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This is a byproduct of the arcane US medical system. The rich see a doctor and get drugs and are warned off ivermectin. The poor see doctors with meters attache

This is a byproduct of the arcane US medical system. The rich see a doctor and get drugs and are warned off ivermectin. The poor see doctors with meters attached, insert $$, get advice, follow advice to pharmacy = another meter, insert $$. Even an ambulance can cost $1000. In Rest of world the state pays health, so the first doctor visit kill the ivermectin myth and they get the proper medication at a fraction of the US price.

fny 5y ago
This is a byproduct of vaccine hesitancy and politicization of the pandemic.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  You can't say vaccine hesitancy hasn't been well earned. It's not like the US doesn't have a history of lying about medical procedures performed on misinformed citizens... Fool me once, shame on you [Tuskegee]. Fool me twice, shame on me [MKULTRA]. Fool me three times...
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    > Fool me once, shame on you [Tuskegee] I am so tired of seeing Tuskegee trotted out as an argument by anti vaxxers. The Tuskegee experiment specifically targeted a selected group of African Americans and was an overtly racist program. COVID vaccines on the other hand are not targeting a specific sample group, they are being given to virtually everyone. There's no sample group. The two are not remotely comparable.
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      It’s not the method, it’s that the government lied about medicine before. No reason they can’t do it again.
      - Ansil849 5y ago
        What kind of reasoning is this? Even if the government had not lied about medicine, or any other topic before, there is equally "no reason" that they couldn't lie going forward about anything and everything. Everyone and anyone could lie to you at any given moment. What's your point? How do you go on living your life?
      - seattle_spring 5y ago
        "the government lied about vaccines a couple times a few decades ago so they are forever untrustable. Far right wing talking heads like Alex Jones lie on a daily basis, but they're inexplicably trustworthy for medical advice because reasons!"
      - moistly 5y ago
        So let’s run with that thought: the governments of almost every nation are outright lying about the vaccines. Also, a supermajority of folk have been vaccinated in most of the advanced nations. Now what? The government lied and… the plan is to have 80% of the population die? How does that benefit those in power? The economy would crash. Production of everything—food, cars, houses—would cease. Healthcare, education, policing, infrastructure maintenance—all would collapse. First-world society would disintegrate. It makes no sense to believe the powers that be are lying about the vaccine. Oh, and also: the unvaccinated make the vast majority of hospitalizations. Now the lie is even more crazy: the vaccine is obviously great at keeping people out of the hospital, but also the governments are all lying about the vaccine. It’s just sheer crazypants conspiracy thinking, through and through.
    - AndrewBissell 5y ago
      > The Tuskegee experiment specifically targeted a selected group of African Americans. Ah, and if they did that (and a thousand other things, many of which were not limited to African Americans, including the aforementioned MKULTRA) and suffered no repercussions for it whatsoever, well, I'm sure they still learned their lesson and would never dream of doing something like it again.
      - Ansil849 5y ago
        > , I'm sure they still learned their lesson and would never dream of doing something like it again. That's the thing though. COVID vaccinations are _nothing like_ the Tuskegee experiment.
  - junon 5y ago
    > You can't say vaccine hesitancy hasn't been well earned. Sure you can. People spend their entire lives studying this shit, dedicating their entire careers to saving people who sit on facebook all day and post nonsense they hear on podcasts and other credit-less sources. It's not "vaccine hesitancy". It's stupidity. Domain experts know more than your conspiracy-theorist crazy Facebook aunt. There is no conspiracy here. It doesn't benefit big pharma by giving it out for free, essentially. There are a handful of other pharmas that did want to rush the vaccine and as a result did not make it to manufacturing because they didn't pass the regulatory process. So no, vaccine "hesitancy" has not been "well earned".
    - rajin444 5y ago
      Do the experts have any long term studies on efficacy (5+ years out)? It seems like they figured out the 6 month (or is it 5? or 8?) window only recently. It also seems learning the vaccine is non sterilizing is new as well. I don't fault them for any of this. Science takes time and iteration. Nobody can account for unknown unknowns - the only solution is time.
      - junon 5y ago
        What is the alternative?
        rajin444 5y ago
        Based on current data? I have no idea. It's an absolute mess: https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/03/i-have-not-been-silenced/ https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/03/i-have-not-been-sil... For a start, we could stop making claims that we don't know to be true. Replace "the vaccine is safe and effective, and if we all get the vaccine the pandemic will be over" with "the vaccine is the best tool we have to prevent serious disease and death".
        junon 5y ago
        But people at e.g. RKI are saying the latter. It's the media that is saying otherwise.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dundarious 5y ago
  Exactly, I have no reason to doubt that the vast majority of ivermectin users are taking it as an alternative to and not in tandem with a free vaccine, and vaccine inaccessibility is way down in the list of justifications unvaccinated people give in polls.
ipnon 5y ago
The United States government already pays 2/3rds of healthcare costs.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Another fact along those lines, government spending per capita in the US is on par with European nations. We just receive vastly less services for the same and often more money.
mattigames 5y ago
Are you sure extremely poorly educated population isn't also a major factor in this matter? I bet good money that these are the very same people that believe in creationism over evolution, that bush did 9/11, on bigfoot and the illuminati, et al.
fallingknife 5y ago
I agree that our medical system is fucked, but what exactly are you referring to here? The process seems the same from when I was poor and now that I'm rich. Make appointment -> pay money -> see doctor -> get prescription -> go to pharmacy -> pay money -> get drugs. And the advice I get from doctors doesn't seem to be any better now. It's not like doctors that poor people see are intentionally giving bad medical advice.
- dboreham 5y ago
  Perhaps they don't even see a doctor, at least not in the official manner. I know of people who consult medical practitioners in a "black market" fashion because it's so much cheaper (and in some ways more convenient) than the proper medical-industrial-complex way.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    > I know of people who consult medical practitioners in a "black market" fashion because it's so much cheaper How does this work?
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  They're saying the upfront costs of healthcare put poor people off going to the doctor at all and leads to distrust of doctors as just being in it for the money. At least that's the way I read it.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  I think the point was that those who can afford it can see better doctors, particularly those who are less likely to be swayed by pharmaceutical company incentives. Case in point would be, when you were poor did you go to the same doctor in the same neighborhood now that you are rich? Kind of like those who can afford them can receive better lawyers than overworked public defenders.
  - godsfshrmn 5y ago
    As a doctor, someone tell me where I can sign up for some of these pharmaceutical incentives. I guess I am out of the loop as after a decade of practice, no one has come knocking
glogla 5y ago
We have universal national healthcare here, and people still take ivermectin because (someone on) Facebook told them to. Before that it was Hydroxychloroquine including one major newspaper running articles on how it helps with COVID (which not only it doesn't but it is illegal to run advertisements on pharmaceuticals around here). So I dunno if US medical system has much to do with it. It seems more like someone weaponized Facebook and other social media to get gullible people to commit mass murder-suicide by refusing vaccinations, masks and taking poison. Or it's an emergent phenomenon with no master behind it, who knows.
- beaner 5y ago
  Why do you mention hydroxychloroquine as if it were snake oil? At least some hospitals here administered it as part of their covid routine, ostensibly because they believed it helped according to the science.
  - glogla 5y ago
    As far as I understand, they were using it before we had the vaccine as "it might work, it might not, better than nothing". But I don't know the details. I think the practice was discontinued later? But the space it occupied in the public debate (at least around here) was the same Ivermectin does now - not "better than nothing" but "use this instead of the vaccine because evil media and pharma and gubmint is lying to you".
    - beaner 5y ago
      The other side of it is that it was unnecessarily lambasted and made to seem unscientific when it was being administered by our hospitals. People would go in Twitter and shout "people promoting HCQ are idiots!" while their grandpa was in the hospital on that very drug as administered by doctors. Neither side has been entirely rational.
  - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
    Unfortunately, hydroxychloroquine, like Ivermectin, has become politicized. Although a Gilead shareholder with a bias towards Remdesivir, I know that the cost and infusion method (IV) makes Remdesivir much less likely to be used and contraindicated for home use. I hope this rampant politicization of drugs stops before it hits the important drug classes like ACE2 inhibitors, bronchodilators or anti-inflammatories.

fny 5y ago

This is a byproduct of vaccine hesitancy and politicization of the pandemic.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
You can't say vaccine hesitancy hasn't been well earned. It's not like the US doesn't have a history of lying about medical procedures performed on misinformed citizens... Fool me once, shame on you [Tuskegee]. Fool me twice, shame on me [MKULTRA]. Fool me three times...
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > Fool me once, shame on you [Tuskegee] I am so tired of seeing Tuskegee trotted out as an argument by anti vaxxers. The Tuskegee experiment specifically targeted a selected group of African Americans and was an overtly racist program. COVID vaccines on the other hand are not targeting a specific sample group, they are being given to virtually everyone. There's no sample group. The two are not remotely comparable.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    It’s not the method, it’s that the government lied about medicine before. No reason they can’t do it again.
    - Ansil849 5y ago
      What kind of reasoning is this? Even if the government had not lied about medicine, or any other topic before, there is equally "no reason" that they couldn't lie going forward about anything and everything. Everyone and anyone could lie to you at any given moment. What's your point? How do you go on living your life?
    - seattle_spring 5y ago
      "the government lied about vaccines a couple times a few decades ago so they are forever untrustable. Far right wing talking heads like Alex Jones lie on a daily basis, but they're inexplicably trustworthy for medical advice because reasons!"
    - moistly 5y ago
      So let’s run with that thought: the governments of almost every nation are outright lying about the vaccines. Also, a supermajority of folk have been vaccinated in most of the advanced nations. Now what? The government lied and… the plan is to have 80% of the population die? How does that benefit those in power? The economy would crash. Production of everything—food, cars, houses—would cease. Healthcare, education, policing, infrastructure maintenance—all would collapse. First-world society would disintegrate. It makes no sense to believe the powers that be are lying about the vaccine. Oh, and also: the unvaccinated make the vast majority of hospitalizations. Now the lie is even more crazy: the vaccine is obviously great at keeping people out of the hospital, but also the governments are all lying about the vaccine. It’s just sheer crazypants conspiracy thinking, through and through.
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    > The Tuskegee experiment specifically targeted a selected group of African Americans. Ah, and if they did that (and a thousand other things, many of which were not limited to African Americans, including the aforementioned MKULTRA) and suffered no repercussions for it whatsoever, well, I'm sure they still learned their lesson and would never dream of doing something like it again.
    - Ansil849 5y ago
      > , I'm sure they still learned their lesson and would never dream of doing something like it again. That's the thing though. COVID vaccinations are _nothing like_ the Tuskegee experiment.
- junon 5y ago
  > You can't say vaccine hesitancy hasn't been well earned. Sure you can. People spend their entire lives studying this shit, dedicating their entire careers to saving people who sit on facebook all day and post nonsense they hear on podcasts and other credit-less sources. It's not "vaccine hesitancy". It's stupidity. Domain experts know more than your conspiracy-theorist crazy Facebook aunt. There is no conspiracy here. It doesn't benefit big pharma by giving it out for free, essentially. There are a handful of other pharmas that did want to rush the vaccine and as a result did not make it to manufacturing because they didn't pass the regulatory process. So no, vaccine "hesitancy" has not been "well earned".
  - rajin444 5y ago
    Do the experts have any long term studies on efficacy (5+ years out)? It seems like they figured out the 6 month (or is it 5? or 8?) window only recently. It also seems learning the vaccine is non sterilizing is new as well. I don't fault them for any of this. Science takes time and iteration. Nobody can account for unknown unknowns - the only solution is time.
    - junon 5y ago
      What is the alternative?
      - rajin444 5y ago
        Based on current data? I have no idea. It's an absolute mess: https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/03/i-have-not-been-silenced/ https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/03/i-have-not-been-sil... For a start, we could stop making claims that we don't know to be true. Replace "the vaccine is safe and effective, and if we all get the vaccine the pandemic will be over" with "the vaccine is the best tool we have to prevent serious disease and death".
        junon 5y ago
        But people at e.g. RKI are saying the latter. It's the media that is saying otherwise.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dundarious 5y ago
Exactly, I have no reason to doubt that the vast majority of ivermectin users are taking it as an alternative to and not in tandem with a free vaccine, and vaccine inaccessibility is way down in the list of justifications unvaccinated people give in polls.

ipnon 5y ago

The United States government already pays 2/3rds of healthcare costs.

willcipriano 5y ago
Another fact along those lines, government spending per capita in the US is on par with European nations. We just receive vastly less services for the same and often more money.

mattigames 5y ago

Are you sure extremely poorly educated population isn't also a major factor in this matter? I bet good money that these are the very same people that believe in creationism over evolution, that bush did 9/11, on bigfoot and the illuminati, et al.

fallingknife 5y ago

I agree that our medical system is fucked, but what exactly are you referring to here? The process seems the same from when I was poor and now that I'm rich. Make appointment -> pay money -> see doctor -> get prescription -> go to pharmacy -> pay money -> get drugs. And the advice I get from doctors doesn't seem to be any better now. It's not like doctors that poor people see are intentionally giving bad medical advice.

dboreham 5y ago
Perhaps they don't even see a doctor, at least not in the official manner. I know of people who consult medical practitioners in a "black market" fashion because it's so much cheaper (and in some ways more convenient) than the proper medical-industrial-complex way.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  > I know of people who consult medical practitioners in a "black market" fashion because it's so much cheaper How does this work?
meheleventyone 5y ago
They're saying the upfront costs of healthcare put poor people off going to the doctor at all and leads to distrust of doctors as just being in it for the money. At least that's the way I read it.
Ansil849 5y ago
I think the point was that those who can afford it can see better doctors, particularly those who are less likely to be swayed by pharmaceutical company incentives. Case in point would be, when you were poor did you go to the same doctor in the same neighborhood now that you are rich? Kind of like those who can afford them can receive better lawyers than overworked public defenders.
- godsfshrmn 5y ago
  As a doctor, someone tell me where I can sign up for some of these pharmaceutical incentives. I guess I am out of the loop as after a decade of practice, no one has come knocking

glogla 5y ago

We have universal national healthcare here, and people still take ivermectin because (someone on) Facebook told them to. Before that it was Hydroxychloroquine including one major newspaper running articles on how it helps with COVID (which not only it doesn't but it is illegal to run advertisements on pharmaceuticals around here). So I dunno if US medical system has much to do with it. It seems more like someone weaponized Facebook and other social media to get gullible people to commit mass murder-suicide by refusing vaccinations, masks and taking poison. Or it's an emergent phenomenon with no master behind it, who knows.

beaner 5y ago
Why do you mention hydroxychloroquine as if it were snake oil? At least some hospitals here administered it as part of their covid routine, ostensibly because they believed it helped according to the science.
- glogla 5y ago
  As far as I understand, they were using it before we had the vaccine as "it might work, it might not, better than nothing". But I don't know the details. I think the practice was discontinued later? But the space it occupied in the public debate (at least around here) was the same Ivermectin does now - not "better than nothing" but "use this instead of the vaccine because evil media and pharma and gubmint is lying to you".
  - beaner 5y ago
    The other side of it is that it was unnecessarily lambasted and made to seem unscientific when it was being administered by our hospitals. People would go in Twitter and shout "people promoting HCQ are idiots!" while their grandpa was in the hospital on that very drug as administered by doctors. Neither side has been entirely rational.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  Unfortunately, hydroxychloroquine, like Ivermectin, has become politicized. Although a Gilead shareholder with a bias towards Remdesivir, I know that the cost and infusion method (IV) makes Remdesivir much less likely to be used and contraindicated for home use. I hope this rampant politicization of drugs stops before it hits the important drug classes like ACE2 inhibitors, bronchodilators or anti-inflammatories.