[HN Gopher] Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 ...
___________________________________________________________________
Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection
Author : stephc_int13
Score : 214 points
Date : 2021-06-19 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.lww.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.lww.com)
| rkagerer wrote:
| This is the same active ingredient used to treat heartworm in
| dogs and kill other types of parasites.
| andreilys wrote:
| It's also been used to treat river blindness in humans, with
| billions of doses administered over several decades
| spadez wrote:
| List of Ivermectin studies:
|
| https://c19ivermectin.com/
|
| FLCCC Alliance Response to All National and International Health
| Agency Recommendations Against Ivermectin in COVID-19:
|
| https://covid19criticalcare.com/videos-and-press/flccc-relea...
| international-health-agency-recommendations-against-ivermectin-
| in-covid-19/
|
| Response to W.H.O s rejection of the studies:
|
| https://covid19criticalcare.com/videos-and-press/flccc-relea...
|
| https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/F...
| akimball wrote:
| Given the dose response, it seems trials should be done on
| nebulized ivermectin for serious cases. But who would pay for
| them?
| raphlinus wrote:
| For the curious, reasonably recent discussions from several TWiV
| episodes on Ivermectin. [3] is quite recent (Jun 9). [4] reviews
| a study which is mildly encouraging. I think it's fair to say
| that the jury is still out, and it does deserve more
| investigation.
|
| Fun fact: Vincent Racaniello's wife worked on Ivermectin at
| Merck, and on a recent livestream (the 6/16 one) he suggested it
| would be reasonable to take it, especially because it's known to
| be safe.
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/4hGVeZGfEnU?t=5414
|
| [2]: https://youtu.be/N0-H28vzOps?t=1452
|
| [3]: https://youtu.be/teJ1wXyEf1Q?t=1905
|
| [4]: https://youtu.be/kz1Ja5zH1n8?t=1720
| jiofih wrote:
| Known to be safe as in "you may get hepatitis".
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| The best way to prevent this from happening would be to allow
| doctors to prescribe it, so people don't screw up the dose by
| buying it from veterinary supply stores.
|
| You may get myocarditis from the vaccines, but that doesn't
| stop anyone from calling them "safe."
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Doctors can prescribe it off-label. At least in the United
| States.
| raphlinus wrote:
| Another great review from the last couple weeks, by Derek Lowe:
| https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/07/iv...
|
| Same tl;dr. It's possible it works, but the evidence for it is
| not strong.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Conclusions:
|
| _" Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in
| COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin
| early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to
| severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that
| ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-
| CoV-2 pandemic globally."_
| anonygler wrote:
| Time for tech companies to blacklist Andrew Bryant from society I
| guess.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Talking about this study on Youtube is forbidden according to
| their TOS.
|
| "Don't post content on YouTube if it includes any of the
| following:
|
| Treatment misinformation:
|
| Content that recommends use of Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine
| for the treatment of COVID-19
|
| Claims that Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine are effective
| treatments for COVID-19"
|
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en
| peytn wrote:
| > Claims that an approved COVID-19 vaccine will alter a
| person's genetic makeup
|
| Wow, that's insane. Time to report some talks on somatic
| hypermutation...
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I find this extremely worrying, to be honest.
|
| They are legal and widely used drugs in most countries.
|
| They might not be miracle drugs to treat COVID-19, but I don't
| see the point in this ban.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The issue isn't the _drug_. It 's the _claim_. The drug could
| be legal for use in the US, and there would still be an issue
| (unless there were studies good enough to pass FDA scrutiny
| that demonstrated the drugs effectiveness). In the US, you
| don 't get to make medical claims that you can't _prove_ are
| valid.
|
| Now, the other questions are whether Youtube should be
| considered "in the US", and whether Youtube should be an
| enforcement arm of the FDA. That's the worrying part.
| Ivdg3 wrote:
| > In the US, you don't get to make medical claims that you
| can't prove are valid.
|
| Every third video on YouTube is a diet or workout video,
| making medical claims.
| ds206 wrote:
| The drug IS legal in the U.S. lol
|
| You just need a prescription
| temp8964 wrote:
| Honest question. Why do they need to ban this claim?
| Because U.S. doctors follow YouTube video suggestions when
| they prescribe drugs?
|
| > In the US, you don't get to make medical claims that you
| can't prove are valid.
|
| Is this a law or just your opinion? Are we expecting Bret
| Weinstein to be arrest in coming days?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Unproven medical treatments are a kind of speech that the US
| government has aggressively suppressed with the approval of
| the courts for many years. That situation was abused to
| suppress the works of Wilhelm Reich (~70 years ago) but I
| don't see that kind of abuse here. Youtube isn't subject to
| the first amendment 'cause it's not the government BUT also
| the first amendment hasn't protected this kind of expression
| for a long time. Just sayin'.
|
| Edit: and as other said, that the drug is legal is irrelevant
| and disingenuous. We're talking a new treatment system.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| Because people are idiots and will try and self-medicate,
| potentially making themselves really ill.
| kcplate wrote:
| I know that is the "theory" behind the censorship, but I'd
| suspect the true number of people choosing to do that is a
| lot smaller than people think. And frankly...if not
| censoring kills a few idiots and saves many more by
| allowing the medical professionals to fine tune a
| treatment, that's a lot better than killing many to save a
| few idiots by making potential lifesaving treatment
| experimentation off limits.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| How are youtube videos by people who haven't studied
| biology since high school going to help medical
| professionals to fine tune a treatment?
| kcplate wrote:
| How are censoring YouTube videos from scientists who do
| this for a living going to help medical professionals
| fine tune a treatment?
|
| It's not just the laymen getting censored. It's everyone.
|
| Also, no offense, but how little faith do you put in our
| medical professionals and scientists that you think they
| can't discern the difference between wheat and chaff?
| _Wintermute wrote:
| I am a scientist, I'm a pharmacologist who's time is now
| mostly spent on covid research. I'm glad youtube is
| removing most of the dangerous nonsense, because people
| like you tend to believe it.
| kcplate wrote:
| Are ya now? Actually "people like me" don't believe that
| random people like you are what you claim to be when
| posting under an anonymous name on the internet.
|
| So no, we don't just believe the BS we are being told on
| the internet.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| I'm not going to dox myself, but check my comment history
| if you want. Unless you think I've spent the last several
| years posting about pharmacology, pharmaceutical
| companies and PhDs in some elaborate ruse.
| kcplate wrote:
| Frankly, I'm not that interested enough to make the
| effort, and don't care. Especially considering your go to
| is to insult people you don't know just because they
| slightly disagree with you.
| ds206 wrote:
| So you'd rather not listen to other scientists, doctors,
| and pharmacologists with real world experience with these
| drugs for your own research purposes? I mean, if you had
| YouTube videos explaining your research results, I would
| watch it.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| I do listen to my colleagues, typically in pre-prints,
| journals and conferences. Youtube is pretty far down the
| list of places you would go for credible scientific
| information.
| raphlinus wrote:
| I think it's important to distinguish two things, which
| look similar on the surface but are quite different. One
| is the ability to listen to the scientific discussion
| taking place on whether Ivermectin is effective. That is
| reasonable and is a good thing.
|
| The other things is pushing narratives that directly
| contradict our scientific understanding to an audience of
| nonscientists. And to be clear, "Ivermectin might work
| and there are good studies in favor of it" is not in that
| category, but "Ivermectin is the cure" is.
|
| I think the Pierre Kory and Bret Weinstein podcast[1] is
| on the border between these two (with a bit of motte and
| bailey). But to get more insight into how it's landing,
| check the comments to that video. Lots of people finding
| ways to procure it, conspiracies, and a strong overlap
| with antivax.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSWjl-JOIqs
| gustavodemari wrote:
| Some people in Brazil did this. What happened? They got
| drug-induced hepatitis by wrong usage of Ivermectin.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Why are they getting the dose wrong? Are doctors refusing
| or being prevented from prescribing the drug, leaving
| them to seek out unsafe alternatives like veterinary
| formulations?
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| You are not their parent, and neither is YouTube.
|
| Besides the scads of dubious (or outright dangerous)
| health-related videos on other topics, YouTube has videos
| of people flying "wing suits" and engaging in many other
| risky activities.
| belltaco wrote:
| You're not YouTube's parent, to tell them what they can
| and cannot do with their own website.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Good, you should. This is a major problem that short
| circuited lots of brains because it was easy to follow the
| msm narrative which character assassinated anybody who didnt
| conform, then used that narrative to start censoring. Again
| on the censorship topic many of us had been ringing warning
| bells (some great if devolved convos during were had here
| when the big censorship push happened...)
|
| When are all you intelligent hacker news readers going to
| realize the history of the world is a history of conspiracy,
| and its the coincidence theorists that are the ones actually
| ignoring the truth(s)? Let me know when you want to have that
| convo and Ill show up.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, but the "wake up sheeple" approach is guaranteed to (a)
| not persuade, and (b) take the thread into a predictable
| rut. So please find a different approach to make your
| substantive points with.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| True enough, which is why I tend to steer away from that
| conversation here, for the most part, but some of the
| more recent things are so blatant and have deep impact on
| the tech community that I thinks its time to start
| talking about the subject, even if from a tech
| perspective.
|
| Point taken dang, Ill try to make less meta and more
| substantive points in the future on this divisive topic.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > the history of the world is a history of conspiracy
|
| ^ 100% This
|
| I'll join you on this sinking ship. : )
|
| Thanks for saying it arminiusreturns. I think more people
| need to argue this. Maybe it'll someday flip the script and
| people will finally become suspicious of authority.
|
| Most people just look at what the majority claims. Maybe if
| they see enough people arguing for this, they'd flip sides.
|
| It's silly, but logic doesn't even seem to matter since
| logic and evidence is so quickly brushed aside via the ad-
| hominem of `conspiracy theorist`.
| guscost wrote:
| Yikes. If _this_ doesn't wake you up, maybe just sleep through
| the next few years.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| This is an interesting link. I wasn't aware they specifically
| discouraged talking about specific medications. I'm not sure
| why you're being downvoted heavily as if you said something
| offensive..
| deadalus wrote:
| Reminder that Twitter/Facebook banned people for talking about
| Ivermectin as a Covid treatment. Youtube channels also got
| banned/demonetized.
| jiofih wrote:
| Same as they would ban someone selling Paracetamol as a cancer
| treatment.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Who is "selling" anything?
|
| This is just one more facile such comparison in the thread,
| alongside "injecting bleach," "snake oil," etc. Whether
| ivermectin is effective or not, to describe the state of the
| evidence as though it were equivalent to pure quackery is
| very dishonest.
| donezo wrote:
| We weren't allowed to say a lot if things in 2020. Weird!
| drno123 wrote:
| Is Ivermectin used in Covid treatment protocols?
| slumdev wrote:
| Yes
|
| https://www.evms.edu/media/evms_public/departments/internal_...
| ds206 wrote:
| The FLCCC has 2 protocols that include Ivermectin among other
| things:
|
| https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/
| goldemerald wrote:
| I heard about Ivermectin for the first time this week and was
| shocked how much it seemed that I had stepped into conspiracy
| theory land. There seemed to be an overwhelming amount of
| evidence over the last year that this repurposed drug is
| effective at treating Covid during a variety of stages
| (preventative, first positive test, ICU admittance, and even long
| haul). But since there hadn't been a randomized trial the drug
| had, not only been dismissed, but heavily censored over social
| media. I still cannot believe how much the discussion has been
| silenced in the same way people discuss "covid vaxx causes
| magnetism". The fact the interview between Bret Weinstein and
| Pierre Kory was banned from youtube for non-WHO/CDC/NIH approved
| covid treatments is a tragedy. I truly hope in the coming years
| the censorship of this topic will be the catalyst for allowing
| free speech to prevail on social media.
| bsder wrote:
| Because ivermectin _is_ conspiracy theory land.
|
| If you don't have a proven, understood mechanism (which
| ivermectin _doesn 't_ for a virus like Covid) then you have to
| rely on trials, and those just don't stand up.
|
| Quoting Derek Lowe on this:
|
| https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/07/iv...
|
| > If you haven't had to mess with drug discovery for a living,
| it's understandable that you hear that Some Person Somewhere
| was very sick, took New Therapy X, and suddenly got better, and
| then assume that there it is, the cure has been found. But
| that's not how it works. Real results stand up when you run
| larger, better-controlled trials, but most early results don't
| turn out to be all that real.
|
| Cue the Green Jellybean XKCD: https://xkcd.com/882/
| kkwteh wrote:
| There are plausible mechanisms of action of Ivermectin
| against the Covid virus being explored. See
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-021-00430-5/figures/1
| josephcsible wrote:
| This may explain the lack of widespread use at first, but it
| definitely does not explain the widespread censorship.
| Ivdg3 wrote:
| The creator of mRNA vaccines disagrees with you:
|
| > What happens to confidence in public health and USG if
| ivermectin turns out to be safe and effective for COVID, and
| the genetic vaccines turn out to have signficant safety
| issues? This looks like a very plausible scenario from where
| I sit.
|
| https://twitter.com/RWMaloneMD/status/1403836354098872322
| jacquesm wrote:
| Mr. Malone is a very eminent scientist who has one serious
| problem in this particular case: he really doesn't like big
| pharma earning billions over what he considers to be his
| invention.
| laverya wrote:
| > If you don't have a proven, understood mechanism (which
| ivermectin doesn't for a virus like Covid) then you have to
| rely on trials, and those just don't stand up.
|
| Please, there are a ton of antiviral drugs without an
| understood mechanism. We don't even know how Acetaminophen
| (Tylenol) works!
| [deleted]
| rbanffy wrote:
| "then you have to rely on trials, and those just don't
| stand up."
|
| The trials for all those antiviral drugs show they work. As
| do with Acetaminophen.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > > If you don't have a proven, understood mechanism (which
| ivermectin doesn't for a virus like Covid) then you have to
| rely on trials, and those just don't stand up.
|
| > Please, there are a ton of antiviral drugs without an
| understood mechanism
|
| Yes, but they have trials that stand up.
| ppf wrote:
| Next we'll find that the cheap and well-understood
| hydroxychloroquine is actually relatively effective Covid-19
| treatment!
|
| It's disturbing how much the suppression of Covid "wrong-think"
| over the last year has resulted in useful results and
| information only very slowly coming out (and generally, in the
| process, giving a feeling of vindication to the conspiracy
| theorists).
|
| I have always been, and continue to be, against the idea that
| "this is such a novel emergency we just need to ignore all the
| processes that we know and trust". If anything, in those times,
| when we don't know what is going on, those principles are
| exactly the type of things we should stick to. I strongly
| believe it would have done us better over the past year.
| jiofih wrote:
| > against the idea that this is such a novel emergency we
| just need to ignore all the processes that we know and trust
|
| There is a pretty well trodden path for new medicine to prove
| their effectiveness, which all Covid measures have gone
| through. If ivermectin, hydroxichloroquine or any other
| alternative drug goes through due course they would have no
| difficult being accepted.
|
| The reason discussions have been censored is _precisely
| because_ people have been rallying around a drug like a
| football club before they've had their effectiveness
| scientifically proven, and demanding to skip the traditional
| due diligence.
|
| And for some context: this paper was submitted to a
| mainstream journal in March and rejected for lack of
| evidence. This publisher who picked it up is not exactly a
| reputable one (and will benefit immensely from citations of
| this study).
| Nursie wrote:
| > rallying round a drug like a football club
|
| That's what gets to me too, and this is the major issue I
| had with Trump saying anything about anything. He was
| floundering to look like he had a plan and the moment he
| mentioned HCQ he turned the whole thing political. It was
| massively irresponsible.
|
| It should be left to medical science, which is doing pretty
| damn well with vaccinations and treatments like
| dexamethasone.
|
| If Ivermectin can be helpful that's great, and if it's not
| then never mind, let's evaluate other things. But it seems
| like people need to latch onto something, and then their
| ego and tribal allegiances won't let it go.
| boredprograming wrote:
| Many people pushing Ivermectin have a vested interest in
| proving the vaccines are unnecessary.
|
| It may work, but that's why you get recommendations for
| "vaccine made me magnetic" and other garbage like that whenever
| you search for videos.
|
| It's the same group that was pushing hydroxychloroquine as a
| miracle drug
| throwaway4good wrote:
| It is and it is weird.
|
| What do these people (the promoters) get out of it?
| Attention? A more dedicated following?
| ds206 wrote:
| How about having a discussion? Not everything has to be so
| complicated lol
| raphlinus wrote:
| I think the most useful lens to understand the sociology of
| these kinds of questions is religious belief. And there is
| no shortage of people out there who want to convince others
| of their belief.
|
| The narrative for "the Ivermectin story" is particularly
| compelling, as it involves brave maverick doctors working
| selflessly to get the word out, suppression and censorship
| by shadowy organizations (big pharma fearing competition,
| the big Internet companies just lusting after the power of
| thought-control), and the empowerment of people to take
| medical decisions into their own hands.
|
| Incidentally, this was the exact same narrative as HCQ, and
| is being pushed by a lot of the same people. The end of the
| story may turn out differently, as the evidence on HCQ is
| overwhelming that it doesn't work, so you only see dead-
| enders pushing it, but there is a good chance that
| Ivermectin will turn out to be at least moderately
| effective, though the jury is still out.
| throwkeep wrote:
| > Many people pushing Ivermectin have a vested interest in
| proving the vaccines are unnecessary.
|
| What is their vested interest in a generic, cheap, decades
| old, off patent drug? Vested interests tend to be in new,
| patented treatments. That's where big pharma profit is. So
| let's try a rephrase: Many people pushing patented treatments
| have a vested interest in proving off patent alternatives are
| unnecessary.
|
| For example, here's Merck warning against using Ivermectin
| for Covid-19:
|
| https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-
| use...
|
| Then a few months later, "Merck Announces Supply Agreement
| with U.S. Government for Molnupiravir, an Investigational
| Oral Antiviral Candidate for Treatment of Mild to Moderate
| COVID-19"
|
| https://www.merck.com/news/merck-announces-supply-
| agreement-...
| boredprograming wrote:
| We already have a drug that's 99% effective at keeping you
| out out hospital. And it's only a single/double dose. It's
| the COVID vaccine.
|
| Any other treatment is basically unnecessary at this point
| because COVID deaths in vaccinated people are less than 1
| in a million.
|
| That's why anti-vaxxers are so vested in other treatments.
| It's the only way they can rationalize not getting
| vaccinated
| apineda wrote:
| Well the covid vaccine comes with some caveats to me most
| crippling to freedoms being the vaccine passports that
| seemingly all nations are already implementing. Having
| various viable treatments would obviously put an end to
| that. Since ivermectin has a long history of safety and
| already largely available its reasonable that interest is
| strong.
| jacquesm wrote:
| But not for this particular application, and not in the
| doses where apparently it has some effect on COVID. And
| that is the problem with promoting this, as long as you
| weren't aware of that you probably should not be part of
| the army of 'useful idiots' of the anti-vax crowd.
| jiofih wrote:
| Being proven right. That's the anti-vac crowd's dearest
| interest.
| swader999 wrote:
| That's the wrong side to look at this from. These are
| just people on the fringe with little influence and
| funding.
|
| If ivermectin was authorized as a viable treatment the
| vaccines receiving emergency use authorisation wouldn't
| have been possible. There were and still are billions on
| the line.
| raphlinus wrote:
| I'm having difficulty understanding this line of
| reasoning. What does the authorization of ivermectin have
| to do with the vaccines? Xofluza, Relenza, and Tamiflu
| have been approved for treating influenza, and that has
| had no effect on the recommendation that people get their
| flu shots.
| [deleted]
| throwkeep wrote:
| Ok, but let's not get confused. This is different than
| being an anti-vaxxer. You can speak up for Ivermectin AND
| be a pro-vaxxer. The most prominent voice on this is Bret
| Weinstein (biology PhD), who is more vaccinated than
| most. He and his wife and kids are vaccinated for the
| typical things plus typhoid, rabies, yellow fever... They
| are pro-vaccine and so am I. They're one of the best
| inventions ever.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You can, but you'd have to have some proof.
|
| And so far we do not have any. So until then this story
| is pushed way further than it has any right to. Weinstein
| thrives on the censorship, but the fact of the matter is
| that there simply is no proven efficacy and until then
| this has no business being promoted to a mainstream
| audience who might get themselves into a lot of trouble,
| or who might forego getting vaccinated.
| raphlinus wrote:
| Ok, I was confused by this line of reasoning, so did some
| digging. I believe it's one of the popular antivax disinfo
| conspiracy theories. Here's my reading.
|
| The line of reasoning hinges on the vaccines being
| "experimental" and only being distributed under an Emergency
| Use Authorization, as opposed to a full approval. The FDA
| policies for EUA indicate they're only to be used when there
| is no adequate, approved, and available alternative. This
| makes a lot of sense - if (let's say) someone comes up with a
| new flu vaccine (an mRNA one, to continue this example, as
| that would be kinda exciting), you really want it to go
| through the full approval process instead of EUA, even if it
| is better. That's because we have plenty of good, approved
| flu vaccines.
|
| So, the theory goes, if we had an approved treatment for
| Covid, then the EUA for the vaccines would be illegal. And so
| that creates incentives for the pharmaceutical companies to
| suppress a miracle cure like (they claim) ivermectin.
|
| To anybody with the capacity for rational thought, this is
| obviously bullshit. We _have_ fully approved treatments
| already, including remdesivir. The idea that a treatment for
| Covid, even a pretty good one, would make vaccines
| unnecessary makes no sense.
|
| I am fairly confident in making the following prediction.
| Full FDA approval for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna
| vaccines is likely by the end of the year[1], at which point
| the above line of reasoning will no longer be applicable.
| Antivaxxers will smoothly transition to another line of
| argument.
|
| I do think this "theory" is one reason you see a significant
| overlap between pro-ivermectin and antivax, for example in
| the comments of Bret Weinstein videos.
|
| [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/18/covid-vaccines-what-
| full-fda...
| spacial wrote:
| Well, in Brazil, the president (Borsalino) is promoting
| ivermectin as covid treatment. I can tell you is not working at
| all.
|
| I doesn't help at all. I have a coworker who as using
| ivermectin as prophylactic and went to ICU (he is recovering
| now).
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| That's weird. I just read about a study in a Japanese
| newspaper today stating that Ivermectin works great.
| Ivdg3 wrote:
| Sample size 1.
| 13415 wrote:
| Without randomized trials you cannot recommend a drug because
| you cannot exclude confounders. It seems wrong to me to even
| speak of "overwhelming evidence" without a randomized trial or
| other sound ways to control or identify for confounders (e.g.
| causal models).
| mgamache wrote:
| Actually a meta analysis can offer better evidence then a
| single RCT.
|
| https://ascopost.com/issues/june-10-2014/randomized-
| trials-v...
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| Wait a minute... This post is a debate between two opposing
| viewpoints. So it also makes the exact opposite point:
|
| _The primary difference between a randomized controlled
| trial and meta-analysis is that the former "provide the
| highest level of evidence because they contain the least
| amount of bias. Randomized controlled trials reduce bias,
| while meta-analyses increase bias. "_
|
| This Hacker News story is about a recent meta-analysis. But
| an actual randomized control trial of Ivermectin in March
| (on 476 patients) found the duration of symptoms on treated
| and untreated patients "was not significantly different."
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2777389
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Important thing to know about that study is they are
| testing time to recovery for people with mild covid.
|
| I'm not anywhere near an expert, but two things stood out
| to me reading this study. First, time to recover in the
| ivermectin group was 10 days versus 12 in the placebo.
| The paper calls this "not significant" but it's not clear
| to me whether that's statistically not significant, and
| if so, why wouldn't it be, or if knocking two days off
| recovery isn't that meaningful. The other thing I noticed
| reading it was that only one person out of 400 died and
| that person was in the placebo group.
|
| I think the Brett Weinstein response would be something
| like -
|
| A. Ivermectin's best benefit is as a prophylactic not a
| treatment.
|
| B. Ivermectin should be administered as early after onset
| as possible to treat, whereas here there was some delay
| to get people organized, enrolled in trial, etc.
|
| C. It's hard to measure effect when the disease is mild.
| Tenoke wrote:
| The best meta-analyses are those made out of RCTs at any
| rate.
| wrycoder wrote:
| https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/05/09/update-on-
| ivermect...
|
| _I've included every double-blind randomized placebo-
| controlled trial I could find of ivermectin as a treatment
| for covid. Using only double-blind placebo-controlled trials
| means that only the highest quality studies are included in
| this meta-analysis, which minimizes the risk of biases
| messing up the results as far as possible. In order to be
| included, a study also had to provide mortality data, since
| the goal of the meta-analysis is to see if there is any
| difference in mortality .... What we see is a 62% reduction
| in the relative risk of dying among covid patients treated
| with ivermectin. That would mean that ivermectin prevents
| roughly three out of five covid deaths. The reduction is
| statistically significant (p-value 0,004). In other words,
| the weight of evidence supporting ivermectin continues to
| pile up. It is now far stronger than the evidence that led to
| widespred use of remdesivir earlier in the pandemic, and the
| effect is much larger and more important (remdesivir was only
| ever shown to marginally decrease length of hospital stay, it
| was never shown to have any effect on risk of dying).
|
| I understand why pharmaceutical companies don't like
| ivermectin. It's a cheap generic drug. Even Merck, the
| company that invented ivermectin, is doing it's best to
| destroy the drug's reputation at the moment. This can only be
| explained by the fact that Merck is currently developing two
| expensive new covid drugs, and doesn't want an off-patent
| drug, which it can no longer make any profit from, competing
| with them._
| goldemerald wrote:
| While randomized trials are certainly the gold-standard for
| determining if you should give a new drug to treat an
| arbitrary disease, that process is far too conservative
| during a pandemic where a huge majority of the world cannot
| access proper medical care. Ivermectin is already massively
| produced, used throughout the world, and cheap to manufacture
| (compared to new anti-Covid drugs). Even months ago before
| the benefits were known, the risks of taking the drug were
| very small, especially when the treatment guidelines were to
| do practically nothing.
|
| Still, the many pieces of non-randomized evidence can still
| clearly point towards this drugs efficacy. The sudden drop in
| Covid cases in India as the clearest indicator to me.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| I had the same opinion until my friend convinced me
| otherwise. The scientific community is taking a long-term
| approach here. If they were to recommend a drug based
| without a scientific trial, they risk losing the trust of
| the world (either from people who want them to only follow
| the science, and the risk that it is incorrect).
|
| The anti-science block is growing, and they are loud. If
| they continue to grow it could be an even greater threat to
| humanity than COVID-19. Science is attempting to fight
| against it by retreating to a science-only corner, for
| better or for worse.
| emn13 wrote:
| It would be nice if we somehow found a way as society to
| get the message out that scientists often just don't
| know. Because too often stories like this are interpreted
| by quite a few people as "science says ivermectin doesn't
| work". And perhaps that conclusion will turn out to be
| right, but the point is the jury is still out - and often
| enough it turns out wrong, and when such a false
| statement turns out to be wrong, people lose faith in
| science regardless, even though a reasonable
| interpretation of the science actually said "don't know"
| not "doesn't work".
|
| This is kind of a corollary to the issues with rejecting
| conspiracies - when we reject a supposed conspiracy, due
| to lack of evidence, that can easily come across as
| claiming the conspiratorial claim is outright false - but
| in a sea of such claims, some then turn out to have at
| least a kernel of truth, which then turns into a big
| gotcha moment: "see, they're repressing us, we were right
| all along!"
|
| So while I understand the idea of maintaining trust by
| not backing anything uncertain, I'm not sure it's the
| right call. Maybe communicating that uncertainty is
| better, and even communicating hints and possibilities -
| instead of trying to control the narrative but thereby
| ceding the ground to nutjobs until certainty arrives,
| often granting them considerable prestige if they guess
| sort of correctly ahead of time.
| jsnell wrote:
| > The sudden drop in Covid cases in India as the clearest
| indicator to me.
|
| What's the alleged connection here? Are you claiming that
| some non-trivial number of patients in India were treated
| with this? How many, and at what point after being
| infected? And just how did the treatment affect the case
| numbers? Generally you'd expect the vast majority of
| secondary infections to happen before the diagnosis, not
| after, so a treatment seems totally irrelevant to the case
| numbers.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Not a primary source, so FWIW. The article compares
| states in India using ivermectin against those which are
| not. Some digging in the sources listed might get what
| you are looking for.
|
| https://www.thedesertreview.com/news/national/ivermectin-
| obl...
| spadez wrote:
| >Are you claiming that some non-trivial number of
| patients in India were treated with this
|
| Yes, example from two states.
|
| https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/lucknow/uttar-
| prade...
|
| https://www.news18.com/news/india/mortality-rate-much-
| lower-...
|
| The testimony video in this page cites examples in many
| other countries https://covid19criticalcare.com/
| jsnell wrote:
| I see no numbers on how many people were treated on
| either of the first two links, and certainly don't intend
| to comb through the dross on the third link. So do you
| actually have a number? It doesn't need to be exact, just
| a credible source on the order of magnitude will be
| enough. Are we talking a thousand, a million, or a
| billion here?
|
| To reduce R by a factor of 2 by the use of a prophylactic
| drug, you'd need to have half of the population on a
| regime of the drug. It seems pretty obvious that did not
| happen if this kind of reporting is the most impactful
| there is. Just think of the logistics of trying to do
| that! India has a population of 1.4 billion.
|
| On the other hand, if they only gave the snakeoil to e.g.
| a single digit number of millions of people the reduction
| in the number of infections would be imperceptible.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| This is a great comment, and an example of why discussion
| of ivermectin should not be CENSORED but instead debated.
| These would be good questions to ask the creators of any
| videos on the topic and from what I can see, the most
| popular creators would probably be open to the
| discussion.
| belltaco wrote:
| >The sudden drop in Covid cases in India as the clearest
| indicator to me.
|
| Nah that's just confirmation bias and rumors. It wasn't
| effective at all, otherwise India wouldn't have taken it
| off the recommended drugs list.
| spadez wrote:
| >India wouldn't have taken it off the recommended drugs
| list.
|
| Normally authorities are afraid to go against W.H.O
| recommendations, because if it didn't work out, it would
| be hard to justify it on the basis of local observations
| alone, at least on paper.
|
| But the important thing is that some states still did it,
| which might indicate there was very observable benefit.
| flenserboy wrote:
| That's rather credulous.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| So's the idea that ivermectin _must_ be the explanation
| for India 's COVID spike abating.
|
| Spikes abated all over the world, more than once in most
| countries, _without_ ivermectin.
| janoc wrote:
| Ivermectin has been trialed also and has been available on
| experimental basis even in Europe - and it was found
| ineffective and is not recommended anymore.
|
| See:
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2777389
|
| Also similar non-randomized evidence was strongly
| suggesting that hydroxychloroquine was very effective (e.g.
| Raoult in France) - until proper randomized trials found it
| was not effective at all.
|
| So you really can't rely on such evidence. That someone
| gets better after they got some drug doesn't automatically
| mean they got better because of the drug. In the absence of
| controls for other factors (other drugs, spontaneous
| recovery on their own, etc.) it only means that the drug
| didn't make their affliction worse.
|
| Not everything has to be immediately a conspiracy of big
| pharma (or worse).
| shaicoleman wrote:
| The Lopez-Medina trial was one of the biggest RCTs for
| Ivermectin. Out of the 60 trials for Ivermectin, it was
| one of the few that didn't show statistical significance.
|
| It was also seriously flawed - a large percentage of the
| placebo group was self-medicating using Ivermectin, they
| mixed up the treatment and placebo group, and they
| switched the primary outcome in the middle of the trial.
| That trial still showed improvement, but it didn't reach
| statistical significance.
|
| "[Lopez-Medina] has many issues. The primary outcome was
| changed mid-trial from clinical deterioration to complete
| resolution of symptoms including "not hospitalized and no
| limitation of activities" as a negative outcome.
| Critically, temporary side effects of a successful
| treatment may be considered as a negative outcome, which
| could result in falsely concluding that the treatment is
| not effective. Such an outcome is also not very
| meaningful in terms of assessing how treatment affects
| the incidence of serious outcomes. With the low risk
| patient population in this study, there is also little
| room for improvement - 58% recovered within the first 2
| days to "not hospitalized and no limitation of
| activities" or better. There was only one death (in the
| control arm). This study also gave ivermectin to the
| control arm for 38 patients and it is unknown if the full
| extent of the error was identified, or if there were
| additional undiscovered errors. The side effect data
| reported in this trial raises major concerns, with more
| side effects reported in the placebo arm, suggesting that
| more placebo patients may have received treatment.
| Ivermectin was widely used in the population and
| available OTC at the time of the study. The study
| protocol allows other treatments but does not report on
| usage. The name of the study drug was concealed by
| refering to it as "D11AX22". The presentation of this
| study also appears to be significantly biased. While all
| outcomes show a benefit for ivermectin, the abstract
| fails to mention that much larger benefits are seen for
| serious outcomes, including the original primary outcome,
| and that the reason for not reaching statistical
| signficance is the low number of events in a low risk
| population where most recover quickly without treatment."
|
| https://ivmmeta.com/#exc
|
| This prompted an open letter from over 170 physicians
| concluding that the study is fatally flawed.
|
| https://jamaletter.com/
|
| This also highlights the risk of only relying on a small
| number of large RCTs, instead of looking at the totality
| of evidence.
| spacial wrote:
| just look at Brazil, where ivermectin and HCQ are used as
| mentos.
|
| I does not help at all. (I wish it was a valid
| treatment).
| emn13 wrote:
| I read the french research at the time, and it was
| immediately obvious that it was deeply flawed. Asking
| around in more expert circles, that did seem to be the
| uniformly echoed initial reaction even then, from day 1
| (not that that means it couldn't have worked, just that
| the paper that sparked it all was not convincing, at all
| - but absence of evidence isn't strong evidence of
| absence in such cases). In retrospect it seems obvious
| people were looking for some kind of light at the end of
| the tunnel, and too willing to ignore the warning signs.
|
| The case for ivermectin is not a slam dunk. But it's
| definitely surpassed the low bar that HCQ set. There is
| at least quite a lot of suggestive correlation without
| trivially obvious other explanations, and the data set
| isn't just "a few people non-randomly selected".
|
| To my non expert opinion the ivermectin case seems at
| least plausible, whereas HCQ was clearly and obviously
| nonsense. Still, I'm skeptical, partly precisely because
| there still hasn't been a slam dunk study and because
| quite a few proponents seem to have a worryingly
| conspiratorial view of the world. Stuff like assuming
| it's not being pushed because it's off patent screams
| conspiratorial thinking to me, and you hear that quite a
| lot. And that's a warning sign, because there are quite a
| lot of interested parties here that really don't care
| about some pharmaceutical companies profit, and in any
| case - just because they don't fund it doesn't mean
| they'll go all Machiavellian and intentionally prolong
| the pandemic just to sell a future drug, and actually get
| away with it to boot. At best, the lack of exclusivity
| might explain why there isn't a specific corporate backer
| for this research, but it doesn't explain why all of the
| governments and universities and hospitals etc aren't
| finding convincing data. So when people see a conspiracy
| here, I wonder how rationally they're looking at the
| evidence for Ivermectin, too - and at the end of the day,
| I'm just a random worried person without the capacity to
| deeply understand every single relevant bit of data, so I
| need to be able to find trustworthy sources and research.
| People that see conspiracies everywhere (without data and
| without real reason) don't inspire great trust in their
| analyses.
|
| Still, it's hard to resist the lure of the cheap and
| affordable silver bullet...
| void_mint wrote:
| > I truly hope in the coming years the censorship of this topic
| will be the catalyst for allowing free speech to prevail on
| social media.
|
| If someone died because of a "Take Ivermectin and you'll
| survive COVID" video on YouTube, who's to blame? Should YouTube
| not take steps to prevent the spread of misinformation that
| could kill people?
|
| _edit_ Big downvotes, no response. Great system.
| bmarquez wrote:
| > If someone died because of a "Take Ivermectin and you'll
| survive COVID" video on YouTube, who's to blame?
|
| Ivermectin is a prescription drug in the United States. A
| doctor would most likely reject the request if a patient
| asked for it solely on a YouTube recommendation. So to answer
| your question, a prescribing doctor.
|
| IMO YouTube isn't medically qualified to censor ongoing
| research or debate, just stick a disclaimer and be done with
| it.
| unparagoned wrote:
| Bret implied he got it from a potentially dodgy source. He
| was also pointing out "risks" with the vaccine. Even in
| comments you had people saying they were going to avoid the
| vaccine and take this drug instead.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| You can (or could until recently?) get topical ivermectin
| from pet stores, no prescription. Humans use it to self-
| diagnose and self-treat rosacea. So there is the risk that
| people will buy and ingest it.
| 4bpp wrote:
| > If someone died because of a "Take Ivermectin and you'll
| survive COVID" video on YouTube, who's to blame?
|
| How about the person who took it? We are presumably talking
| about adults, who we supposedly simultaneously trust with
| choosing a government that decides over life and death for
| millions in their own country and abroad.
| goldemerald wrote:
| It doesn't have to be so black and white on youtube's
| response. They could, for example, but a disclaimer pre-roll
| ad saying "Don't take medical advice from youtube." There's a
| difference between Brett's interview, where they discussed
| the scientific merits of a drug, and someone saying "Here's
| how much drug you need to buy at your farm store, and how to
| dilute it." In any case, the analysis for banning topics
| doesn't consider the risk of how many lives could have been
| saved if Ivermectin actually is pandemic ending. Some
| professionals speculate hundreds of thousands of deaths could
| have been prevented if Ivermectin was given back in November.
| I don't know either way, but surely the discussion is worth
| not being banned.
| newsclues wrote:
| Who is to blame when YouTube censors life saving
| recommendations and people needlessly die?
| unparagoned wrote:
| No-one. Since doctors don't go to YouTube to find out what
| to do. Until there is solid evidence for a drug noone
| should be going to YouTube to decide what to do, expecially
| when we have many proven low risks vaccines.
| e9 wrote:
| Not true. A bunch of doctors went on YouTube about
| usefulness of hydroxychloroquine in their patients and
| got taken down by YouTube. Every person is unique and
| medications/supplements/food will work for some and not
| others. Best example is coffee. If you have gene that
| metabolizes caffeine fast then coffee is good for you and
| helps you because your body clears caffeine and reaps
| benefits of antioxidants in coffee. On the other hand if
| you don't have that gene then caffeine lingers in your
| body and causes all sorts of damage and therefore
| drinking coffee is bad for you.
| Heyso wrote:
| So much low risk, that pharmaceutical compagny made sure
| to have no liability if something bad happen.
| void_mint wrote:
| > Who is to blame when a social media website censors
| unproven medical procedures
|
| FTFY
| Heyso wrote:
| And who will judge it misinformation. You want to give
| someone the right to censor if they think something is false
| ? You probably think people are to dumb to do that for
| themselves. You will end up victim of that censorship soon or
| later. You can be sure someone with more power than you,
| somewhere, is thinking the same of you (too dumb to think by
| themselves).
| spadez wrote:
| >If someone died because of a "Take Ivermectin and you'll
| survive COVID" video on YouTube, who's to blame?
|
| But who is to blame for the deaths of thousands of people,
| who could have been saved by Ivermectin, which in all
| probability is happening right now, and has been going on for
| many months, if not for the censorship of W.H.O, Youtube and
| media?
| void_mint wrote:
| > But who is to blame for the deaths of thousands of
| people, who could have been saved by Ivermectin,
|
| Entirely irrelevant when discussing YouTube, which we're
| doing now. YouTube is not a legitimate source for
| medical/drug information.
| pstuart wrote:
| I disagree. It's merely a platform for content and needs
| to be evaluated independently per presentation.
| ds206 wrote:
| But drug commercials on TV are? I mean, why can't a
| doctor talk about the benefits of a certain drug with a
| "but talk to your own doctor first"? How is that any
| different?
| [deleted]
| unparagoned wrote:
| Drug commercials are bad, and banned in pretty much every
| developed country. Anyway those drugs have been proven to
| work, this drug hasn't been proven to work.
| rbanffy wrote:
| This is something that really shocks and annoys me when I
| visit the US. Ad-sponsored TV is unusable.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Here's a response:
|
| YouTube is chock-full of dubious health information. But only
| this one got banned.
|
| Why?
|
| For the record, since I've been muzzled from responding
| further, I don't believe that it was "money".
| happytoexplain wrote:
| This doesn't address the parent's question - it's only a
| criticism of YouTube's potential hypocrisy.
| guscost wrote:
| And here's the correct response to you:
|
| Money.
| dang wrote:
| You've posted something like 9 unsubstantive and/or
| flamebait comments in this thread. That has a seriously
| damaging effect on discussion, especially when the topic
| is divisive as this one is. I'm sure you don't intend
| that, but the effects work that way regardless of intent:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| sor....
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart,
| we'd be grateful. Note this one: " _Comments should get
| more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic
| gets more divisive._ "
| lvs wrote:
| I'm disappointed you are not more active in pulling these
| snake oil posts from the front page.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Seconded.
|
| The whole Ivermectin saga does not deserve the attention
| that it is getting, those that are relentlessly pushing
| it are causing people not to get vaccinated and that in
| turn will prolong the epidemic and lead to people getting
| ill and some fraction of those will die.
|
| I've read up on this thing as much as I could and it's
| quite simple: there is at this point in time _zero_ hard
| evidence that it works in humans short of using it in
| dosage that is well outside the range that we have data
| on. It 's just the HCQ story warmed over.
| dang wrote:
| I've addressed that here and here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27563873
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27564376
| guscost wrote:
| I disagree strongly. Conflict-avoidant platitudes have
| much less substance.
| dang wrote:
| Something else having less substance does not make your
| comments substantial.
| bookofsand wrote:
| There are at least two questions to ask:
|
| * If X died because of a "Take Ivermectin and you'll survive
| COVID" video on YouTube, who's to blame?
|
| Assumption: Ivermectin has a net negative effect. Assumption:
| X relied on Ivermectin exclusively, rejecting the current
| standard of care procedures.
|
| * If X died because Youtube censored "Take Ivermectin and
| you'll survive COVID" videos, who's to blame?
|
| Assumption: Ivermectin is effective in certain cases, and X's
| life could have been saved if Ivermectin were used, possibly
| in conjunction with other standard procedures, up to and
| including vaccination.
|
| The point of public conversation is to asses the cost/benefit
| tradeoffs of different courses of action, especially in
| presence of incomplete information. Additionally, reliable
| cost/benefit tradeoffs heavily inform the design of future
| information gathering campaigns. Given the public's
| heightened interest in Covid, it is unclear how to have
| necessary cost/benefit conversations other than in public.
| Censoring such conversations is potentially costing lives and
| is eroding the public's trust in the authorities.
| void_mint wrote:
| This post entirely misunderstands YouTube's position in the
| whole situation though. YouTube removes content advertising
| the use of drugs outside of their (at least, at the time of
| posting the video) prescribed usage. YouTube is not meant
| to be a message board for "Does ___ work for ____ illness?
| Let's see!".
| emn13 wrote:
| You're spot on. But beyond that, the idea that there's
| any kind of general public enlightenment to be had by
| spreading the most impactful (not necessarily accurate)
| videos by algorithmic selection in the face of
| considerable uncertainty and risk is absurd.
|
| The youtube algorithm and social platform is not some
| kind of careful dialog for mutual enlightenment. People
| aren't _trying_ to rationally assess conflicting and
| limited evidence, and youtubes algorithm _certainly_
| doesn 't reward any such painstaking work.
|
| As such _on youtube_ which is what this is about, any
| such discussion is not at all likely to inform; yet
| because convincing tales sell better, whatever claims are
| made, are likely to sound convincing to at least some
| people - truth and honesty are entirely orthogonal issues
| here, or worse actively selected against (because they
| 're usually messy, unclear, and thus boring).
|
| And thus _on youtube_ the appropriate strategy is at a
| bare minimum draconian censorship. I mean, ideally they
| 'd dump the sensationalism-boosting algorithm, but that
| ideal is obviously not a viable request to a platform
| that depends on user engagement (of any kind) for its
| survival.
|
| Just because we don't want to live in an Orwellian
| nightmare doesn't mean all speech is necessarily a value-
| add, nor that there aren't any social dynamics that can
| reliably induce harmful speech. The world isn't that
| simple.
|
| So while it's reasonable for people to seek certainty in
| uncertain times, that doesn't mean youtube is the place
| for everybody to debate ideal drug regimens.
| bookofsand wrote:
| Not sure if I got this correctly. The argument is that no
| rational conversation of public interest can be hosted by
| _youtube_ , in order to protect the public from the
| sensationalistic garbage _youtube_ cynically promotes?
| And the solution is to let the machine rampage freely,
| but drastically censor certain points of view?
|
| Worse, _youtube_ outcompetes traditional mass-media for
| ad dollars by exploiting precisely the sensationalism
| engine. The net result is an uninformed population fed
| sensationalism on all cylinders, with rampant censorship
| decided by a tiny clique. I have some doubts whether this
| is a recipe for a stable prosperous society.
|
| Edit. Of course the bulk of the conversation should
| happen on technical grounds in the medical media in
| relative obscurity. But given the high profile of the
| covid pandemic, should a therapeutic drug with a stack of
| studies backing claims of positive impact, be discussed
| in mass-media?
| throwaway192021 wrote:
| My mom is on dialysis, has diabetes and hypertension. Recently
| for a surgery we had to do a covid test. Dad also took the
| test. Both were positive.
|
| The nephrologist prescribed ivermectin for mom. She had mild
| fever for 3 days and recovered. Dad had no obvious symptoms and
| recovered(he was not prescribed ivermectin, hence did not take
| it). The govt doctors don't prescribe it just vitamin c, zinc
| and dolo. This is india btw.
| oblib wrote:
| I've been monitoring this for a long time now. I have
| ivermectin on hand for deworming my two mini burros.
|
| Of course, you're not supposed to use it on humans but they say
| that about fish mox too. But as time went on it was pretty
| clear to me that it was working to prevent covid from becoming
| severe in the countries that were using it for that because
| they had nothing much else to use. I saw many reports of it
| working.
|
| I also read about vitamin D, melatonin, famotidine, and aspirin
| helping to reduce severity of infections. So, when my wife and
| I got our 1st and 2nd jab of the Pfizer vaccine we took all of
| those and had no reaction to it at all. Our daughter took it
| before her first jab and had no reaction but didn't for her 2nd
| and she did get sick. As soon as she told us she wasn't feeling
| good we dosed her with those and just an hour or so later she
| was feeling good again.
|
| I haven't been infected and now I've reached full immunity so
| none of that proves anything at all but it's still been worth
| knowing.
| yumraj wrote:
| How do you know that that dosing did not interfere with you
| developing proper immunity?
|
| In fact, CDC recommends taking fever reducing medicine only
| once you develop fever after a vaccine and not before
| vaccination for just this reason.
| ajb wrote:
| " But since there hadn't been a randomized trial " This is not
| true. A quick search shows 71 trials covering ivermectin, of
| which 6 of which are complete, interventional[1], and have
| results
|
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=ivermectin&cond=...
|
| [1] This should mean an RCT, but I haven't time to read through
| each and check they are
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Yes, it has been explored, trialed, and experimented with
| quite significantly.
|
| The results show that there might be something there, but
| it's not a miracle cure.
|
| The conspiracy angles are coming from those who have been
| misled into thinking it has been more successful than it
| really has been, which leads to confusion about why it's not
| being used everywhere.
| lettergram wrote:
| Ivermectin is a cheap drug, Mercer (who produces ivermectin) is
| trying to produce their own covid19 drug.
|
| Further, if there are viable alternative treatments we
| shouldn't be using a vaccine still in phase 2/3 trials that
| haven't even been tested on animals... the entire emergency use
| authorization is only allowed if there aren't safe
| alternatives.
|
| Ivermectin is generally safe to take, and a known drug with
| known risks. If it was shown to be effective the vaccine
| rollouts should be stopped. So, there's a lot of political and
| financial reasons to not publicize it.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| A treatment isn't an alternative to vaccination. Millions of
| people have been vaccinated so we know it's safe, while tons
| of people have died from covid so we know it's not safe.
| lettergram wrote:
| This study appears to show that there is a treatment that's
| ~90% effective at reducing deaths.
|
| The vaccines are not shown to be (may be) safe outside of a
| brief few month window (for specific classes of people).
| These are a new class of vaccine and there appears to be
| significant risk based on the cdc data (VAERS).
|
| https://austingwalters.com/covid19-vaccine-risks/
|
| To be clear none of the vaccines really completed a
| standard phase 2 or 3 trial. It had an abridged or
| expedited version that skipped things like pregnant women,
| etc. the vaccine is also not 100% effective, which is
| important as it's a "leaky" vaccine. Meaning, we're going
| to see lots of variants that get around our protection from
| the vaccine. That's why treatments are important.
|
| It's also possible we see genetic defects 2-3 years from
| now or an increase in cancer. We really have no idea.
| [deleted]
| fuckyah wrote:
| And there you have it! Why is ivermectin censored? Because
| otherwise they had to stop administering the experimental
| vaxx.
| desine wrote:
| You can't get EUA for the vaccines if there's a working
| treatment. The doctor who promoted Hydroxychloroquine and zinc
| treatment, Dr. Zelenko, is still banned from Twitter for
| spreading COVID disinformation.
|
| There's both actual conspiracies in this world, and well
| poisoning to damage the conversations. When you look at the
| amount of money these companies stand to make from producing
| billions of vaccinations, you should not be surprised.
| sveiss wrote:
| > You can't get EUA for the vaccines if there's a working
| treatment.
|
| Veklury (remdesivir) was approved by the FDA for the
| treatment of Covid-19 in hospitalized individuals on October
| 22, 2020. This was a full approval, not an emergency use
| application: https://www.fda.gov/media/137574/download
|
| We've continued using the vaccines under the existing EUAs
| even after a treatment was approved.
|
| The FDA has granted additional EUAs for other treatments,
| even after that date: four more, not counting a sedative
| agent, per https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-
| response/mcm-... .
|
| In fact, the FDA has even granted an EUA for a vaccine after
| approving Veklury: the Janssen/J&J vaccine received its first
| EUA on February 27, 2021.
| https://www.fda.gov/media/146303/download
|
| Even if ivermectin was a perfect treatment for Covid, and
| even if an approved treatment would pull all the vaccines off
| the market -- despite that not happening after the FDA
| approved Veklury -- by the time ivermectin made its way
| through the approval pipeline to be labelled for this
| indication, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would very likely
| have received approval as well. So there's no "billions of
| vaccinations" at risk should another treatment be found to be
| effective and approved.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| This is exactly why instead of censoring podcasts like Bret
| Weinstein when he brings on guests to discuss ivermectin,
| other experts should engage in debate with him.
|
| When people who are credible scientists (like many of his
| guests) get censored it can reasonably look suspicious.
|
| I'm not saying he's correct, I'm just saying the right
| answer is debate.
|
| A person who is willing to have a calm, 3 hour discussion
| on a topic is not the kind of person who needs to be
| censored.
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, the other experts are at work, and don't have time to
| debate every person out there who has a following. This
| pandemic is not yet over and guys like Weinstein are all
| noise and no signal. Keep enough Weinsteins engaged and
| progress on this front (real progress, not imaginary
| progress) will grind to a halt.
| wonnage wrote:
| It's hilarious how parent comment's opening sentence is a
| (easily debunked, as you've shown) conspiracy theory, and
| in the next breath they're trying to sound reasonable and
| Definitely Not a conspiracy theorist
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's
| hugely destructive of the threads, especially when the
| topic is divisive, and your comment adds no information,
| just poison. Please don't do that; instead, respond to
| bad information with accurate information, and weak
| arguments with stronger ones, without crossing into snark
| or personal attack. If you can't or don't want to do
| that, that's fine, but then please don't post.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| azinman2 wrote:
| Not to mention it's good to have treatment options in
| addition to a vaccine. Vaccines aren't full-proof
| (treatment options are then good), some people legitimately
| can't get vaccinated, and should there be a mutation the
| vaccines can't handle then you still want treatment.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Lots of others have debunked this here. Yet with all this
| conspiracy stuff there's a big elephant in the room that no
| one seems to ever talk about: Covid is a global virus. The
| FDA can block and approve whatever treatments in the US, but
| it has no authority in Brazil or Thailand. If all these
| conspiracy drugs worked well yet the FDA blocked it for some
| malicious intent, the rest of the world would approve and use
| it. Particularly since these conspiracy drugs have all been
| around forever, are generics, and exist globally. Yet we
| aren't seeing this emerging despite massive world wide
| deaths.
| gustavodemari wrote:
| In Brazil many people have used Ivermectin and our country
| is getting a record of 500.000 deaths of covid today. Also,
| here in Brazil we had many reports of people needing a
| liver transplant because they caught drug-induced
| hepatitis. So, in summary, 1. Ivermectin doesn't work and
| 2. it can cause severe health issues if used wrongly.
| monoideism wrote:
| Wrong - there are countries it's being widely used in. For
| example, India and many Easter European countries (and some
| S. American???).
|
| We need effective vaccines _and_ therapeutics. I don't
| understand this push to discredit any therapeutic before
| reasonable research has even been conducted.
| leesalminen wrote:
| > I don't understand this push to discredit any
| therapeutic before reasonable research has even been
| conducted.
|
| It's simple. Money. Companies like it and want more of
| it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't understand this push to discredit any
| therapeutic before reasonable research has even been
| conducted.
|
| No such thing exists. There are literally dozens of
| therapeutics in trials , and a few actually approved and
| in non-trial general use (dexamethasone, remdesevir, and
| favilavir, in various jurisdictions) -- for both, see [0]
| -- the ones that tend to get strongly negative treatment
| are hydroxychloroquine (not actually in trials) and
| ivermectin (in Phase 2/3 trials), both on the basis of
| unsupported scams around both earlier in the pandemic,
| not any general aversion to therapeutics.
|
| [0] https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-
| articles/2020/3/...
| [deleted]
| vimy wrote:
| Most regions that use ivermectin have significantly less
| deaths. Example:
| https://twitter.com/jjchamie/status/1334228581870931968
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That chart shows that state being the lowest death toll
| both before _and_ after ivermectin treatment, which would
| seem to point to some serious confounding factors in this
| analysis.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Not to mention dramatic changes else where as well, and
| that's assuming this data is accurate. It's also from
| very early in the pandemic, when we didn't know as much
| generally. Plus correlation =! causation. Could be far
| better making behaviors there, or all kinds of other
| factors. That's why you need randomized double blind
| clinical trials, done by experts. This arm chair
| "analysis" is just bad science.
| kkwteh wrote:
| To me, this kind of regional comparison has been most
| convincing that Ivermectin is a very effective treatment.
|
| This paper by Pierre Kory has graphs that clearly show
| the evolution of Covid cases and deaths across different
| states in Peru.
|
| https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/11/F...
| ds206 wrote:
| Well, all the data we have is from outside the U.S. so I
| guess U.S. doctors in-the-know are trying to discuss it but
| getting shut down on U.S.-based social media.
| enkid wrote:
| Source for the EUA stuff? Source that HCQ and zinc are viable
| treatments? The problem isn't that some of these things might
| be viable, the problem is we don't know which of the
| literally hundreds of treatments are actually going to be
| viable when going through the proper testing and approval
| process. You can't just scream conspiracy when there much
| better explanations
| desine wrote:
| >Source for the EUA stuff?
|
| https://www.fdanews.com/ext/resources/files/archives/e/Emer
| g...
|
| (PDF warning)(section III, the first list, point #4)
|
| >Source that HCQ and zinc are viable treatments?
|
| Dozens? Hundreds? of doctors speaking out, including videos
| posted to youtube, that they saw great effectiveness in the
| trial. The people promoting it weren't a bunch of nobodys,
| despite what the nightly news told you. There were plenty
| of frontline workers with actual experience. But that
| likely won't satisfy your request for a source - which is
| fine. We all appeal to authority as we see fit. I saw many
| actual doctors saying "this is effective", and I saw many
| large corporations working together to shut that
| conversation down.
|
| Do you have any evidence it's not effective?
| zarzavat wrote:
| You are seriously proposing that if an effective
| treatment had been found in 2020, that the US government
| would have _denied EUA_ for vaccines while the rest of
| the world got to work vaccinating their citizens?
| enkid wrote:
| A number with a question mark behind it is not evidence,
| and even if hundreds of doctors did speak up about it,
| hundreds of doctors thought Cholera was caused by miasma
| instead of bad drinking water. Hundreds of doctors
| thought bleeding was the universal cure all. Hundreds of
| doctors thought washing their hands was useless. Some
| random number of random doctors saying it may be
| effective is not evidence of it's effectiveness.
|
| Your document also doesn't say what you think it does. If
| it did, we wouldn't be able to have multiple vaccines
| approved. Is there any evidence that the FDA would
| interpret a non vaccine as an alternative to a vaccine,
| when there's no issue with granting EUA to multiple
| vaccines? I doubt it, but would love to see what you
| have.
| belltaco wrote:
| >Do you have any evidence it's not effective?
|
| Do you have any evidence snake oil isn't effective?
|
| Burden of proof is on the people claiming a magic cure.
|
| Anyway here are a couple of studies that show it's not
| effective.
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.27122
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2777389
|
| Here's a good take by someone that does research on new
| medicines.
|
| https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/07
| /iv...
| vixen99 wrote:
| And there are papers which show that it does. Rather than
| descend into a 'my list of papers denoting effectiveness
| is bigger than your's suggesting the opposite' contest, I
| suggest you go to http://www.freefullpdf.com/#gsc.tab=0
| and do some objective searching yourself preferably
| without a prior agenda.
| mcguire wrote:
| We have to do this again? Hydroxychloroquine was debunked
| months ago.
|
| " _Among patients hospitalized with mild-to-moderate
| Covid-19, the use of hydroxychloroquine, alone or with
| azithromycin, did not improve clinical status at 15 days
| as compared with standard care. (Funded by the Coalition
| Covid-19 Brazil and EMS Pharma; ClinicalTrials.gov
| number, NCT04322123. opens in new tab.)_ "
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2019014
|
| " _After high-risk or moderate-risk exposure to Covid-19,
| hydroxychloroquine did not prevent illness compatible
| with Covid-19 or confirmed infection when used as
| postexposure prophylaxis within 4 days after exposure.
| (Funded by David Baszucki and Jan Ellison Baszucki and
| others; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04308668. opens in
| new tab.)_ "
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638
|
| " _Neither HCQ nor HCQ /AZ shortened the clinical course
| of outpatients with COVID-19, and HCQ, but not HCQ/AZ,
| had only a modest effect on SARS-CoV-2 viral shedding.
| HCQ and HCQ/AZ are not effective therapies for outpatient
| treatment of SARV-CoV-2 infection._"
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258953
| 702...
|
| " _Among patients hospitalized with Covid-19, those who
| received hydroxychloroquine did not have a lower
| incidence of death at 28 days than those who received
| usual care. (Funded by UK Research and Innovation and
| National Institute for Health Research and others;
| RECOVERY ISRCTN number, ISRCTN50189673. opens in new tab;
| ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04381936. opens in new
| tab.)_ "
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2022926
|
| Shall we discuss creationism?
| jeremys00 wrote:
| Hey mate for what it's worth and you might say not much
| and may be right, the argument I ear goes as follow: the
| trials showing the ineffectiveness of HCQ use protocols
| that are inconsistent with the protocols the advocate of
| HCQ propose.
|
| To my understanding, the proponents tend to say that HCQ
| is effective when administered as soon as first symptoms
| (day 0 to 3 I believe). There are also dosage issues and
| combinations with other drugs, and they say that's its
| ineffective administered late.
|
| In the first paper you propose, patients treated are
| already hospitalized (day 14 or fewer still probably not
| day 0 to 3). The fourth paper states (when following the
| link the to protocol) that hospitalisation is a condition
| for eligibility. That's not first symptoms.
|
| The third papers talks about "initiated medication a
| median of 5.9 days after symptom onset". So not 0 to 3
| days?
|
| The second paper you propose talks about administering
| HCQ as post-exposure prophylaxis. It seems outside of the
| scope to me.
|
| There are other issues on this debate, dosage, drug
| combinations, I can't talk about that, this website does:
|
| https://hcqmeta.com/
|
| This person resumes the argument this way:
|
| https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/how-to-rig-
| research-...
|
| (Note that the fourth paper on your list is the RECOVERY
| trial he's no a fan of)
|
| What do you think about this? Also what about intelligent
| design?
| alaxsxaq wrote:
| This is from the FDA website.
|
| "Under section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic
| Act (FD&C Act), when the Secretary of HHS declares that an
| emergency use authorization is appropriate, FDA may
| authorize unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of
| approved medical products to be used in an emergency to
| diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening
| diseases or conditions caused by CBRN threat agents when
| certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate,
| approved, and available alternatives."
|
| You should probably drill into this if you are interested,
| but the phrasing most often referenced by people talking
| about effective therapeutics and the lack of approval by
| the FDA is, "there are adequate, approved, and available
| alternatives."
| enkid wrote:
| Can you point to anything that says the FDA would
| consider HCQ or any of these other drugs as alternatives
| to vaccines? They are not the same, and though they could
| both treat COVID, my reading is not that this would limit
| vaccine emergency authorization if there was a non
| vaccine treatment. This is especially true considering
| there are multiple vaccines approved under emergency use
| which would be direct competitors. So, nope, I don't buy
| it from just this wording. I need something saying
| specifically that alternative treatments would stop a
| vaccine being approved.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| I believe it means vaccines should go typical testing and
| vetting process, not the emergency shortened, is what the
| op wanted to tell.
| enkid wrote:
| I understand that's what op is trying to say, but op
| isn't providing sufficient evidence for that. Non
| vaccines are not alternatives for vaccines. And we have
| EUAs for things that would be alternatives to each other,
| multiple vaccines. So there's not reason to think a
| viable treatment for COVID would prevent a vaccine from
| getting a EUA.
| wrycoder wrote:
| I get vaccinated for flu every year. And yet there is
| Tamiflu, an effective palliative.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The idea that ivermectin (even if it works, and gets
| approved for this usage, which'd likely take as long as
| the vaccines are taking to get to that point) is an
| adequate alternative to a vaccine, which provides
| _ongoing, lasting_ protection, is silly.
|
| It'd be like claiming the existence of the iron lung is
| sufficient to yank the polio vaccine out of production.
|
| For example, Remdesivir is approved, without any sign of
| that fact jeopardizing the EUA on the vaccines. https://w
| ww.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/therapeutic-op...
|
| > FDA has approved one drug, remdesivir (Veklury), for
| the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients aged
| 12 years and older who weigh at least 40 kg.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > You can't get EUA for the vaccines if there's a working
| treatment.
|
| Per the FDA: ""Under section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug,
| and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), when the Secretary of HHS
| declares that an emergency use authorization is appropriate,
| FDA may authorize unapproved medical products or unapproved
| uses of approved medical products to be used in an emergency
| to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening
| diseases or conditions caused by CBRN threat agents when
| certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate,
| approved, and available alternatives.""
|
| And that falls apart under some scrutiny... it says
| "adequate, approved, and available alternatives." "adequate"
| being efficacious which is debatable without testing.
| "approved" which that drug is absolutely not approved for
| covid use. "available" being enough supply which is debatable
| if it turns out to be effective and widely used. I see no
| reason why the EUA for the vaccines would be threatened by
| this drug _also_ being used in an EUA fashion. if they are
| going for actual approval for that drug it would take as long
| as the vaccine to get.
|
| > When you look at the amount of money these companies stand
| to make from producing billions of vaccinations, you should
| not be surprised.
|
| I think that when you look at everything through the
| conspiratorial lens... all you see are conspiracies.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Also, I simply wouldn't assume the FDA considers a
| treatment (this drug) an alternative to something that
| prevents the disease (vaccines).
|
| They both are used for the same disease but in different
| ways. They are only alternatives in a very broad sense.
| weaksauce wrote:
| yeah agreed. literally the only people I've seen push
| this kind of nonsense are antivaxxers and conspiracy
| theorists. I don't understand why they need it to be true
| so badly; doesn't pass any of the sniff tests under even
| a little scrutiny.
|
| Even if it fit all those criteria for being an
| alternative it's not like it's some kind of thing that
| couldn't be amended if they really needed/wanted to.
| saddens me how reactionary everyone is.
|
| Edit: also I forgot to make the point in my replay
| above... it's not like having three vaccines under is
| preventing another vaccine from getting EUA so even under
| this logic framework it is nonsense. are they hinging it
| on the fact that it's an approved drug for some other
| disease?
| ds206 wrote:
| "literally the only people I've seen push this kind of
| nonsense are antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists."
|
| Literally? Everyone? LOL this is why there are so many
| normal people in this thread saying "at least let's have
| a discussion!"
|
| Your sentiment is the reason (imo) that these discussions
| are so hard to have, no offense.
| belltaco wrote:
| Dr. Zelenko held studies that 'showed' that HCQ had 100% cure
| rate by excluding people that moved to an ICU from the
| treatment group. The studies turned out to be complete bunk.
| He's a fraud.
| wrycoder wrote:
| https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/03/04/hydroxychloroquin
| e...
|
| _Two observational studies, both carried out in New York
| (Carlucci et al. and Derwan et al.), appear to show
| promising results in patients treated with a combination of
| hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin. The first,
| involving 932 paitents, showed a 55% reduction in relative
| risk of death among those getting zinc in addition to
| hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, as compared with those
| just getting hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. The
| second, involving 518 patients, showed an 80% reduction in
| relative risk of death among those getting the full triple
| therapy, when compared with a reference sample that didn't
| get any of the drugs.
|
| That seems impressive. However, these are low quality
| observational studies that are seriously limited by the
| methodology used. The scope for confounding effects is
| huge. Therefore, these studies should be considered
| exploratory and hypothesis generating. They certainly
| should not be considered evidence of any cause and effect
| relationship._
| belltaco wrote:
| >https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/us/coronavirus-
| doctor-zel...
|
| >In an interview on Friday, Dr. Zelenko said that he was
| guilty of nothing more than sloppy wording.
|
| >"I'm a clinician, not a researcher," he said. "I don't
| understand fully the language of clinical research."
|
| Yet he went on TV and on large podcasts and talked like
| he was an expert on clinical research.
| birken wrote:
| Pfizer, a company that has contributed probably trillions of
| dollars to global GDP over the past 6 months, is massively
| underperforming the stock market when you compare pre-
| pandemic to now [1]. The stock price in theory should price
| in all the future cash flows from the vaccine. What is your
| basis that the pharma companies are making tons of money on
| these vaccines?
|
| It isn't like the vaccines are pure profit. The pharma
| companies have to develop them, they have to produce them,
| they have to distribute them, and if they charge too much
| they get into massive political trouble. It seems like it is
| basically a giant marketing effort for pharma companies where
| everybody in the world is benefiting.
|
| 1: For example, from Feb 1st, 20 to today, Pfizer is up 10%
| and the Vanguard total stock index VTI is up 35%
| ds206 wrote:
| "everybody in the world is benefiting"
|
| Did the patent issues get resolved? Last I heard, the drug
| companies didn't want to share because of reasons.
| _Microft wrote:
| The parent commenter might have wanted to say with that
| that the vaccines help end the pandemic. The world
| benefits from that because we are losing massive amounts
| of money per day while still being stuck in the pandemic.
| redrain wrote:
| > What is your basis that the pharma companies are making
| tons of money on these vaccines?
|
| I am not sure, but doesn't companies make a lot of money if
| their product sells a lot? I thought it was basic
| economics.
|
| Do you really need to look at the stocks to understand it?
| tonfa wrote:
| Isn't Pfizer mostly handling manufacturing and distribution
| for biontech?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| > There seemed to be an overwhelming amount of evidence....
|
| > ....there hadn't been a randomized trial the drug
|
| You don't see the contradiction here?
|
| Edit: because it must be made 100% obvious, clinical trial
| results are the _definition_ of evidence in medical science.
| nicoburns wrote:
| That's not really contradictory. Lots of covid treatments
| have been discovered in hospital settings by doctors trying
| desperately to find something to help their patients.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| And those were later validated by evidence from clinical
| trials. Until clinical trials involving significant numbers
| of patients are available, there is not evidence according
| to the standards of medical science. That's the
| contradiction.
| atlgator wrote:
| Whether it works or not, there's no money to be made from
| Ivermectin. It's a very cheap generic drug. Why else would they
| stamp out all possible investigations of it just to ascertain
| truth?
| stordoff wrote:
| Is the same not true for dexamethasone[1], which was the
| first successful finding from the RECOVERY trial[2]? That's
| how I've repeatedly seen it described[3] (FWIW, I was treated
| with dexamethasone for Covid-19 in October 2020).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethasone
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RECOVERY_Trial
|
| [3] "A cheap and widely available drug can help save the
| lives[...]" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53061281
| h0l0cube wrote:
| One could argue there's money to be _lost_ if it displaces
| vaccines as a method of treatment (assuming it 's affects
| are as lasting)
| raphlinus wrote:
| So is dexamethasone, and that's used world-wide for seriously
| ill Covid patients.
|
| What's the explanation for why dexamethasone was allowed but
| ivermectin is being suppressed?
| oblib wrote:
| Basically it's been that there had been no studies to prove
| it works for covid. It's been used mostly in poorer
| countries that have had it on hand because it's relatively
| inexpensive. Doctors in those countries have been sharing
| info with each other and that's how it started being used a
| lot.
|
| During that time gather data for this use was begun and
| it's taken this long to gather enough, over enough time, to
| prove its efficacy according to the standards required.
| benmw333 wrote:
| People down vote this - they gasp saying "no way could this
| be true" - yet they complain about big pharma right up until
| the "right" virus/disease/whatever science thing comes along
| and their tribe picks it up and runs with it - they're now
| the savior. The left/right don't realize they both have
| faith/religion of government. These politicians do not speak
| for you or me. Voting only leads to consequence without
| recourse.
| christmm wrote:
| Discussions about ivermectin must be banned from youtube. It
| smells of Trump too much. Any scientific dissent, even justified,
| should not be tolerated.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. We're
| trying for a different sort of internet here, if possible.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| I present this post, the fact that it made the front page, and
| many of the comments on it, as evidence that the US is sliding
| into idiocy.
| christmm wrote:
| Who are the scientists that instructed YouTube to take down the
| "Bret Weinstein and Pierre Kory" video?
| ds206 wrote:
| Link to the censored video:
| https://odysee.com/@BretWeinstein:f/COVID-Ivermectin-and-the...
| kitcar wrote:
| The FDA has a page on Invermectin for Covid treatment, which
| provides a reminder that veterinary drugs are not designed for
| human consumption.
|
| https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...
|
| "For one thing, animal drugs are often highly concentrated
| because they are used for large animals like horses and cows,
| which can weigh a lot more than we do--a ton or more. Such high
| doses can be highly toxic in humans.
|
| Moreover, FDA reviews drugs not just for safety and effectiveness
| of the active ingredients, but also for the inactive ingredients.
| Many inactive ingredients found in animal products aren't
| evaluated for use in people. Or they are included in much greater
| quantity than those used in people. In some cases, we don't know
| how those inactive ingredients will affect how ivermectin is
| absorbed in the human body."
| wonnage wrote:
| The warning is there because some people decided to self-
| medicate and bought veterinary doses and ODed.
| andreilys wrote:
| You can also over-dose on dihydrogen monoxide - should we
| also ban any discussion on that?
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| Hydroperoxyl (the common name for hydrogen dioxide) should
| just break down into water and oxygen gas as soon as it
| encounters H+ ions (e.g. when it touches liquid water), no?
| Is there some particular reason you think the dangers are
| being repressed? If your answer is something to do with
| "free radicals" my understanding is that most of those come
| from metabolic processes rather than things you eat.
| andreilys wrote:
| Thanks for correcting me, meant to say dihydrogen
| monoxide, aka water ;)
|
| My point being that you can over-dose on almost any
| compound at high enough doses. So instead of driving the
| conversation underground and letting patients self-
| medicate, we should empower doctors with proper
| information rather than painting Ivermectin as a
| conspiracy theory drug
| mcguire wrote:
| Or, as the FDA page says,
|
| " _If you have a prescription for ivermectin for an FDA-
| approved use, get it from a legitimate source and take it
| exactly as prescribed. Never use medications intended for
| animals on yourself. Ivermectin preparations for animals
| are very different from those approved for humans._ "
| jiofih wrote:
| That's a terrible argument. You can't unwittingly
| overdose on water.
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| Ah, yeah. Some actual RCTs with a decent sample size
| would be nice though, so as to _have_ proper information
| to empower doctors and patients with.
| wonnage wrote:
| I dunno how you made the jump from this warning to banning
| discussion
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Ivermectin isn't a "veterinary drug", it's been used as a human
| medicine for decades.
| wrycoder wrote:
| The use of ivermectin in _humans_ to treat parasites won a
| _Nobel Prize_.
|
| Quoting from the Wikipedia page:
|
| _" Half of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
| was awarded jointly to Campbell and Omura for discovering
| avermectin, "the derivatives of which have radically lowered
| the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, as
| well as showing efficacy against an expanding number of other
| parasitic diseases"_
| kitcar wrote:
| The link I provided from the FDA says:
|
| "There seems to be a growing interest in a drug called
| ivermectin to treat humans with COVID-19. Ivermectin is often
| used in the U.S. to treat or prevent parasites in animals.
|
| The FDA has received multiple reports of patients who have
| required medical support and been hospitalized after self-
| medicating with ivermectin intended for horses."
| krona wrote:
| The most common way to treat onchocerciasis (river
| blindness) is by using ivermectin.
| ds206 wrote:
| It's also been given to people around the world billions of
| times for 4 or 5 decades.
|
| Yeah, don't take the horse dose lol, take the human dose.
| [deleted]
| mgamache wrote:
| Countdown to Tess Lawrie being attacked 3,2,1....
| mgamache wrote:
| keep downvoting. She's already had her Twitter account
| suspended.
|
| https://twitter.com/marybethpf/status/1404880155537985541
| dang wrote:
| Can you please not post unsubstantive and/or flamebait
| comments to HN? If you have substantive information to share,
| please share it thoughtfully. If you post like you're doing
| in this thread, it's just pouring fuel on the flames, and no
| one learns anything from that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Moreover, you discredit your own view by posting like this,
| which isn't in your interest--and if your view happens to be
| correct, then you're actually discrediting the truth as well,
| and that's a harmful thing to do. https://hn.algolia.com/?dat
| eRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| You belong in a coffin.
| [deleted]
| gmnash wrote:
| It's banned on YouTube because of multiple authoritative sources
| indicating it's not a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19.
|
| Here is the FDA's stance: https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-
| updates/why-you-shoul...
|
| Here is the European equivalent of the AMA advising against it's
| use: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-advises-against-use-
| iv...
|
| Here is an RCT in JAMA finding it ineffective:
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2777389
|
| And here is Merck, that sells Ivermectin, but whose vaccine
| didn't make it through clinical trials, discouraging the use of
| Ivermectin for COVID-19: https://www.merck.com/news/merck-
| statement-on-ivermectin-use...
|
| If Ivermectin worked on COVID-19, the manufacturer of Ivermectin
| that has made no money on vaccines for COVID-19 would probably be
| pushing it wouldn't they?
|
| There have been some studies that found it effective in vitro,
| but as noted in other comments, at several times the safe dosage
| in vivo.
| andreilys wrote:
| _If Ivermectin worked on COVID-19, the manufacturer of
| Ivermectin that has made no money on vaccines for COVID-19
| would probably be pushing it wouldn 't they?_
|
| Surprise, Merck is now working on anti-viral drug whose profits
| would be eaten into by an off-patent drug (ivermectin)
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-25/merck-mrk...
| rubatuga wrote:
| > Here is an RCT in JAMA finding it ineffective:
|
| For treating what? This study looked at trying to reduce mild
| COVID-19 symptoms. In fact, the current strongest evidence is
| for prophylaxis, as well as treating more severe cases. Also
| the study didn't show that it was ineffective, it showed that
| it couldn't disprove the null hypothesis. Please get your facts
| straight, before throwing a link to a overly specific RCT to
| prove your point.
| analyte123 wrote:
| Actually the EMA link says that current evidence for ivermectin
| is insufficient and it cannot currently be recommended outside
| of trials. This not the same as claiming that it does _not_
| work or that it is hazardous, although many journalists can
| seemingly not tell the difference. The FDA's advisory is mostly
| about people overdosing on veterinary ivermectin. They
| emphasize that overdose and medication interactions are
| possible, veterinary ivermectin is not a good substitute for
| human ivermectin, and that ivermectin is not an approved
| treatment for COVID-19. Again, even within the paradigm of
| blindly listening to authoritative sources, this is not an
| assertion that normal doses of ivermectin for off-label use are
| dangerous and should be prohibited for prescription, let alone
| an order for tech companies to censor the mere mention of it.
|
| When the FDA's advisory came out, there were articles (eg [1])
| referring to ivermectin-the-molecule as a "horse de-wormer" and
| drawing no distinction between animal and human use (and it
| _has_ been proven safe and effective in humans, just not for
| COVID). The level of discourse around this feels like I am
| reading 90s drug war content.
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/people-poisoning-
| themselves-...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| It seems it is you who is misrepresenting the ema link.
|
| Key quote: " _Although ivermectin is generally well tolerated
| at doses authorised for other indications, side effects could
| increase with the much higher doses that would be needed to
| obtain concentrations of ivermectin in the lungs that are
| effective against the virus. Toxicity when ivermectin is used
| at higher than approved doses therefore cannot be excluded._
| "
|
| IE, the dose needed for covid could quite possibly be
| harmful.
| analyte123 wrote:
| Agreed on missing this facet of their advisory. However,
| the concentration of ivermectin in the early in vitro study
| was 35x higher than the plasma concentration reached for
| the approved ivermectin dose [1] whereas the doses used in
| ivermectin trials (https://ivmmeta.com) range from 1x to
| 10x the approved dose daily, with successful results as low
| as 4x approved dose (1x approved dose daily for 4 days)[2].
| So whatever ivermectin is doing, it doesn't seem to require
| the concentration that the initial in vitro study required.
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32378737/
|
| [2] The approved dose is actually 200 mcg/kg. I used 12mg
| to correspond to a normal adult "approved dose" for these
| numbers.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| You've gone from "no, the EMA didn't really to object" to
| "here's why their objection is wrong". See how that
| works?
|
| The thing about Covid is that it isn't "super deadly". It
| has about a 1% fatality rate. That's terrible for society
| as a whole when the disease is also extremely infectious.
| But it means that "I took X and recovered from Covid"
| isn't the most amazing thing.
|
| _" So whatever ivermectin is doing, it doesn't seem to
| require the concentration that the initial in vitro study
| required."_ Maybe the trial dose does nothing at all and
| people are recovering like they normally do.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, this is the key item. In vitro there has been some
| success but at dosage _far_ higher (double digits) than
| what the safe dose is, and no in vivo trial has been done
| at those dosages (and likely never will due to the risks
| involved).
| reedjosh wrote:
| There's a large body of evidence in the opposite direction as
| well.
|
| I just pulled the following from Bret Weinstein's show notes.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSWjl-JOIqs
|
| British Ivermectin Recommendation Development group:
| https://bird-group.org
|
| The BIRD Recommendation on the Use of Ivermectin for Covid-19:
| Executive Summary: https://bird-group.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/03/bird-execu...
|
| Carvallo et al 2020. Study of the efficacy and safety of
| topical ivermectin+ iota-carrageenan in the prophylaxis against
| COVID-19 in health personnel. J. Biomed. Res. Clin. Investig.,
| 2.
| https://medicalpressopenaccess.com/upload/1605709669_1007.pd...
|
| Cobos-Campos et al 2021.Potential use of ivermectin for the
| treatment and prophylaxis of SARS-CoV-2 infection: Efficacy of
| ivermectin for SARS-CoV-2. Clin Res Trials, 7: 1-5.
| https://www.readkong.com/page/potential-use-of-ivermectin-fo...
|
| Database of all ivermectin COVID-19 studies. 93 studies, 55
| peer reviewed, 56 with results comparing treatment and control
| groups: https://c19ivermectin.com
|
| Karale et al 2021. A Meta-analysis of Mortality, Need for ICU
| admission, Use of Mechanical Ventilation and Adverse Effects
| with Ivermectin Use in COVID-19 Patients.
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2021/05/04/202...
|
| Kory et al 2021. Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating
| the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of
| COVID-19. American Journal of Therapeutics, 28(3): e299:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/
|
| Nardelli et al 2021. Crying wolf in time of Corona: the strange
| case of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Is the fear of
| failure withholding potential life-saving treatment from
| clinical use?. Signa Vitae, 1: 2.
| https://oss.signavitae.com/mre-signavitae/article/20210508-3...
|
| Yagisawa et al 2021. Global trends in clinical studies of
| ivermectin in COVID-19. The Japanese Journal of Antibiotics,
| 74: 1.
| https://www.psychoactif.org/forum/uploads/documents/161/74-1...
| wrycoder wrote:
| In addition, there is this summary:
|
| https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/
|
| and
|
| https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/.
| ..
|
| _Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment
| trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large,
| statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to
| clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore,
| results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report
| significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the
| regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of
| ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid
| population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate
| that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has
| been identified._
|
| Edit: There's a mountain of data here:
|
| https://ivmmeta.com/
|
| Edit: Clip from that last link:
|
| _*While many treatments have some level of efficacy, they do
| not replace vaccines and other measures to avoid infection.
| Only 27% of ivermectin studies show zero events in the
| treatment arm. *Elimination of COVID-19 is a race against
| viral evolution. No treatment, vaccine, or intervention is
| 100% available and effective for all current and future
| variants. All practical, effective, and safe means should be
| used. Not doing so increases the risk of COVID-19 becoming
| endemic; and increases mortality, morbidity, and collateral
| damage._
| glenra wrote:
| Nearly all of your links are broken. I think you copy-pasted
| the text of links that had been truncated with a "...", where
| the part prior to "..." is not sufficient to constitute a
| valid web address. For instance, the link for Carvallo et al
| 2010 should be this, which resolves: https://medicalpressopen
| access.com/upload/1605709669_1007.pd...
|
| ..rather than this, which doesn't:
|
| https://medicalpressopenaccess.com/up
| reedjosh wrote:
| Thank you! I've fixed them.
| lvs wrote:
| WHO statement: https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-
| stories/detail/who-adv...
| throwkeep wrote:
| > If Ivermectin worked on COVID-19, the manufacturer of
| Ivermectin that has made no money on vaccines for COVID-19
| would probably be pushing it wouldn't they?
|
| No, because it's out of patent. There's little profit to be
| made. Merck is instead pushing a new drug that they will have a
| monopoly on.
|
| "Merck Announces Supply Agreement with U.S. Government for
| Molnupiravir, an Investigational Oral Antiviral Candidate for
| Treatment of Mild to Moderate COVID-19"
|
| https://www.merck.com/news/merck-announces-supply-agreement-...
|
| Big pharma 101.
|
| As for Ivermectin effectiveness, it looks promising. There was
| an evidence based clinical review posted on Nature earlier this
| week:
|
| "As per data available on 16 May 2021, 100% of 36 early
| treatment and prophylaxis studies report positive effects (96%
| of all 55 studies). Of these, 26 studies show statistically
| significant improvements in isolation. Random effects meta-
| analysis with pooled effects using the most serious outcome
| reported 79% and 85% improvement for early treatment and
| prophylaxis respectively (RR 0.21 [0.11-0.37] and 0.15
| [0.09-0.25]). The results were similar after exclusion based
| sensitivity analysis: 81% and 87% (RR 0.19 [0.14-0.26] and 0.13
| [0.07-0.25]), and after restriction to 29 peer-reviewed
| studies: 82% and 88% (RR 0.18 [0.11-0.31] and 0.12
| [0.05-0.30]). Statistically significant improvements were seen
| for mortality, ventilation, hospitalization, cases, and viral
| clearance. 100% of the 17 Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs)
| for early treatment and prophylaxis report positive effects,
| with an estimated improvement of 73% and 83% respectively (RR
| 0.27 [0.18-0.41] and 0.17 [0.05-0.61]), and 93% of all 28
| RCTs."
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-021-00430-5
| reedjosh wrote:
| You have to give credit where it's due. People were
| suspicious of big pharma cos prior to the miracle vaccine,
| but today they line up to defend them.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| Dexamethasone is off patent, it's cheap and widely available,
| it's also the standard of care for covid-19 patients on
| respiratory support.
|
| What's the difference between dexamethasone and
| hydroxycholoroquine/ivermectin/next-consipracy-theory?
|
| It's been proven to work. There's no conspiracy, just
| pharmacology is hard, and people's random hunches typically
| don't work out.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Also, and feel free to downvote...
|
| > multiple authoritative sources
|
| Gross!
|
| Authority is the problem. We need to use our own minds. The
| very idea that an ad tech co is backing an amorphous group of
| authoritative governmental bodies is repugnant.
|
| > And here is Merck, that sells Ivermectin
|
| Ivermectin has been out of patent for years--so it is not
| particularly profitable anyway. The initial claim insinuates
| that Merck went against its own interest, but there was never
| much profit to be made from an old and proven safe drug that
| can be sold by generic manufactures.
| gmnash wrote:
| It's impossible to be an expert in every field, particularly
| those as complicated as medicine. Furthermore, you don't have
| to rely on authority, I linked to an RCT showing it was
| ineffective.
|
| "Not particularly profitable", which is speculative, is still
| profitable. I highly doubt any one at Merck is actively
| working against selling a drug they already manufacture at a
| profit, but feel free to provide evidence otherwise.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Can you explain how the RCT is more useful than the meta-
| analysis that was posted as the OP?
| lph wrote:
| > Authority is the problem. We need to use our own minds.
|
| No offense, but that depends on the quality of minds. What
| you've just said is exactly what Q-Anon proponents say, just
| before they go on to repeat absolutely baseless conspiracy
| theories they heard about on YouTube.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| > _And here is Merck, that sells Ivermectin, but whose vaccine
| didn't make it through clinical trials, discouraging the use of
| Ivermectin for COVID-19:https://www.merck.com/news/merck-
| statement-on-ivermectin-use...
|
| If Ivermectin worked on COVID-19, the manufacturer of
| Ivermectin that has made no money on vaccines for COVID-19
| would probably be pushing it wouldn't they?_
|
| You are misinformed. Merck has a particular formulation of
| Ivermectin that they sell but the vast majority of it is made
| off patent by other manufacturers for very little profit. If
| they had an exclusive patent on a drug that they could make any
| flimsy case for effectiveness against Covid I'm sure they would
| be pushing it, the way Gilead has with remdesivir.
| mgamache wrote:
| Remember if Ivermectin was considered a safe treatment, there
| would have been no Emergency Use Authorization for vaccines.
| There was huge incentives to suppress the Ivermectin story until
| the vaccines were approved. Merck claimed it's own drug (off
| patent) did not have enough safety data. This is a drug taken by
| millions of people every month for decades.
| jhayward wrote:
| This is a conspiracy theory. Why is it that everyone who pushes
| Ivermectin as a miracle cure for COVID is also a conspiracy
| aficionado?
| guscost wrote:
| Simple. You have defined the latter as some variation on the
| former.
| jhayward wrote:
| No, "there is a worldwide conspiracy to suppress Ivermectin
| so that Big Pharma can make vaccines" is clearly a
| conspiracy theory, it's not a tautology.
|
| Seriously, why all the tinfoil?
| andreilys wrote:
| People called the lab leak theory a conspiracy theory
| (because it was associated with Trump and "racism").
|
| Now we have blue-chip liberal celebrities like Jon
| Stewart coming out in favor of the lab leak hypothesis.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Giving the benefit of the doubt (that new evidence is
| compelling), that still doesn't retroactively justify
| anything. The information available in the past is not
| affected by the informative available in the future. If
| we discover that Bush irrefutably orchestrated 9/11, that
| doesn't make the conspiracy theorists' rationales more
| rational. It feels natural to make that connection, but
| that's only in service of our side-taking tendencies.
| andreilys wrote:
| The problem is that the quality/quantity of evidence has
| not changed.
|
| Plenty of folks have been drawing attention to the lab
| leak hypothesis way before it reached mainstream, and
| they were using the exact same arguments and facts that
| the mainstream is co-opting now.
|
| The only difference is that Trump is out of office, so
| people are less afraid to associate with the idea that
| the Lab Leak Hypothesis is worth investigating
| mgamache wrote:
| Why the tinfoil? When the WHO and the CDC/NIH and public
| officials lie repeatedly and demonstrably you can not
| trust them. Sort of invites wondering what the game is,
| because it's not public health.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| You mean it's implausible that Big Pharma might do
| reprehensible things for profit?
| mgamache wrote:
| All I said was there was a disincentive and claimed it's
| being wrongly characterized as 'unsafe' by the company that
| brought it to market. Are either of those statements
| incorrect?
| jsnell wrote:
| Yes. I believe it is factually incorrect that a treatment
| with the claimed efficacy numbers would have prevented an
| EUA, given the vaccines we got were both safe and more
| effective.
| mgamache wrote:
| The vaccine is experimental and the full safety profile
| is still being discovered. The EUA specially requires
| that there is "no adequate, approved, and available
| alternatives". The conclusion: "large reductions in
| COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin" suggests
| it may be a viable alternative to widescale deployment of
| a vaccine that _did not_ go through the full approval
| process.
| jsnell wrote:
| No, sorry. The linked study suggests a 60% reduction in
| deaths from this drug. Even if it were true, it is
| nowhere enough to be an adequeate alternative to the
| vaccines, that were both vastly more effective at
| reducing deaths and could also significantly reduce
| transmission.
| wrycoder wrote:
| If you got the first dose of vaccine and then presented
| with COVID (that does happen), a short course of
| ivermectin immediately could likely do you some real
| good.
| jsnell wrote:
| That is totally irrelevant to the subject at hand:
| whether use of this drug would have prevented EUAs for
| vaccines. It clearly would not have, this is just a pure
| conspiracy theory.
| wrycoder wrote:
| I am double vaccinated. I'm not proposing ivermectin as a
| substitute for vaccination. It's a palliative which may
| reduce serious consequences if an unvaccinated (or
| partially vaccinated) person presents with COVID. In that
| case, a vaccination would not act quickly enough to
| develop immunity. Even early use of Ivermectin would not
| have prevented the EUAs, because around 30% of those
| taking Ivermectin develop serious COVID, some progressing
| to death.
|
| The problem is the EUA argument preventing the use of
| Ivermectin, not the other way around.
| guscost wrote:
| Hey investigative journalists, pull on this thread! This one
| right over here!
| jiofih wrote:
| Hmm.. how about scientists instead?
| hannob wrote:
| This looks less ridiculous than the last metaanalysis on
| Ivermectin that was posted here.
|
| Still if you look at it there's some reason for caution. Not all
| of the included studies were RCTs, some were not blinded. If you
| look at the "Risk of Bias"-Table there are really only three
| studies that could qualify as high quality.
|
| I'm waiting for judgement from medical experts.
| jiofih wrote:
| The medical experts at _Frontiers of Pharmacology_ , the #2
| journal in the field, rejected the paper due to lack of rigor.
| andreilys wrote:
| Unfortunately medical experts are not allowed to discuss this
| in public, so we're left with back door meetings where Pharma
| execs will inevitably push outcomes that will be favorable for
| their bottom line.
|
| Who wants to invest billions of dollars into a new
| vaccine/anti-viral drug only to lose out on all that investment
| by Ivermectin which will not contribute a single cent to the
| Pharma execs year-end bonus?
| hannob wrote:
| > Unfortunately medical experts are not allowed to discuss
| this in public
|
| I've heard and read quite a bunch of them discuss this in
| public in the past, they must've been unaware that this is
| illegal. Or maybe it just isn't.
| belltaco wrote:
| Merck sells Ivrmectin and recently had their vaccine
| candidate fail, they might be behind this push for IVR, with
| all the behind the scenes PR for it and the questionable
| speciality anonymous websites in this thread.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Merck is developing a new anti-viral drug that would be
| much more profitable than Ivermectin.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-25/merck-
| mrk...
| ralph84 wrote:
| Whether ivermectin helps with covid or not, it's certainly not an
| advertising company's role to censor the debate.
| belltaco wrote:
| And it's certainly not right wing politicians' and talking
| heads' role to promote unproven medical treatments and be anti-
| vaxx to their huge audience, but here we are.
| takeda wrote:
| We don't have extensive studies that injecting bleach helps as
| well.
|
| There is a huge liability to those companies if it would end
| with deaths or health issues ("Facebook only looked for profits
| and didn't care that people were killed by misinformation")
|
| You should not get medical advice from social media, and
| Facebook is also not the right place to discuss medical
| research.
|
| Ironically few days ago people here commented that HN was
| linking to a rant on Facebook about performance in Python
| affected by shared libraries.
|
| FB was considered not suitable for that kind of discussion and
| link was changed to bug database, yet some people don't have
| problem about discussing medical treatment there.
| dang wrote:
| Just to be clear, if we changed a URL from one source to
| another, that would be rooted in 10+ years of HN moderation
| practice and would have been about the specific articles, for
| example we would tend to replace a "rant" with a more
| substantive/original source. It would imply nothing about FB
| being "considered not suitable". Plenty of FB articles have
| been discussed here over the years; though there tend to be
| issues with login walls and whatnot and I think the community
| tends to prefer the open web for content.
| [deleted]
| turnerc wrote:
| I highly recommend Dr. John Campbell video's on the Ivermectin
| topic:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0-90kvoQac
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLWQtT7dHGE
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ju5v4TAaQ
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| I Googled Ivermectin meta-analysis. But instead of finding the
| article we're discussing now, I found a different meta-analysis.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.21.21257595v...
|
| It concluded Ivermectin "did not reduce all-cause mortality,
| length of stay or viral clearance in RCTs in COVID-19 patients
| with mostly mild disease. IVM did not have effect on AEs or SAEs.
| IVM is not a viable option to treat COVID-19 patients."
|
| But wait... Before you upvote or downvote me, I want to say this
| proves something entirely different than what we may think. It
| proves that there's lots of studies -- some say one thing, some
| say another. I can produce a study which seems to convincingly
| prove one side of an issue -- and somebody else can produce a
| different study which seems to show the opposite.
| zanethomas wrote:
| compare to duckduckgo results
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=+Ivermectin+meta-analysis&a...
| jiofih wrote:
| Or it proves that meta-analyses are meaningless when you can
| pick the target studies at will.
| [deleted]
| guscost wrote:
| And the hits just keep coming. What a pair of years.
| deadalus wrote:
| This URL is blacklisted from Google. Try it.
|
| * "Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search
| results" :
| https://twitter.com/kashhill/status/1402986015107653647
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Dedicated Frank Zappa fans might.
| mikeytown2 wrote:
| N=1. Me and my 2 year old had covid. My wife started ivermectin
| and never got sick. Shared bed and sick 2 year old wants mommy.
|
| Ivermectin didn't work for me (diarrhea) but my fever went from
| 102.7 down to 99 12 hours after HQC after 6 days of a slow
| downward spiral (fever kept going up and up every day). So for
| me, my take is the drugs absolutely worked.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| I had a raging case of COVID19, and deep into a 39C fever I
| began burning offerings and meat and honey to the moon. It was
| late at night, and I figured maybe the Moon God would be awake.
| There was no effect on the fever.
|
| Once the dawn came, I gyrated wildly in the direction of the
| sun while burning incense. Within hours, my fever broke and was
| down to a lukewarm 38C! Now I see that COVID19 is the domain of
| the Sun God. I was a fool for praying to the moon the whole
| time.
|
| My relatives had COVID19 too. Two were completely asymptomatic
| and two had moderate disease in a family of 4. Since half of
| COVID19 cases are asymptomatic, many people think because
| they're taking foo, it had effect bar against the disease and
| that is why they aren't sick. But it turned out they're just
| one of the lucky 1 in 2.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar,
| especially not on divisive topics.
|
| We all know that anecdotes aren't statistical evidence. That
| doesn't make them offtopic. They're interesting, and they're
| the lifeblood of conversation. Generally on HN the approach
| is to trust readers to be able to make their own minds.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.
| ..
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful. Note these ones: " _Don 't be snarky._", " _Please
| respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what
| someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize.
| Assume good faith._", and " _Comments should get more
| thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more
| divisive._ "
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _We all know that anecdotes aren 't statistical evidence.
| That doesn't make them offtopic. They're interesting_
|
| They were interesting before they were weaponized by
| politicians. Then they became a threat.
|
| This crap doesn't belong here, dang. Seriously.
| axguscbklp wrote:
| The Hacker News guidelines say:
|
| "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find
| interesting. That includes more than hacking and
| startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
| answer might be: anything that gratifies one's
| intellectual curiosity."
|
| There is nothing in there about censoring things because
| they have been weaponized by politicians or because they
| are a threat.
| dang wrote:
| I don't see any reason to think that mikeytown2's comment
| is being weaponized by politicians or that mikeytown2 is
| a weaponizing politician.
|
| My purview is limited to HN and I try never to
| extrapolate beyond that, but as far as HN goes, we've
| always favored the principle that readers are smart
| enough to make up their own minds. I've been saying that
| for 7 years (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0
| &prefix=true&que...) and I don't think that the crises
| and tectonic shifts of the past few years have given any
| reason to change that--actually the opposite. (It has
| been a lot of work trying to shore up a culture of
| thoughtful commenting, with mixed results, but that's a
| separate issue.) IMO you guys should worry less about
| restricting what other people might see or think and
| worry more about finding the best information and the
| best arguments to persuade each other with.
|
| To repeat: my remarks are limited to HN, which is the
| space I've observed enough to speak about. I'm not saying
| HN is an exception and I'm not saying it isn't an
| exception; I don't know.
|
| Edit: There are another couple points I'd like to make.
| First, I think there's a perspective bias here. We all
| assume that _we 're_ the smart one capable of making
| judgments about what the dumber ones might think, but
| literally everyone sees themselves that way. That shows
| not only that we can't all be right about that, but--more
| interestingly--that this entire line of thinking is
| invalid. It's a hard-wired unreliable narrator.
|
| Second and last, if HN readers _aren 't_ smart enough to
| make up their own minds, then this place is fucked, so we
| might as well make a Pascal's wager about it.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Thank you.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| My anecdote is exactly as valid as his. You can't prove the
| Sun God didn't cure me.
| dang wrote:
| That's deeply, and I think obviously, not the point.
| Please stop now.
| brokensegue wrote:
| this is not how science works
| slumdev wrote:
| Actually, it does. It starts with data.
|
| Sure, we can't conclude from his N=1 experiment that it
| definitely works.
|
| But Youtube wants to conclude from N=0 that it definitely
| doesn't work, and they don't want the peasantry asking
| questions.
| gcbirzan wrote:
| It doesn't start with "my wife didn't get sick after
| getting treatment X". This is not data, this is noise.
| wrycoder wrote:
| But it is how science starts.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Ivermectin has to be one, presumptuously, of the most ridiculous
| foreign PSYOP interventions in recent memory. I believe that
| somewhere there's a bet going on for how many Westerners they can
| get taking dog medication thinking it makes them immune to
| COVID19.
|
| We already have a cure! In most countries, it's even _free_! And
| yet I read paranoid blogs online from conspiracy theorists who
| refuse a vaccine but guzzle down veterinary medication user to
| treat heartworm and digestive parasites.
|
| Pound me with downvotes, I'll hold my breath until I see a large
| scale randomized double-blind trial.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post flamebait to HN, and especially not on
| divisive topics. That amounts to trolling, in effect if not in
| intention, and it leads to exactly the opposite of what we're
| trying for here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: you posted this right after I asked you to stop doing it
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27563671). If you pull a
| trick like that again, we will ban you.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Citing Roman et al.
|
| > Conclusions: In comparison to SOC or placebo, IVM did not
| reduce all-cause mortality, length of stay or viral clearance
| in RCTs in COVID-19 patients with mostly mild disease. IVM
| did not have effect on AEs or SAEs. IVM is not a viable
| option to treat COVID-19 patients. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.21.212575
| 95v...
|
| I would prefer to see a single RCT with at least a few
| thousand patients, but the early results aren't looking
| positive. It's a repeat of HCQ-AZ and that people are lending
| credence to RCTs with double digit cohorts is what causes
| people to rush out and eat medications intended for dogs. It
| _actively promotes harm to individuals who take medications
| for no reason, which have side effects_. I would prefer that
| HN not allow discussion of what appears to be medicine advice
| without a basis in clinical results.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I have seen people pointing out the low price of the horse
| formulations on Twitter without the obvious caveat that
| dosage will definitely make the poison in this case.
| dang wrote:
| This is one of those cases where it's helpful, in fact
| indispensable, to remember that there is exactly one thing
| we're optimizing for on HN, namely intellectual curiosity:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&so
| r.... The fact that we have a clear guiding principle is my
| favorite thing about moderating HN because how the hell
| would one decide these things otherwise.
|
| It seems clear that the community has genuine intellectual
| curiosity in discussing this topic. It's also a flamewar
| topic so we need to take the usual care not to end up in a
| flamewar; that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. This
| thread doesn't seem to be doing too badly. The OP seems
| like a substantive enough article to at least provide a
| basis for a good discussion.
| atum47 wrote:
| I was living in Sao Paulo when the pandemic started, so when I
| went into lock down mode, it made no sense for me to stay in SP,
| since the cases over there was high (compared to the small city
| my parents live), so I went to stay with my parents. Fast forward
| 6 months the company I was working for went full remote, new
| contracts and everything. So I decided to terminate my rent
| contract for the condo I was pay (but not living in) in SP. So,
| in the middle of the pandemic I had to go to SP to get my stuff
| and return the apartment. As prevention I took a lot of Vitamin C
| (with zinc) and Ivermectin. My rationale was: every one needs to
| take vermin medicine once a year, so why not Ivermectin, who some
| people are saying that is showing some results in the prevention
| and treatment of the COVID? So I took the recommend dose for my
| weight and went on my way. I did take care of my self with the
| default stuff as well, mask, alcohol for the hands, staying away
| from people... Glad to say that I did not contract the disease.
| At least I did not have any symptoms and wasn't sick.
| coliveira wrote:
| If Ivermectin saved anyone, Brazil wouldn't be hotbed for COVID
| that it is right now. Doctors are prescribing Ivermectin to
| pretty much anyone who arrives with any signs that appear to be
| COVID-related. Some people are even taking it by themselves as a
| form of "prevention". It has not worked as the numbers clearly
| show.
| xikrib wrote:
| It's a treatment, not a cure
| kcplate wrote:
| I think the future is going to look back on this pandemic and be
| simply amazed that the public allowed social media companies to
| dictate to the world what scientists and the people could and
| could not discuss. Much in the same way we look at the 16th
| century with Galileo and the Catholic Church.
| hannob wrote:
| This thread is literally under a scientific publication
| investigating the effectiveness of Ivermecitin, but yeah,
| basically like Galileo Galilei. Except not at all.
| andreilys wrote:
| Any discussion of ivermectin on platforms like YouTube,
| Facebook, and twitter is met with ceremonial bans or
| deletion. Even when the discussion is between doctors or is
| part of a senate hearing (see: dark horse podcast with Bret
| and Cory, and Cory's testimony to the senate which have both
| been taken off YouTube)
|
| So yes it is an apt comparison.
| jiofih wrote:
| YouTube and Facebook are public platforms. Nobody benefits
| from the general public being sold unsubstantiated theories
| of miracle medicine X _before_ there is scientific
| consensus. My beetroot-cures-cancer video has no right to
| be there either.
| kcplate wrote:
| In the 16th century falling out of favor with the church's
| conventional wisdom could affect your social standing and
| livelihood.
|
| In 2021 falling out of favor with your social media
| platform's conventional wisdom could affect your social
| standing and livelihood.
| belltaco wrote:
| Scientists discuss science in YouTube comments? That's a first
| to me.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27562540.
| spadez wrote:
| > 16th century with Galileo and the Catholic Church.
|
| Killing science in the name of religion and beliefs is one
| thing, killing science in the name of science itself is quite
| another.
| jhayward wrote:
| "Ivermectin has been shown to inhibit the replication of SARS-
| CoV-2 in cell cultures.13 However, pharmacokinetic and
| pharmacodynamic studies suggest that achieving the plasma
| concentrations necessary for the antiviral efficacy detected in
| vitro would require administration of doses up to 100-fold higher
| than those approved for use in humans."
|
| "Since the last revision of this section of the Guidelines, the
| results of several randomized trials and retrospective cohort
| studies of ivermectin use in patients with COVID-19 have been
| published in peer-reviewed journals or have been made available
| as manuscripts ahead of peer review. Some clinical studies showed
| no benefits or worsening of disease after ivermectin use,21-24
| whereas others reported shorter time to resolution of disease
| manifestations that were attributed to COVID-19,25-28 greater
| reduction in inflammatory marker levels,26,27 shorter time to
| viral clearance,21,26 or lower mortality rates in patients who
| received ivermectin than in patients who received comparator
| drugs or placebo.21,26,28
|
| However, most of these studies had incomplete information and
| significant methodological limitations, which make it difficult
| to exclude common causes of bias."
|
| https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/ant...
| slumdev wrote:
| > doses up to 100-fold higher than those approved for use in
| humans.
|
| Drugs are approved according to their use. If they have
| multiple uses, they will have multiple approved dosages.
| Someone with sudden sensorineural hearing loss might be
| prescribed 60mg of prednisone per day, while someone who takes
| it for rheumatoid arthritis will take only 10 mg per day. One
| dose is six times the other dose. Both are safe, and both are
| approved.
|
| It's also necessary to consider the drug's therapeutic index.
| Therapeutic index is a ratio that measures the difference
| between the effective dose of a drug and its lethal dose. [1]
| NIH data indicates that administering ivermectin (at these
| "100-fold higher" dosages) to treat COVID-19 is no more
| dangerous than placebo. [2]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_index
|
| 2.
| https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/ivermectin#section...
| beervirus wrote:
| Let's not forget the censorship of the lab leak hypothesis. A few
| months ago it was a racist theory that constituted thoughtcrime
| and couldn't be mentioned, and now the mainstream thinking is
| that it's the most likely explanation.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| I have downvoted you, because I believe that it is a complete
| fabrication to claim that the mainstream thinking is "that it's
| the most likely explanation". As far as I can tell, most
| experts have settled on "unlikely but possible".
|
| I would be happy to "undown" you if you can provide evidence.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I don't think we can say that this question is settled yet.
|
| The origin of SARS-COV2 is still a mystery and there is not
| enough evidence to support any explanation so far.
|
| The initial violent pushback and recent relaxation around the
| lab leak hypothesis is suspicious, but it might be unrelated
| to the truth.
| beervirus wrote:
| Now that we're allowed to talk about it, it's certainly the
| most likely in the Occam's Razor sense.
| benmw333 wrote:
| Coronavirus origins, China = racism. South African variant =
| science.
| Wistar wrote:
| I remember it differently as not a "lab leak hypothesis" but a
| claim that the virus was not from nature but was a man-made
| virus, to wit:
|
| "I can present solid scientific evidence to our audience that
| this virus, COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 virus, actually is not from
| nature. It is a man-made virus created in the lab."
|
| -- Dr. Li-Meng Yan on the Tucker Carlson show.
| nicoburns wrote:
| There are really two separate lab leak hypotheses:
|
| 1. That it was made in the lab and accidentally released
|
| 2. That it was made in the lab and released intentionally as
| some kind of biowarfare or population control.
|
| (1) has been discussed as a definite possibility by credible
| scientists since day 1 (and although it's true that the
| mainstream media didn't really pick up on it, I don't see
| much evidence that they intentionally buried it)
|
| (2) is straying very heavily into conspiracy theory
| territory.
| tomp wrote:
| Nobody ever seriously discussed (1). The best (and so
| obvious) rebuttal to (2) is "If COVID is a weapon, it
| sucks." The only time (2) comes up is when people want to
| censor (1) so they twist it into something similar to (2).
| emn13 wrote:
| Exactly - the problem isn't the consideration of a lab leak
| as a possible source, it's the presentation of that theory
| embellished well beyond what's plausible without any evidence
| - and then suggesting it's not just a far out there
| possibility, but actually the most likely source. And all
| that when it was a convenient diversionary tactic - looking
| for a scapegoat.
|
| Let's not forget that not only is the lab leak theory to this
| day just one possibility, it's still not backed by much
| evidence, whereas many other viruses have jumped species
| before without needing a lab.
|
| Finally, even in the unlikely event it turns out to have
| leaked from the lab _and_ we manage to get convincing
| evidence of that now, that doesn 't actually make those
| claims last year any more defensible. It's not OK to spout
| wild claims without evidence - even though if you do so often
| enough, you'll get lucky sometimes. Even a broken clock is
| right twice a day, but that does not mean breaking clocks is
| a valid strategy for telling the time.
|
| And unless I'm missing something, it's just not plausible
| that fox news or mike pompeo or whoever had some secret
| evidence - if they had it, they would have shared it,
| somebody would have leaked it, or at the very least other
| corroborating sources would have appeared. None of that
| happened: ergo they were lying _at least_ by exaggeration -
| and that 's assuming they even believed the story to be at
| least plausible.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Exactly. Let's also not forget that for this virus to have
| escaped, there would have had to have been incredibly lax
| safety procedures. That doesn't mean that wasn't the case,
| just that we would have had trained researchers and
| technicians working with viruses similar to other viruses
| that have jumped species and caused serious disease under
| the equivalent of BSL-1 ( _i.e._ no precautions). BSL-2 is
| required for procedures where a potentially human-
| infectious virus may be aerosolized.
|
| For the zoonotic leap hypothesis, all you need is for some
| people to be near some sick bats. Which one is simpler?
| nicoburns wrote:
| Coronaviruses were being studied in a BSL-4 lab in Wuhan.
| That is ~100 metres from the meat market which was
| supposedly the epicentre of the original outbreak.
| Theoretically the safety standards would be very high.
| But all it takes is one slip-up. And it wouldn't be the
| first time that has happened. Seems pretty simple to me.
|
| The zoonotic leap is definitely plausible too. But there
| you have to explain how the virus mutated to be
| infectious to humans. Whereas the lab is known to have
| intentionally modified the coronaviruses it was studying
| to be infectious to humans.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Sure, I'm not denying the plausibility of either
| scenario. But, which one is more likely: a virus jumped
| from animal to human, just as has happened many times
| before in history (and, without our help, for that
| matter), or safety procedures were not being followed in
| a lab that studies viruses with the very highest level of
| safety controls? How many times has the latter happened
| compared to the former?
| blumomo wrote:
| That could be what you call a ,,limited hangout". You only
| admit what you can't hide any longer.
|
| Firstly it was a no-go to claim it came from the lab. ,,It
| came from a wet market" was the only truth you were allowed
| to claim without getting censored. Now that Fauci's emails
| are visible, it becomes more evident that the origin is a
| lab.
|
| Now you are only allowed to claim that it accidentally
| escaped from a lab.
|
| What's next? Maybe we will see new evidence coming out that
| it was created and released on purpose. Let's wait and see
| what we will be allowed to say then on social media.
| emn13 wrote:
| Where exactly is this _positive_ evidence it leaked from
| the Wuhan lab - and not just emails that considered the
| _possibility_ it might have?
| plebianRube wrote:
| There is no 'smoking gun' but you will never see one
| without the fog of propaganda cast over it.
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-
| theory-...
| Wistar wrote:
| Nowhere, man.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27562573.
| beervirus wrote:
| Why?
| dang wrote:
| It veered off topic. I agree that there's a point of
| connection between the media/tech/institutional treatment
| of that question and this one, but arguing about who said
| "man made" vs. whatever a year ago is way into a different
| patch of weeds.
|
| Your comment bears some responsibility for that, btw. If
| you had posted something less flamebaity and more
| thoughtful, the subthread would probably have been better.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&so
| r...
| [deleted]
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _The antiparasitic ivermectin, with antiviral and anti-
| inflammatory properties_
|
| That makes me wonder at the mechanism and biological pathways
| involved in how this works at all on anything and how that
| intersects with Covid-19.
|
| I'm alive in part because for some years my best friend was a
| former registered nurse who had let her nursing license lapse
| while she raised her special-needs sons and pursued training in
| various alternative medicines to try to keep them alive. I
| remember asking her once in exasperation after several rounds of
| back and forth still hadn't really answered my question "Yes, but
| exactly what does this drug do in the body at the cellular
| level?" And she told me "You are asking questions for which they
| don't have answers. That's not how drug studies work."
|
| Everything I have read and experienced suggests to me that
| covid-19 is so deadly largely because of what it does to your
| blood, not your respiratory system. One of the things that kills
| people with covid-19 is blood clots.
|
| And parasitic infections sometimes infect your blood cells. This
| is how malaria works and it's why Sickle Cell trait is protective
| against it.
|
| So I'm really wondering at that connection. If this is an
| antiparasitic, does it work by impacting your blood in a
| particular way? Could that be the connection here for why it
| seems effective against covid-19?
|
| And I'm wondering if we even have that type of information about
| this drug nearly twenty years after my friend told me "They don't
| know that. Drug studies don't answer that."
|
| Do we answer those questions these days?
| jiofih wrote:
| > You are asking questions for which they don't have answers.
| That's not how drug studies work
|
| A doctor or nurse might not now the answer many times, which is
| fine, you can't be an expert on all at once. But the latter is
| bullshit - any reputable drug study will elaborate (or worst
| case, speculate) on the action mechanism of the drug in detail.
| In the case of ivermectin, it's supposed to inhibit viral
| replication, here is an example of a study diving into it:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016635422...
| comicjk wrote:
| Some drugs are developed with a particular mechanism in mind: a
| known protein target, a known binding site, and a molecule
| designed to match. For these, scientists have a good shot at
| knowing what's going on. Even then, a doctor might not know -
| they don't need to.
|
| Other drugs are developed by a more random method - for
| example, take every druglike chemical you have on the shelf and
| put it in a vial with COVID-19. In that case, scientists will
| try to find the mechanism afterwards, but they might never know
| for sure.
| ds206 wrote:
| From what I understand, it's the anti-inflammatory piece of
| Ivermectin that can help with covid because, apparently, the
| respiratory issue with covid is not caused by covid directly
| but rather an overexcited autoimmune response.
|
| I'm not a doctor but that's what some doctors on YouTube have
| said ;)
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Antiinflammatories are generally useful against all kinds of
| things. Inflammation is a common side effect of infection.
|
| I find that answer unsatisfactory. If "it's an anti-
| inflammatory!" is The Answer, there are lots of
| antiinflammatories out there.
| ds206 wrote:
| Here, try this video
|
| https://youtu.be/kSWjl-JOIqs
| ds206 wrote:
| Sorry, that clip doesn't talk about what I thought it
| did. I watched the whole 2.5 video before it was
| censored/taken down from YouTube and somewhere in there
| they talk about why they think Ivermectin is effective
| (assuming it is).
|
| The full video can be watched here:
| https://odysee.com/@BretWeinstein:f/COVID-Ivermectin-and-
| the...
| rolph wrote:
| ivermectin effects chloride channels in neurons of
| parasites.
|
| in mammals ivermectin effects nuclear transport protiens
| responsible for mediating signal peptide transport to the
| nucleus.
|
| the in vivo concentration corresponding to EC50 was
| reported in the range of 2. to 5. micromolar this is a very
| problematic dose, for humans; this drug targets host, and
| pathogen, albeit by different mechanisms.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation#Iverm
| e...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_drug_repurposing_res
| e...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _ivermectin effects chloride channels in neurons of
| parasites.
|
| in mammals ivermectin effects nuclear transport protiens
| responsible for mediating signal peptide transport to the
| nucleus._
|
| So that first statement makes some kind of sense to me.
| That second one doesn't quite parse for me.
|
| Can anyone kind of explain that in layman's terms?
|
| (Thanks to everyone who has indulged my curiosity. I'm
| just trying to better understand the piece that most
| directly answers my question here.)
| rolph wrote:
| the nucleus of a eukaryotic; mammalian cell [a.k.a.
| humans] is surrounded by a membrane, this membrane has a
| number of protiens studded into it, some are channels,
| others "do backflips" to transport things across the
| nuclear membrane.
|
| why do this ?.... protiens are made outside of the
| nucleus and must be inserted into the nucleus.
|
| some of these are structural protiens, others are
| enzymes, and others are signals to the nucleus to switch
| operations for the time being, constantly chasing after
| homeostasis.
|
| Ivermectin disrupts signal transport protien, and becomes
| cytotoxic, in higher doses due to its effect on the
| genetic expression signaling system.
|
| [ADNDM] the claim is that CoV2019 infects a cell then
| produces a protien that enters the host nucleus and
| ultimately modulates interferon production, by the
| infected cell, and that Ivermectin can disrupt this.
|
| when covid imports a specific protien this lowers the
| signal the infected cell attempts to give surrounding
| cells that there is an invader, and to harden up
| molecular defenses.
|
| the problem is that the cell relies on this nuclear
| transport of signals for proper functioning, so you cant
| just block it, and expect the host to be spared cytotoxic
| effect.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Thank you.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| What is this thing with alt-right figures like Bret Weinstein
| (and others) promoting particular medicines / self-medication
| through theirs shows? It is weird and cult like - why not just
| stick to politics?
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Why do you think that Bret Weinstein is alt-right?
|
| This is contradictory to what I've seen on his Wikipedia page.
| throwkeep wrote:
| Speaking of cult like, what is this thing with calling people
| who are on firmly on the left, like Bret Weinstein and Joe
| Rogan, alt-right?
| hosteur wrote:
| Why makes you think Bret Weinstein is alt right?
| throwaway4good wrote:
| I have watched his shows. Intellectual alt right is a quite
| suitable label for this guy.
| hosteur wrote:
| I am genuinely curious to know what made you come to that
| conclusion?
|
| Assuming you mean darkhorse, what episode and what in that
| episode makes him alt right? Please be specific. If there
| are multiple examples then just provide a few.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Just browse the latest videos - these are clearly
| political and they are classical alt-right subjects:
| anti-vax, lab leak theory, how we are not racists, how we
| are being censored, something about trans-sexual people,
| portland riots ...
| whiddershins wrote:
| Bret Weinstein is a lefty. Calling him alt-right is a
| slanderous talking point.
| xibalba wrote:
| Doesn't Weinstein have PhD in biology? Surely that gives him
| some credibility.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Then he really should know better than to self-medicate and
| encourage others to do the same.
| hosteur wrote:
| He did not encourage others to do that.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| I think he is very much doing so. In particular as a safe
| alternative to the mRNA vaccines which he describes as
| dangerous.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27562573.
| [deleted]
| _gtly wrote:
| @dang why was this flagged?
| wrycoder wrote:
| Thanks to the mods for unflagging this as of 1419 EDT Sat
| dang wrote:
| Users flagged it. That's basically always the reason when you
| see [flagged] on a submission. (With comments it's a little
| more ambiguous - moderators will also sometimes put [flagged]
| on a comment, though still in a tiny minority of cases.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#flag
|
| We sometimes turn off flags, especially when an article seems
| to contain enough significant new information to support a
| substantive discussion. I've done that in this case.
| guscost wrote:
| Users with enough karma can flag things they don't like.
| oDot wrote:
| Yes, very unfortunate.
| dang wrote:
| That's an illusion; it only seems that way when you judge
| by specific prominent cases that you care about.
|
| Turning off flagging on HN would have the same effect as
| turning off the immune system in a human body, only faster.
| oDot wrote:
| Didn't mean it wasn't useful, just that it has
| unfortunate side effects
| [deleted]
| seventytwo wrote:
| Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Not even the new, just haven't been picked on up on HN earlier.
| The sciency Covid-19 subreddit was all over it last summer when
| HCQ had been proven ineffective.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/search/?q=Ivermectin&sort=t...
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