(The Epoch Times)—Ivermectin was found to be highly toxic against certain mosquito types and can be used as an effective tool in malaria management, according to a peer-reviewed study published in Nature on Oct. 31.
Ivermectin became controversial during the COVID-19 pandemic when many health officials denounced its usage, while others praised the drug for its efficacy. Since its discovery in the late 1970s, it has been used worldwide for treating infections caused by gastrointestinal roundworms, lungworms, and other parasites.
Many regions in Africa have been using ivermectin for malaria management, and in places where there was mass drug administration, it has been observed to “significantly reduce” the mosquito population, the study said.
Researchers based in India looked at the potential of ivermectin as a “contact-toxin” for malaria transmitters and parasites. Contact toxins are toxins that are absorbed through direct skin contact.
The study exposed lab-reared female An. culicifacies and An. stephensi mosquitoes to varying concentrations of ivermectin. Both mosquito types are the major malaria vectors in India.
When ivermectin was administered to the mosquitoes, researchers found that there was “significantly high mortality” depending on the drug concentration and the method of administration.
Mortality rate climbed as dosage was raised, with the highest ivermectin concentration resulting in a 100 percent mortality rate.
“This study also pin-pointed the fact that ivermectin when applied to treated surfaces exhibited faster killing effect among mosquitoes in contrast to when ingested through blood meal from treated individuals,” it said.
“When feeding on ivermectin-treated blood, mosquitoes survived an average of 7 days. Ivermectin exhibited a significantly stronger and faster mosquito-killing effect when applied to treated surfaces, eliminating mosquitoes within 24–48 h.”
Researchers also found that contact-exposure to ivermectin has the potential to block the development of Plasmodium parasites, which are responsible for malaria, in infected mosquitoes. They suggested that ivermectin impairs the sexual development of the parasite inside the mosquitoes’ midgut.
“The results of this study highlight the potential of ivermectin as a promising synergist to traditional insecticide-based vector control strategies. This transmission-blocking activity adds an important dimension to ivermectin’s potential as a malaria control tool,” the study said.
The study was funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research—National Institute of Malaria Research, the University Grants Commission, and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. The authors declared no competing interests in the study.
Among previous studies, some have questioned the efficacy of ivermectin to treat malaria in humans, while others have confirmed its positive impact,
In a June 2021 study published in the Cochrane Library, researchers detailed the results of a test conducted in eight villages in the West African nation of Burkina Faso, where people received doses of ivermectin.
Researchers concluded that the study did not demonstrate ivermectin’s effect on the cumulative incidence of malaria among children during the 18-week study period.
“We are uncertain whether community administration of ivermectin has an effect on malaria transmission,” they wrote.
Another study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on July 23, found ivermectin to be beneficial for malaria treatment. It analyzed children, aged 5 to 15, living in a Kenyan county where malaria was endemic and the use of insecticide-treated bed nets was high.
Administering a dose of ivermectin once a month for three straight months was found to have led to a 26 percent lower incidence of malaria infection compared to a control drug.
Malaria Worldwide
According to a December 2024 post by the World Health Organization (WHO), globally in 2023, there were an estimated 263 million malaria cases and 597,000 malaria deaths in 83 countries.
“The WHO African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2023, the WHO African Region was home to 94 percent of malaria cases (246 million) and 95 percent (569 000) of malaria deaths,” it said.
In the United States, malaria is not endemic, meaning it does not regularly occur or spread in the country. Approximately 2,000 malaria cases are reported annually in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ivermectin During Pandemic
During the COVID-19 pandemic, some researchers promoted ivermectin as a potential treatment for the illness, despite federal officials not approving it.
In an August 2021 X post, the Food and Drug Administration asked people to stop using ivermectin. “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” it said, referring to the fact that ivermectin is commonly used as a veterinary medicine.
A June 2021 study found ivermectin to be associated with “large reductions” in COVID-19 deaths.
According to researchers, the risk of death among people hospitalized with COVID-19 who were treated with ivermectin was 2.3 percent compared to 7.8 percent among those who did not receive the drug.
Another 2022 study examining ivermectin use in COVID-19 patients found that it resulted in decreased mortality compared to remdesivir, the medication federally authorized by the FDA for emergency use to treat COVID-19.
In recent years, some states in the United States have moved to allow ivermectin to be sold as an over-the-counter medication. In 2022, Tennessee permitted the sale of ivermectin without a prescription requirement. Arkansas and Idaho followed suit this year.
Potential side effects of ivermectin include vomiting, nausea, constipation, loss of appetite, chest discomfort, and weakness. Some of the serious consequences include coma, hives, peeling skin, and confusion.
As of now, the FDA hasn’t approved ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.
“The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19 in people or animals. The FDA has not determined that ivermectin is safe or effective for these indications (uses),” the agency stated on its website.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.