10 ms·

Interesting how much of a double standard there is in the media when it comes to promoting booster shots before the effects of doing so are adequately studied,

Interesting how much of a double standard there is in the media when it comes to promoting booster shots before the effects of doing so are adequately studied, but then pre-maturely shutting down other potential treatments (ivermectin, fluvoxamine, hcq), when there isn’t really a consensus for either thing. Shooting from the hip seems to be fine as long as it has the effect of administering more vaccine doses, but everything else is to be ridiculed and held to much stricter standards of scientific proof.

dragontamer 5y ago
I can only assume you're talking about Ivermectin? https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-2c/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-... Because the treatments that work (ie: Monoclonal Antibodies) are being hugely invested into right now. IIRC, the government just spent a few billion dollars buying more doses of them. -------- The thing about COVID19 vaccine boosters is that the CDC has basically blessed them, but the FDA has not yet. As such, there's a vigorous debate going on right now whether the 3rd dose is needed. (Immunocompromised individuals are already allowed to get the 3rd dose however. The only questions with regards to the booster is the general public). Yes, different agencies will disagree on things. CDC is most focused on public health, FDA is most focused on safety. Their goals / purposes are different, and therefore will lead to situations where they disagree like this. The White House then has to resolve the difference and make a stance. Since the White House is having meetings on the subject, it makes the news a lot. For some "alternative treatments", like Ivermectin, there's no major body who believes it works in the USA. CDC says it doesn't work. FDA says it doesn't work. NIH doesn't have any research showing any reasonable degree of efficacy.
- daxfohl 5y ago
  Yeah but you're forgetting this is all lies because government has no other way of extracting $31 or whatever from each citizen. /s
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    If we're bringing up costs... what actually bothers me rather severely is the $2100 price tag per Monoclonal Antibodies treatment. But it works. And people are freaking out about COVID19 so much that its free. Maybe we should start a debate about the moral hazards of giving highly expensive (though effective) COVID19 treatments to population centers who have refused to take the $20 vaccine? ------- If people want the "cheap miracle drug that works", that was dexamethasone, at a price tag of like $15 or so. And the vaccine of course. I don't know why they're going for IVM. As a steroid, its an innately risky treatment (steroids suppress your immune system). But its been shown that the cheap steroid dexamethasone, when used in correct doses, can greatly decrease mortality rates. So yeah, take with assistance of a doctor (to make sure your situation is the right use case), but we already have a "cheap miracle drug" success story here if people just want some hope or optimism in their lives. Dexamethasone was credited for cutting out 50% of deaths or something along that magnitude.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Methylprednisolone is more effective than dexamethasone for treating COVID-19 lung injuries. Cost is similar. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252057#sec012 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-06045-3 https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128...
    - listless 5y ago
      This is basically the conservative argument that you don’t have a basic right to health care. If you can’t afford it, you don’t get it. I’m not saying that logic is flawed, but we should at least be consistent. If healthcare is a human right, you can’t then judge my life choices that got me there.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        I lean conservative. Numerous hospitals have reached triage of care. We now have to talk about how to conserve scarce resources. We need to pick "winners and losers". No one likes this discussion, but it must happen. * https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez-houston-covid-hospitals/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez... * https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-letter.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-l... Now that we're reaching this level of crisis, hospitals are beginning to ration off care. I know the ethicists have theorized the proper ethics to this situation over the past year, but as citizens / voting members of the public, its our job to form an opinion about these ethics think-tanks, and whether or not we should support certain viewpoints or not. Health care cannot "be a right" if we cannot afford said health care for everyone. If we cannot afford health care for everyone (literally not enough hospital beds), some mechanism needs to be used to prioritize who gets care or not. No amount of policy can squeeze blood from a stone: if we don't have enough hospital beds anymore, then we must systematically deny care in some regards. (And whatever system we choose will hopefully be fair) Money, for all of its problems, is an effective prioritization methodology... and simple to understand. You give care to those who can afford it. People always criticize the methodology but in the absence of better choices, I'm going to default to it. I think there's some hypotheticals saying that maybe the vaccinated should have priority (since the unvaccinated are the group who is causing the crisis, we should "punish" the unvaccinated in this regards). I think I can accept that as an answer as a higher priority.
- nradov 5y ago
  The NIH is currently sponsoring a large scale clinical trial of ivermectin and several other drugs to see whether they're effective. We'll have to give them time to complete the study. https://www.nih.gov/research-training/medical-research-initiatives/activ/covid-19-therapeutics-prioritized-testing-clinical-trials#activ6 https://www.nih.gov/research-training/medical-research-initi...
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    NIH is _always_ sponsoring clinical trials. That's literally their job. We also happen to have months worth of studies of IVM already. Given what has happened in literally the last dozen studies, we have a good idea of what will probably happen in that study. That's 16 high quality studies on IVM already in the link I posted above. Do you think the results of study #17 will change things? ------ I mean, maybe it will. But I wouldn't bet on it. Studies in science have this thing where they usually replicate results.
    - nradov 5y ago
      I wouldn't describe any of the ivermectin studies conducted so far as "high quality". All were relatively small and most had other flaws or limitations. The link you posted above is missing recent studies, some of which show statistically significant positive results. https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/6/989 https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/6/989 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.21.21260223v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.21.21260223v... https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/10000/ivermectin,_a_reanalysis_of_the_data.9.aspx https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/... So we just don't know, and it's too early to place any bets one way or the other. That's how science works.
      - allturtles 5y ago
        It's not at all too early to place bets; if there is no good data showing that Ivermectin works, we should assume the null hypothesis, that it does nothing. Otherwise we would have to maintain the same sort of equipose about literally ever possible substance - peanut butter could be an effective COVID treatment, until someone does a proper study, we just don't know.
- Izkata 5y ago
  > CDC says it doesn't work. The CDC's stance is "we don't know, there's trials ongoing", not "it doesn't work".
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    FDA hasn't approved any IVM for treatment of COVID19. NIH has a website listing 16 studies, the majority of which says IVM doesn't help at all. CDC has a webpage pointing to the FDA / NIH web-pages. ------ As far as I can tell, "IVM doesn't work vs COVID19" is the official stance of US health research institutes. There are further studies because the politics of it kinda demand a study, but no one expects the studies to have a good result. (Nothing like monoclonal antibodies, which are being used to save lives right now). This isn't a "we don't know" stance. FDA is very explicit to not use IVM for COVID19. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19 https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...
    - Izkata 5y ago
      From your link: > Currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19. Clinical trials assessing ivermectin tablets for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in people are ongoing. From https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/han00449.asp https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/han00449.asp > Ivermectin is not authorized or approved by FDA for prevention or treatment of COVID-19. The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel has also determined that there are currently insufficient data to recommend ivermectin for treatment of COVID-19. ClinicalTrials.govexternal icon has listings of ongoing clinical trials that might provide more information about these hypothesized uses in the future. Those are "we don't know" stances. Or at least, "we're not certain".
xyzzy21 5y ago
It's almost as if "follow the science" actually means "follow the demagoguery". It's certainly NOT science in any way, shape or form!
standardUser 5y ago
All of the vaccines in use have gone through massive and extensive trials specifically for the prevention of COVID-19. Trials started over 18 months ago. Have hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin completed such rigorous testing, specifically for the treatment of COVID-19? The answer is an unqualified "no".
- dragontamer 5y ago
  More accurately: both Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin have been tested. And in both cases, they suck at treating COVID19 (roughly equivalent to placebo and/or weaker than current standard of care). I listed the ivermectin review in my post earlier. HCQ is reviewed here by the NIH: https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-2b/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-... The fact of the matter is: HCQ and IVM have been extensively studied. They've been fully rejected based off of evidence. When a treatment works (ex: cheap corticosteroids like dexamethasone), the NIH announces and the hospitals start using it immediately. ---------- Vaccines, dexamethasone, and monoclonal antibodies all work. So all hospitals are offering these services to any COVID19 patient. IVM, HCQ and other "alternative treatments" are snake-oil bullshit.
  - winocm 5y ago
    Correct. HCQ only works in vitro with Vero cells that do not express TMPRSS2. It stops working once you start expressing the gene.
- bananabiscuit 5y ago
  Obviously the vaccines weren’t studied enough if we are only finding out now that certain age groups might be at more risk from vaccine side effects than from covid itself (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...) OPs Lancet article shows there is not a consensus on effectivity of boosters, but you will never hear that from the left media. I understand science is a process, and things that we might think are true/false/undetermined now might change based on new evidence. My complaint isn’t that scientist aren’t magically getting everything right first try, but that there is clear bias in the media towards some narrative and while most people happily will take that for granted with right wing news sources, they think left wing news sources are somehow immune to spreading misinformation.
titzer 5y ago
Ivermectin was invented to combat parasites--worms. Not viruses. It is not an anti-viral or even anti-antirheumatic. It is the latest in a class of ignorant folk remedies emerging from who-knows-what dark place on the internet, and it will join Hydroxychloroquine as a total failure at treating COVID. The only double standard here is that, for once, the media isn't suffering the latest idiotic conspiracies with "both sides" nonsense but is appropriately putting them in the "eating crayons" box. For once, the media is actually taking public health seriously. As for proof, you know, propose a treatment, get approvals, run trials, analyze data. Zero people are doing that with Ivermectin. It's flat-Earther crackhead territory and I have absolutely no qualms about dismissing it out of hand. Meanwhile, vaccines have billions of data points that aren't just correlations, they are causative, and there's an entire sum of human knowledge of biology behind them, instead of some vague superstitious belief that magic potion kills one bad thing in your body, therefore it must kill other bad things. Also, people are eating tubes of topical Ivermectin. You have got to be freaking kidding me. What a shitshow.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hunterb123 5y ago
  Not so fast, like many drugs, it has multiple uses, not just what it was invented for. Ivermectin, like HCQ, has antiviral properties and prevents binding of some viruses, like the dengue virus and covid-19. You use it as a prophylactic to prevent replication of the virus. Details how Ivermectin prevents Covid19 from binding: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-021-00430-5/figures/1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-021-00430-5/figures/1 There have been many studies showing it's effective at preventing serious infections of Covid-19. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19 https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19
  - titzer 5y ago
    Well, given it's from Nature, I actually gave your link a fair shake to see what it's about. This is not a "details on how it works" article. It's an article that is basically "brainstorming on how it might work". There is no epidemiological study, no controlled trial here, no proposed specific mode of action. A huge shotgunning of potential pathway interactions that might affect some portion of the virus's interaction with host cells. In fact, the conclusion from TFA itself: > Considering the urgency of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, simultaneous detection of various new mutant strains and future potential re-emergence of novel coronaviruses, repurposing of approved drugs such as Ivermectin could be worthy of attention. This is their conclusion. Not a sample of their conclusion. Their entire conclusion. Not "It is effective." Not "It works like this." Not "Here are studies that show it works". This article is "hey, some drugs have crossover effects, we should look at them." I mean, they literally wrote that. I will repeat, again. Ivermectin is not an approved anti-viral medication. There are all kinds of things that have "anti-viral properties". Like UV light and bleach. These are not treatments for COVID. Meanwhile there is a fricking vaccine. It's a scientifically designed, as-close-to-perfectly engineered solution to active your own immune response to respond to exactly the spike protein, has been administered to billions of people worldwide and has overwhelming data that it fucking works. They're not even in the same league. People who are taking Ivermectin, and people who are advocating it widely can be dismissed without further evidence. Otherwise, just show up to a pharmacy and pick a random drug off a back shelf. Drugs do weird things, sometimes they interact with viruses! Ship it? No. Please do Science, not whatever the fuck is behind the Ivermectin craze right now. Should it be studied? I mean, sure. But it is so clearly not even a decent treatment, we should probably move on from it.
javagram 5y ago
> then pre-maturely shutting down other potential treatments (ivermectin, fluvoxamine, hcq), when there isn’t really a consensus for either thing. You listed 1 drug proven to work, Fluvoxamine, with two that have repeatedly failed in well designed RCTs… The problem with HCQ and Ivermectin are they are both being oversold as a near-certain cure. They’ve been politicized and you see the media reacting to that. Traditional media by debunking, social media by ineffectively trying to slow the spread of the false claims that you don’t need a vaccine or masks or social distancing because of HCQ and Ivermectin. HCQ is pretty clearly a dud. Ivermectin has a chance of having a small effect like 10% or 20%. Fluvoxamine is the real deal but why are you complaining about media censorship here? Google News for “Fluvoxamine” shows plenty of positive coverage e.g. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covid-ivermectin-together-study-mcmaster https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covi... > The limited, promising literature around fluvoxamine prompted its inclusion in the large-scale study of treatments for Covid-19 run by Ed Mills at McMaster University and primarily conducted in Brazil. Dubbed the TOGETHER study after other prominent mega-clinical trials like RECOVERY and SOLIDARITY by other organizations, it randomized patients across eight prospective treatments, including metformin (a diabetes medication), hydroxychloroquine (an antimalarial), and ivermectin (an antiparasite). > The team announced their results at an August 6 symposium that was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Most of the treatments failed: Their study couldn’t detect an effect. “A lot of drugs against Covid just don’t work very well,” Mills told me. Two other treatments were still in progress, and it was too early to rule out the chance that they’ll work. > But fluvoxamine was a different story. In the trial, it improved patient outcomes substantially — and while it’s not the first drug to do that, ease of delivery and price give it the potential to have an outsized impact on patient care, especially outside the rich world

dragontamer 5y ago

I can only assume you're talking about Ivermectin? https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-2c/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-... Because the treatments that work (ie: Monoclonal Antibodies) are being hugely invested into right now. IIRC, the government just spent a few billion dollars buying more doses of them. -------- The thing about COVID19 vaccine boosters is that the CDC has basically blessed them, but the FDA has not yet. As such, there's a vigorous debate going on right now whether the 3rd dose is needed. (Immunocompromised individuals are already allowed to get the 3rd dose however. The only questions with regards to the booster is the general public). Yes, different agencies will disagree on things. CDC is most focused on public health, FDA is most focused on safety. Their goals / purposes are different, and therefore will lead to situations where they disagree like this. The White House then has to resolve the difference and make a stance. Since the White House is having meetings on the subject, it makes the news a lot. For some "alternative treatments", like Ivermectin, there's no major body who believes it works in the USA. CDC says it doesn't work. FDA says it doesn't work. NIH doesn't have any research showing any reasonable degree of efficacy.

daxfohl 5y ago
Yeah but you're forgetting this is all lies because government has no other way of extracting $31 or whatever from each citizen. /s
- dragontamer 5y ago
  If we're bringing up costs... what actually bothers me rather severely is the $2100 price tag per Monoclonal Antibodies treatment. But it works. And people are freaking out about COVID19 so much that its free. Maybe we should start a debate about the moral hazards of giving highly expensive (though effective) COVID19 treatments to population centers who have refused to take the $20 vaccine? ------- If people want the "cheap miracle drug that works", that was dexamethasone, at a price tag of like $15 or so. And the vaccine of course. I don't know why they're going for IVM. As a steroid, its an innately risky treatment (steroids suppress your immune system). But its been shown that the cheap steroid dexamethasone, when used in correct doses, can greatly decrease mortality rates. So yeah, take with assistance of a doctor (to make sure your situation is the right use case), but we already have a "cheap miracle drug" success story here if people just want some hope or optimism in their lives. Dexamethasone was credited for cutting out 50% of deaths or something along that magnitude.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Methylprednisolone is more effective than dexamethasone for treating COVID-19 lung injuries. Cost is similar. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252057#sec012 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-06045-3 https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128...
  - listless 5y ago
    This is basically the conservative argument that you don’t have a basic right to health care. If you can’t afford it, you don’t get it. I’m not saying that logic is flawed, but we should at least be consistent. If healthcare is a human right, you can’t then judge my life choices that got me there.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      I lean conservative. Numerous hospitals have reached triage of care. We now have to talk about how to conserve scarce resources. We need to pick "winners and losers". No one likes this discussion, but it must happen. * https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez-houston-covid-hospitals/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez... * https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-letter.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-l... Now that we're reaching this level of crisis, hospitals are beginning to ration off care. I know the ethicists have theorized the proper ethics to this situation over the past year, but as citizens / voting members of the public, its our job to form an opinion about these ethics think-tanks, and whether or not we should support certain viewpoints or not. Health care cannot "be a right" if we cannot afford said health care for everyone. If we cannot afford health care for everyone (literally not enough hospital beds), some mechanism needs to be used to prioritize who gets care or not. No amount of policy can squeeze blood from a stone: if we don't have enough hospital beds anymore, then we must systematically deny care in some regards. (And whatever system we choose will hopefully be fair) Money, for all of its problems, is an effective prioritization methodology... and simple to understand. You give care to those who can afford it. People always criticize the methodology but in the absence of better choices, I'm going to default to it. I think there's some hypotheticals saying that maybe the vaccinated should have priority (since the unvaccinated are the group who is causing the crisis, we should "punish" the unvaccinated in this regards). I think I can accept that as an answer as a higher priority.
nradov 5y ago
The NIH is currently sponsoring a large scale clinical trial of ivermectin and several other drugs to see whether they're effective. We'll have to give them time to complete the study. https://www.nih.gov/research-training/medical-research-initiatives/activ/covid-19-therapeutics-prioritized-testing-clinical-trials#activ6 https://www.nih.gov/research-training/medical-research-initi...
- dragontamer 5y ago
  NIH is _always_ sponsoring clinical trials. That's literally their job. We also happen to have months worth of studies of IVM already. Given what has happened in literally the last dozen studies, we have a good idea of what will probably happen in that study. That's 16 high quality studies on IVM already in the link I posted above. Do you think the results of study #17 will change things? ------ I mean, maybe it will. But I wouldn't bet on it. Studies in science have this thing where they usually replicate results.
  - nradov 5y ago
    I wouldn't describe any of the ivermectin studies conducted so far as "high quality". All were relatively small and most had other flaws or limitations. The link you posted above is missing recent studies, some of which show statistically significant positive results. https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/6/989 https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/6/989 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.21.21260223v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.21.21260223v... https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/10000/ivermectin,_a_reanalysis_of_the_data.9.aspx https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/... So we just don't know, and it's too early to place any bets one way or the other. That's how science works.
    - allturtles 5y ago
      It's not at all too early to place bets; if there is no good data showing that Ivermectin works, we should assume the null hypothesis, that it does nothing. Otherwise we would have to maintain the same sort of equipose about literally ever possible substance - peanut butter could be an effective COVID treatment, until someone does a proper study, we just don't know.
Izkata 5y ago
> CDC says it doesn't work. The CDC's stance is "we don't know, there's trials ongoing", not "it doesn't work".
- dragontamer 5y ago
  FDA hasn't approved any IVM for treatment of COVID19. NIH has a website listing 16 studies, the majority of which says IVM doesn't help at all. CDC has a webpage pointing to the FDA / NIH web-pages. ------ As far as I can tell, "IVM doesn't work vs COVID19" is the official stance of US health research institutes. There are further studies because the politics of it kinda demand a study, but no one expects the studies to have a good result. (Nothing like monoclonal antibodies, which are being used to save lives right now). This isn't a "we don't know" stance. FDA is very explicit to not use IVM for COVID19. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19 https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...
  - Izkata 5y ago
    From your link: > Currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19. Clinical trials assessing ivermectin tablets for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in people are ongoing. From https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/han00449.asp https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/han00449.asp > Ivermectin is not authorized or approved by FDA for prevention or treatment of COVID-19. The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel has also determined that there are currently insufficient data to recommend ivermectin for treatment of COVID-19. ClinicalTrials.govexternal icon has listings of ongoing clinical trials that might provide more information about these hypothesized uses in the future. Those are "we don't know" stances. Or at least, "we're not certain".

xyzzy21 5y ago

It's almost as if "follow the science" actually means "follow the demagoguery". It's certainly NOT science in any way, shape or form!

standardUser 5y ago

All of the vaccines in use have gone through massive and extensive trials specifically for the prevention of COVID-19. Trials started over 18 months ago. Have hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin completed such rigorous testing, specifically for the treatment of COVID-19? The answer is an unqualified "no".

dragontamer 5y ago
More accurately: both Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin have been tested. And in both cases, they suck at treating COVID19 (roughly equivalent to placebo and/or weaker than current standard of care). I listed the ivermectin review in my post earlier. HCQ is reviewed here by the NIH: https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-2b/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-... The fact of the matter is: HCQ and IVM have been extensively studied. They've been fully rejected based off of evidence. When a treatment works (ex: cheap corticosteroids like dexamethasone), the NIH announces and the hospitals start using it immediately. ---------- Vaccines, dexamethasone, and monoclonal antibodies all work. So all hospitals are offering these services to any COVID19 patient. IVM, HCQ and other "alternative treatments" are snake-oil bullshit.
- winocm 5y ago
  Correct. HCQ only works in vitro with Vero cells that do not express TMPRSS2. It stops working once you start expressing the gene.
bananabiscuit 5y ago
Obviously the vaccines weren’t studied enough if we are only finding out now that certain age groups might be at more risk from vaccine side effects than from covid itself (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...) OPs Lancet article shows there is not a consensus on effectivity of boosters, but you will never hear that from the left media. I understand science is a process, and things that we might think are true/false/undetermined now might change based on new evidence. My complaint isn’t that scientist aren’t magically getting everything right first try, but that there is clear bias in the media towards some narrative and while most people happily will take that for granted with right wing news sources, they think left wing news sources are somehow immune to spreading misinformation.

titzer 5y ago

Ivermectin was invented to combat parasites--worms. Not viruses. It is not an anti-viral or even anti-antirheumatic. It is the latest in a class of ignorant folk remedies emerging from who-knows-what dark place on the internet, and it will join Hydroxychloroquine as a total failure at treating COVID. The only double standard here is that, for once, the media isn't suffering the latest idiotic conspiracies with "both sides" nonsense but is appropriately putting them in the "eating crayons" box. For once, the media is actually taking public health seriously. As for proof, you know, propose a treatment, get approvals, run trials, analyze data. Zero people are doing that with Ivermectin. It's flat-Earther crackhead territory and I have absolutely no qualms about dismissing it out of hand. Meanwhile, vaccines have billions of data points that aren't just correlations, they are causative, and there's an entire sum of human knowledge of biology behind them, instead of some vague superstitious belief that magic potion kills one bad thing in your body, therefore it must kill other bad things. Also, people are eating tubes of topical Ivermectin. You have got to be freaking kidding me. What a shitshow.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hunterb123 5y ago
Not so fast, like many drugs, it has multiple uses, not just what it was invented for. Ivermectin, like HCQ, has antiviral properties and prevents binding of some viruses, like the dengue virus and covid-19. You use it as a prophylactic to prevent replication of the virus. Details how Ivermectin prevents Covid19 from binding: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-021-00430-5/figures/1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-021-00430-5/figures/1 There have been many studies showing it's effective at preventing serious infections of Covid-19. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/ https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19 https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19
- titzer 5y ago
  Well, given it's from Nature, I actually gave your link a fair shake to see what it's about. This is not a "details on how it works" article. It's an article that is basically "brainstorming on how it might work". There is no epidemiological study, no controlled trial here, no proposed specific mode of action. A huge shotgunning of potential pathway interactions that might affect some portion of the virus's interaction with host cells. In fact, the conclusion from TFA itself: > Considering the urgency of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, simultaneous detection of various new mutant strains and future potential re-emergence of novel coronaviruses, repurposing of approved drugs such as Ivermectin could be worthy of attention. This is their conclusion. Not a sample of their conclusion. Their entire conclusion. Not "It is effective." Not "It works like this." Not "Here are studies that show it works". This article is "hey, some drugs have crossover effects, we should look at them." I mean, they literally wrote that. I will repeat, again. Ivermectin is not an approved anti-viral medication. There are all kinds of things that have "anti-viral properties". Like UV light and bleach. These are not treatments for COVID. Meanwhile there is a fricking vaccine. It's a scientifically designed, as-close-to-perfectly engineered solution to active your own immune response to respond to exactly the spike protein, has been administered to billions of people worldwide and has overwhelming data that it fucking works. They're not even in the same league. People who are taking Ivermectin, and people who are advocating it widely can be dismissed without further evidence. Otherwise, just show up to a pharmacy and pick a random drug off a back shelf. Drugs do weird things, sometimes they interact with viruses! Ship it? No. Please do Science, not whatever the fuck is behind the Ivermectin craze right now. Should it be studied? I mean, sure. But it is so clearly not even a decent treatment, we should probably move on from it.

javagram 5y ago

> then pre-maturely shutting down other potential treatments (ivermectin, fluvoxamine, hcq), when there isn’t really a consensus for either thing. You listed 1 drug proven to work, Fluvoxamine, with two that have repeatedly failed in well designed RCTs… The problem with HCQ and Ivermectin are they are both being oversold as a near-certain cure. They’ve been politicized and you see the media reacting to that. Traditional media by debunking, social media by ineffectively trying to slow the spread of the false claims that you don’t need a vaccine or masks or social distancing because of HCQ and Ivermectin. HCQ is pretty clearly a dud. Ivermectin has a chance of having a small effect like 10% or 20%. Fluvoxamine is the real deal but why are you complaining about media censorship here? Google News for “Fluvoxamine” shows plenty of positive coverage e.g. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covid-ivermectin-together-study-mcmaster https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covi... > The limited, promising literature around fluvoxamine prompted its inclusion in the large-scale study of treatments for Covid-19 run by Ed Mills at McMaster University and primarily conducted in Brazil. Dubbed the TOGETHER study after other prominent mega-clinical trials like RECOVERY and SOLIDARITY by other organizations, it randomized patients across eight prospective treatments, including metformin (a diabetes medication), hydroxychloroquine (an antimalarial), and ivermectin (an antiparasite). > The team announced their results at an August 6 symposium that was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Most of the treatments failed: Their study couldn’t detect an effect. “A lot of drugs against Covid just don’t work very well,” Mills told me. Two other treatments were still in progress, and it was too early to rule out the chance that they’ll work. > But fluvoxamine was a different story. In the trial, it improved patient outcomes substantially — and while it’s not the first drug to do that, ease of delivery and price give it the potential to have an outsized impact on patient care, especially outside the rich world