4 ms·

It's weird how often on threads about covid, an entirely new HN account turns up to extol the virtues of Ivermectin. I'd say the chances of that being a coincid

It's weird how often on threads about covid, an entirely new HN account turns up to extol the virtues of Ivermectin. I'd say the chances of that being a coincidence are estimated to be 1 in 85 trillion.

anodari 6y ago
Here in Brazil there is a manufacturer that finances a group that promotes its use. "The sale of vermifuge ivermectin jumped from R$44.4 million in 2019 to R$409 million last year, an increase of 829%." (In portuguese) https://negativando.medium.com/m%C3%A9dicos-pela-vida-s%C3%A3o-diretamente-ligados-a-grupo-empresarial-que-produz-ivermectina-140285fe0691 https://negativando.medium.com/m%C3%A9dicos-pela-vida-s%C3%A...
- bbb2019 6y ago
  If you are skeptical of financial motivated misinformation - are you concerned that the parent article - touting an unapproved FDA cure for covid - is placed on a website that advertises it sells sponsored content articles: https://www.postmediasolutions.com/solutions/content/ https://www.postmediasolutions.com/solutions/content/ Or that the FDA promotes Remdesivir which make's Gilead billions of dollars, where the largest non-manufacturer sponsored trial by the WHO showed 0 benefit for saving lives? Why is hacker news so excited about something that may take months to get to market, currently has less efficacy data than ivermectin, and will never have the safety profile of ivermectin?
argvargc 6y ago
Maybe potentially saving lives by providing negligently under-reported and big-coughtech suppressed information is enough to motivate someone to set up an account?
read_if_gay_ 6y ago
This is the first time I see this and so at least to me, an actual counter to their points would have been more of a convincing argument, compared to accusations of shilling which might as well be FUD.
- volta83 6y ago
  They aren't FUD. Click on the accounts mentioning Ivermectin, and they are just new, and only have one comment. Sure, it might be that a dozen long time lurkers had to create an account to made people aware of it. Its plausible. I think its more plausible that HN is suffering a disinformation attack by a cheap as botnet. A limit of "wait 1 day after registering to comment" would make whatever cheap botnet is doing this much less effective. Since after 1 day most stories are not in the frontpage anymore.
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    I only see one single new account that has made multiple comments in this thread. One guy signing up or creating a throwaway isn’t exactly unlikely.
  - bbb2019 6y ago
    It's not a botnet. Am a long-time hacker news reader who thinks ivermectin is a better covid cure based on science than what Pfizer is rushing to produce (Pfizer's drug hasn't even finished Phase 1 FDA trials, Ivermectin is FDA approved with ~40 years safety data). I use multiple machines and didn't remember the password for this account so created a new one. My interest is not in spamming, but having a genuine discussion, why ivermectin isn't more widely used. There are multiple prominent doctors who believe it could end the covid pandemic. Why get so excited about new medications when generics are cheaper, and have better safety data. Other treatments have good data like Fluvoxamine, here's a good article from Steve Kirsh: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-cure-for-COVID-19/answer/Steve-Kirsch https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-cure-for-COVID-19/answer/... Am interested in a genuine discussion of facts. There's a lot of censorship around Ivermectin. Youtube specifically says it can delete videos mentioning ivermectin as a treatment for covid. Since when is science advanced through censorship instead of debate?
    - mewse 6y ago
      > Since when is science advanced through censorship instead of debate? Science is never advanced through debate; it's advanced through research. Research which gets repeated by different teams, in different places, in different circumstances, and conducted in different ways, while still producing the same results. Random people on internet discussion boards who want to advance science via a "debate" is how misinformation is advanced.
oefrha 6y ago
Guidelines ask you to refute content rather than accuse of shilling. If you have evidence of shilling you should email the mods instead. Guidelines also ask you to not post the same comment twice. Disclosure: no dog in the fight and never heard of this drug before.
- throwanem 6y ago
  Ivermectin is an antiparasitic in wide human and veterinary use since the early 1980s. It is also fairly broadly studied, in no small part because it's one of the most effective drugs in its class. That it should double as a highly effective broad-spectrum antiviral is not impossible, quite, but anyone advancing the claim badly needs to explain why, over all the dozens of studies and millions of doses over multiple decades, no one has noticed this supposedly very obvious antiviral efficacy before now. The next person I see try to explain that will be the first.
  - bbb2019 6y ago
    The discovery came years ago: "Dr Wagstaff made a previous breakthrough finding on Ivermectin in 2012 when she identified the drug and its antiviral activity with Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s Professor David Jans, also an author on this paper. Professor Jans and his team have been researching Ivermectin for more than 10 years with different viruses." https://www.monash.edu/discovery-institute/news-and-events/news/2020-articles/Lab-experiments-show-anti-parasitic-drug,-Ivermectin,-eliminates-SARS-CoV-2-in-cells-in-48-hours https://www.monash.edu/discovery-institute/news-and-events/n...
    - throwanem 6y ago
      Lots of things work in vitro, this apparently included. Arsenic probably would too. Cell culture is a very different environment from a living organism, so all this says about whether the same drug works the same way in vivo is that it's worth finding out. Despite the usual mild tendentiousness one finds in press releases from academia, the linked article says as much, repeatedly and in detail.

anodari 6y ago

Here in Brazil there is a manufacturer that finances a group that promotes its use. "The sale of vermifuge ivermectin jumped from R$44.4 million in 2019 to R$409 million last year, an increase of 829%." (In portuguese) https://negativando.medium.com/m%C3%A9dicos-pela-vida-s%C3%A3o-diretamente-ligados-a-grupo-empresarial-que-produz-ivermectina-140285fe0691 https://negativando.medium.com/m%C3%A9dicos-pela-vida-s%C3%A...

bbb2019 6y ago
If you are skeptical of financial motivated misinformation - are you concerned that the parent article - touting an unapproved FDA cure for covid - is placed on a website that advertises it sells sponsored content articles: https://www.postmediasolutions.com/solutions/content/ https://www.postmediasolutions.com/solutions/content/ Or that the FDA promotes Remdesivir which make's Gilead billions of dollars, where the largest non-manufacturer sponsored trial by the WHO showed 0 benefit for saving lives? Why is hacker news so excited about something that may take months to get to market, currently has less efficacy data than ivermectin, and will never have the safety profile of ivermectin?

argvargc 6y ago

Maybe potentially saving lives by providing negligently under-reported and big-coughtech suppressed information is enough to motivate someone to set up an account?

read_if_gay_ 6y ago

This is the first time I see this and so at least to me, an actual counter to their points would have been more of a convincing argument, compared to accusations of shilling which might as well be FUD.

volta83 6y ago
They aren't FUD. Click on the accounts mentioning Ivermectin, and they are just new, and only have one comment. Sure, it might be that a dozen long time lurkers had to create an account to made people aware of it. Its plausible. I think its more plausible that HN is suffering a disinformation attack by a cheap as botnet. A limit of "wait 1 day after registering to comment" would make whatever cheap botnet is doing this much less effective. Since after 1 day most stories are not in the frontpage anymore.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  I only see one single new account that has made multiple comments in this thread. One guy signing up or creating a throwaway isn’t exactly unlikely.
- bbb2019 6y ago
  It's not a botnet. Am a long-time hacker news reader who thinks ivermectin is a better covid cure based on science than what Pfizer is rushing to produce (Pfizer's drug hasn't even finished Phase 1 FDA trials, Ivermectin is FDA approved with ~40 years safety data). I use multiple machines and didn't remember the password for this account so created a new one. My interest is not in spamming, but having a genuine discussion, why ivermectin isn't more widely used. There are multiple prominent doctors who believe it could end the covid pandemic. Why get so excited about new medications when generics are cheaper, and have better safety data. Other treatments have good data like Fluvoxamine, here's a good article from Steve Kirsh: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-cure-for-COVID-19/answer/Steve-Kirsch https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-cure-for-COVID-19/answer/... Am interested in a genuine discussion of facts. There's a lot of censorship around Ivermectin. Youtube specifically says it can delete videos mentioning ivermectin as a treatment for covid. Since when is science advanced through censorship instead of debate?
  - mewse 6y ago
    > Since when is science advanced through censorship instead of debate? Science is never advanced through debate; it's advanced through research. Research which gets repeated by different teams, in different places, in different circumstances, and conducted in different ways, while still producing the same results. Random people on internet discussion boards who want to advance science via a "debate" is how misinformation is advanced.

oefrha 6y ago

Guidelines ask you to refute content rather than accuse of shilling. If you have evidence of shilling you should email the mods instead. Guidelines also ask you to not post the same comment twice. Disclosure: no dog in the fight and never heard of this drug before.

throwanem 6y ago
Ivermectin is an antiparasitic in wide human and veterinary use since the early 1980s. It is also fairly broadly studied, in no small part because it's one of the most effective drugs in its class. That it should double as a highly effective broad-spectrum antiviral is not impossible, quite, but anyone advancing the claim badly needs to explain why, over all the dozens of studies and millions of doses over multiple decades, no one has noticed this supposedly very obvious antiviral efficacy before now. The next person I see try to explain that will be the first.
- bbb2019 6y ago
  The discovery came years ago: "Dr Wagstaff made a previous breakthrough finding on Ivermectin in 2012 when she identified the drug and its antiviral activity with Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s Professor David Jans, also an author on this paper. Professor Jans and his team have been researching Ivermectin for more than 10 years with different viruses." https://www.monash.edu/discovery-institute/news-and-events/news/2020-articles/Lab-experiments-show-anti-parasitic-drug,-Ivermectin,-eliminates-SARS-CoV-2-in-cells-in-48-hours https://www.monash.edu/discovery-institute/news-and-events/n...
  - throwanem 6y ago
    Lots of things work in vitro, this apparently included. Arsenic probably would too. Cell culture is a very different environment from a living organism, so all this says about whether the same drug works the same way in vivo is that it's worth finding out. Despite the usual mild tendentiousness one finds in press releases from academia, the linked article says as much, repeatedly and in detail.