and Cory times), a convict’s belated full-of-holes “confession” that pointed to Danding as promotor (1995), the early presidential pardons by GMA (2007 to 2009), and Fe Zamora’s seven-part special report for the Inquirer (2010). Close readings for the nth time, and now I’m seeing the signs of long-term planning for both the assassination and the cover-up, how Machiavellian, how Marcosian.

Yes. Much easier to write about the past, no matter how maddening. A kind of escape from what’s turning out to be an endlessly harrowing and painful present.

Except that there is really no escaping the present for long. No ignoring the COVID threat, no shrugging off climate change, no excusing state terrorism and historical revisionism.

Without losing sight of the past, writing in, on, the present is the urgent challenge of these trying times.

*

This essay was written for the e-book IN CERTAIN SEASONS: MOTHERS WRITE IN THE TIME OF COVID, handog ng CCP at Philippine PEN.

Free e-book download link: https://www.mediafire.com/file/07tdoup69koebsw/In_Certain_Seasons_012321b.pdf/file?fbclid=IwAR0Y42SPJsUzNaTOIZDBPYowntgaXJ06h6jT3N12t_koOHyd4537riY8qzs