Well, I finally got COVID. After 18 months of seeing patients everyday, it happened. Who knows how — I’m on the campaign trail, I have kids in school, I don’t double mask while driving alone in my car — but it finally happened.
Let me begin by disclosing that I managed to make it through the pandemic without having a single person or staff member contract COVID at my clinic. We see hundreds of patients per week. My job is to operate on skin cancer, mostly on people’s faces, and repair the results. This means I’m less than a foot away from people’s mouths and noses, sometimes for an hour during a long reconstruction. Zero cases. How did we do this? We followed the science, not the CDC. From day one I provided N95s to all of my staff. We reused these, again following the best data, and managed to stretch our inventory over months. We succeeded where most hospitals failed: keeping our patients and our staff protected.
I will also disclose that I’m fully vaccinated. While I do not, and will never, mandate vaccination or even inquire on vaccination status of my staff, I believe that every person has the right to choose to be vaccinated if they desire. For personal reasons related to my job, I chose to voluntarily vaccinate. You should have the same right to choose.
What the legacy media, the CDC and the rest of the public health complex are hiding is the fact that many or most of the cases are now in the vaccinated population. They’re content to falsely vilify the recovered or the unvaccinated as the drivers of disease. With the exception of the recovered, both the vaccinated and unvaccinated can spread delta-variant COVID. In my case, full immunization clearly did not prevent my infection. In fact, I’m unaware of any close contacts who have contracted COVID who were unvaccinated — they’ve all been vaccinated and most could trace it back to a vaccinated individual who infected them.
So what am I doing? Well, first of all, I contacted everybody around me to let them know so they could get tested or monitor for symptoms. Second, I moved into the basement away from the rest of my family while I’m symptomatic. Finally, I started ivermectin. That’s right, I’m taking what CNN believes is a horse dewormer. I guess Joe Rogan will be welcoming me to the club soon.
More fully, I started the FLCCC protocol (Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance). This is an evidence-based protocol utilizing a variety of medications and other treatments that has proven helpful in saving lives around the globe. A mainstay of their protocol is ivermectin. Did this medication come from a farm supply store? No, it came from an FDA-approved box of medication called Stromectol(R).
I am a dermatologist, and my specialty prescribes more ivermectin in a year than any other field in American medicine. We treat scabies and lice with oral ivermectin as first-line therapy. For rosacea we use ivermectin in cream form. Ivermectin, the discovery of which earned a Nobel prize, has controlled the scourge of river blindness (onchocerciasis) in central Africa. With over two billion doses administered to people two years and older, it is one of the safest medications in existence.
Nonetheless, the unfounded concern from the medical-industrial-complex towards a treatment with nearly zero risk, a much stronger evidence base than masking, and the potential to save millions of lives has been bizarre to watch. Doctors with no understanding of the drug, and ignorance of its evidence base, parade their ignorance in the legacy media as a badge of honor. Vaccines have their role in the war against COVID, but so does ivermectin. Furthermore, the benefit of vaccines erodes every day. Whereas for ivermectin the benefits seem more apparent with time.
For example, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has nearly eradicated COVID through a policy of providing the 240 million inhabitants with ivermectin, doxycycline, rapid tests and a pulse oximeter. For $10 a household they have contained and controlled COVID. This is the best kept secret that the establishment doesn’t want you to know: we have tools to beat back COVID that are not just the vaccines or very expensive on-patent drugs. Meanwhile, Indian states that didn’t follow Uttar Pradesh’s lead suffered for far longer with COVID deaths and hospitalizations.
By the time you read this sentence I will most likely have been canceled for stating these facts. Sadly, the politicization of COVID continues to lead to unnecessary deaths. If you think you might have COVID, regardless of your vaccine status, please get tested. If you test positive, please quarantine until you feel better. And, finally, don’t sit on the positive test: get treated. Ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies — whatever you’re comfortable taking. I sincerely hope that more people will seek treatment so we can stop seeing our families, friends and neighbors die needlessly.
Neil A. Shah, MD
Dr. Neil Shah is a candidate for Minnesota Governor. Learn more about his campaign by visiting electneil.com
