The Miracle Not-Heard Around The World: The Success of Uttar Pradesh

In Part 1 of this post on Uttar Pradesh (UP), I introduced the people responsible for UP’s “Test, Track, and Treat” program and reviewed its evolution into the most pragmatic, comprehensive, and successful health system response to COVID in the world.

ONTO THE SECOND WAVE

As you can see below, after the “First Wave,” by January of 2021, India had “gone quiet,” given that COVID death rates per 100,000 plummeted across the country, with most states having very low rates of reported deaths as seen below to the far right of the graph (ending just before the Delta wave starts to form):

Then the new “Delta” variant began to escalate in Lahore, Pakistan in mid-February. A month later Delta began to escalate in the adjacent Punjab region of India and then onto nearby Delhi where the city started to get hammered. Delhi experienced the worst outbreak in the country, with 50% higher rates of death than its nearest neighboring city. It then spread to Mumbai in mid-southwest India which implemented lockdowns causing massive numbers of migrant workers to begin fleeing Delhi to go back to their hometowns. The reason why they fled is because they remembered what happened during the 2020 lockdown in Mumbai and Delhi where they couldn't work and they couldn't be with their families. As you can see below, Uttar Pradesh is the home of millions of migrant workers, particularly those working in Mumbai and Delhi.

So UP started to get hit, and hard. They went from 300 cases a day on March 19th (umm, out of 231 million people) to 2,589 on April 2nd, then to almost 40,000 by April 27th. Note that the United States of Pharma (USOP) would love to see just 40,000 cases a day.

The case rate increase and decrease in UP looked like this:

The reason why it looked like the above is because the massive surge was met with an aggressive response by UP’s “Team-11.” First, they increased the number of health care workers to more aggressively perform testing throughout the state. They ended up deploying 400,000 health care workers in 141,610 teams along with 21,242 supervisors within a structure of 60,000 “surveillance committees.” As detailed in this news article, they had already been distributing 1 million ivermectin doses bi-weekly to over 1 million Health care workers since August 2020. The teams then proactively visited homes, testing covid-symptomatic individuals using Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kits; those who tested positive were isolated and given a medicine kit containing ivermectin with clear-cut instructions. They also began screening all incoming migrants at bus stations, airports, and train stations. By May 15th, they had conducted 43 million tests.

Now, check out the below. Due to these millions of migrant workers bringing Delta into UP, this led to one of the highest infection rates in India per 100,000 as seen below where the other grey lines represent 29 other Indian states:

Although their case rate was one of the highest in India during the massive migration, note that their death rate per 100,000 was one of the lowest in India as seen below (I again highlight Kerala as a comparator, for reasons you will learn about (essentially because they responded to the Delta wave with mass vaccination and avoidance of ivermectin):

So how did they accomplish such a low death rate compared to cases? Well, on April 17th, UP’s government released a list of 7 medicines, published in a major newspaper, giving clear instructions on how to treat patients with COVID. In particular, they advised giving ivermectin after food which we now know leads to much higher concentrations of ivermectin. I also loved their guidance about drinking enough water and getting enough sleep.

Then, on April 25th, Chief Minister Yogi announced to all UP residents, that it will now bear the cost of treatment of Covid patients even in private hospitals!

Most importantly, the RRT teams spread out across UP, visiting 97,000 villages, testing widely, prophylaxing close contacts, and treating those ill with ivermectin. The cases started to drop precipitously. Based on data from Johns Hopkins University, on April 26th they had 33,531 cases which decreased to 18,023 by May 12. Then on May 30, the cases dropped to just under 600 cases a day. Again, we are talking about a state with 231 million people performing massive testing. Only 600 cases a day. While the rest of India was still raging with Delta.

Now, to the point of this post: one of the last headlines mentioning UP’s ivermectin use in a major newspaper can be found in this article below from May 12, 2021.

On May 10th however, although the Hindustan Times also reported on the amazing turnaround in UP, detailing the steep drop in cases, the high recovery rate of cases, and one of the lowest positivity rates in the country, they do not mention ivermectin. Instead they report on the number of vaccinations the UP has administered. The insane censorship of mentioning ivermectin as part of UP’s program begins in earnest (and will get worse, a lot worse). What is even more tragic is the beginnings of the attempt to credit UP’s turnaround to vaccinations. Absolute nonsense.

Delta enveloped most of India, particularly in the big cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Numerous reports of collapsing city and regional health systems due to hospitals that were over-run with patients and running out of supplies and oxygen.

But then the censorship increases even more. It is not that propaganda went away, in fact, numerous media articles cited the massive infection rates and India’s widespread ivermectin use to support their narrative that ivermectin does not work. In the case of UP’s program, since UP had so rapidly and successfully extinguished cases, the media avoided mentioning that UP was using ivermectin systematically in prevention and treatment (an approach I had argued for in my Senate Testimony).

Check this out, on May 7, 2021, the WHO posted a highly praiseworthy description of UP’s COVID response . You cannot find the word ivermectin in the report.

Further, they did not even mention the name of UP’s “Test, Track, and Treat” program. Instead the article focuses on and solely credits UP’s testing and contact surveillance methods for its success. It was a blatant attempt at avoiding the mention of ivermectin, even though they knew it was being used. This is what they wrote, "Those who test positive are quickly isolated and given a medicine kit with advice on disease management." Not subtle.

Then, a few days later, in the midst of the wider humanitarian catastrophe across India, the WHO sends out multiple tweets praising UP. Again, no mention of ivermectin.

For the naysayers who refused to believe that UP was using ivermectin, below are the official documents from Uttar Pradesh, detailing their use of ivermectin in pre-exposure prophylaxis of health care workers, post-exposure prophylaxis of exposed contacts, and in treatment of ill patients (see below in both Hindi and English).

Note that one of the architects of the TTT program, Dr. Surya Kant, was interviewed on May 22nd, 2021, and said the following to the WHO:

This is my request to WHO – please can you advise on a policy [for ivermectin use] for developing countries at least. This is a cost-effective drug, this is a safe drug and let us try this! Of course, in India I think the day will come when it will be used pan-India. ……Of course after vaccine, ivermectin can be a very important tool to save humanity, to save our people.”

I had encouraging email correspondences with Dr. Kant above from June to September of 2021 when I pled with him for any official data on ivermectin’s efficacy in UP. He said they were compiling a paper to be published in the top Indian Medical journal but that they were busy, plus he had recently been put in charge of India’s Vaccination campaign. Yikes. That was in September 2021. Still waiting on the paper.

You will see how strongly the “thou shalt not say ivermectin” then takes hold in this farce of an article a month later on India.com news site. They announce that Yogi Adityanath’s government has decided to prepare 5 million “special medicine kits” for children with chewable tablets and/or syrup, however nowhere is it mentioned what the “special” medicine is.

The very last time I can find a major media article about UP where the word ivermectin appears is on June 15, 2021, when the Hindustan Times also reported on the CM’s plan to prepare kits for children, but here they actually mention that ivermectin is in the kits. Wow.

Anyway, soon after the hell month where UP was over-run with cases, they started to drop. Precipitously. But Team-11 and its massive workforce of RRT team kept going with testing, tracking, treating. So much so that cases started to disappear over the summer.

By August-September of 2021, I maintain that one of the greatest public health achievements in history was realized in Uttar Pradesh. The significance of this achievement cannot be overstated given that one of history’s most highly contagious, aerosol-transmitted viruses had essentially disappeared from within the borders of a massive Indian state of 231 million people. This article in the Hindustan Times on September 10th reported;

• 67 of UP’s 75 districts did not report a new case in the previous 24 hours. That would be like 44 states in the U.S not reporting a new case at the same time. Think about that for a second.

• In 33 districts, they had not a single “active case.” That would be like the U.S having 22 states without any resident being actively ill with COVID. Again, think about that for a second.

• In a state of 231 million people, there were only 199 active cases. You know what I want you to do with that info. The USOP has more monkey pox now than UP has had COVID since. Clown world.

• In the previous 24 hours, there had been only 11 new COVID-19 cases in UP. Again, 11 new cases among 231 million people. This occurred despite 226,000 tests having been conducted in that same 24 hour period (.004% positivity). This is effectively a zero prevalence. I repeat, zero prevalence. Astounding.

• On September 20th, out of the previous 2.5 million tests (2,524,162) in UP there were only 201 positives, a rate of .007%, which is again, effectively zero. By this time 57 districts in the state were without an active case of COVID.

Note that this astonishing news should have been on the cover of every major newspaper across the world. The article above essentially reported that UP’s TTT program had ended the pandemic within the state. UP’s achievement, to me, is as newsworthy as any discovery with potential to change life across the globe, akin to the discovery of penicillin. Yet, again, ivermectin is not mentioned in the article.

Another article in India Today also reported the amazing success of Uttar Pradesh, and again, ivermectin is not mentioned.

In this article based on an extensive interview with Yogi Adnithayath, ivermectin is also not mentioned despite including highly detailed descriptions of everything else that Yogi’s Team-11 did. The writer instead emphasizes vaccinations and the ignoring of natural immunity. The enemies of ivermectin instead erroneously claimed that UP’s vaccination drive is what should be credited. This is beyond absurd. On September 21, 2021 only 10% of UP citizens were fully vaccinated (plus, and it should go without mention… the vaccines don’t work).

Further, news of this amazing achievement was not reported by any major newspaper in any major country in the world that I know of. In the U.S, the only news sites that I saw that reported it and included mention of the role of ivermectin were TrialSite News, the Desert Review (by my friend Justus Hope), and the Gateway Pundit.

Even when UP’s achievement was covered, either by the FLCCC or from other sources and podcasters, it was met with the usual Disinformation “narratives” constructed to distort its importance. News articles instead highlighted the carnage of the Delta wave. One mentor from early in my career, texted me that, “India was using it widely and they got crushed, it clearly doesn’t work.”

The more astute and well-studied observers and researchers compared UP’s performance with Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the two Indian states that very publicly removed ivermectin from use.

Let’s do that comparison: On May 14, 2021, amidst the onslaught of the Delta wave, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu (M.K. Stalin - I am not making this up and what is more ridiculous is that his Communist Party held increasing power in that state) decided to remove ivermectin from the state’s protocol in favor of Remdesivir and vaccination. Note that Stalin’s response exactly mirrored the USOP’s COVID protocol at the time.

Well, look what happens:

Now let’s look at the state of Kerala. They had already taken Ivermectin out of their protocol on August 5, 2020 after having earlier limited its use to advanced cases only. During Delta, they started vaccinating, hard. Two months after the peak of UP’s Delta wave, on July 29th, this article reported that "Kerala has been reporting over 22,000 new COVID infections for the last three days now. No other state in India is even close to the 10,000 mark. The COVID conundrum in the southern state has led to several questions, with no certain answers."

Kerala continued to have the majority of new daily cases and almost 25% of India's daily deaths despite a population of just 34 million, less than 3% of India's total population. What could they have been doing wrong?