5 ms·

Brazil's tragic ivermectin frenzy is a warning to the US, experts say

30 points by bb88 5y ago

dfdz 5y ago
I think everyone (who is reasonable) agrees the vaccine is the most effective tool we have against covid based on current scientific studies However this article about Ivermectin is not well reasoned: > As infection rates soared, some people were taking excessively high doses of the medicine every day, hoping to stave off COVID-19, but in a few rare cases that move prompted liver failure. >Other patients were unknowingly given the "kit" drugs by doctors in private hospitals instead of more standard treatments — and some of them died. These quotes from the article don’t support … anything. People had Covid, they took a treatment, but some died? Really? Could they at least pretend to use some statistics or even an antidotal control group?
- rargramble 5y ago
  No, because that goes against the narrative of demonizing ivermectin as some sort of dangerous drug. There's a reason all these outlets have been pushing the idea that it's a "horse dewormer."
  - oblio 5y ago
    What's the angle, though. Cui bono?
    - jbotz 5y ago
      It's cheap? No US-based pharma corps are reaping big profits from it? Btw., I live in Brazil, and I went with one of my daughters to see a GP a few days ago because she had symptoms of respiratory illness and was worried it might be Covid (she had had recent contact with peers who afterward tested positive). The physician told her to get a test, and if it were positive (it wasn't) she should take Vitamin C, N-acytilcholine, Ivermectin, and Hydroxychloroquine. I'm not saying that I think this makes sense, just reporting what a Brazilian physician said 5 days ago. I also want to add that I'm fairly convinced that Ivermectin is probably useless for Covid, but I raise livestock and am a big fan of Ivermectin as a medication of first resort for my animals, and in some cases for ourselves as well... long before Covid I've taken Ivermectin for diverse parasitic infections with good results and no adverse effects.
      - oblio 5y ago
        Vaccines are cheap.
      - vcoelho 5y ago
        Once everyone starts taking it preemptively for covid, would it still be cheap?
- simtel20 5y ago
  Clinics distributed a box of pills with no proven efficacy for the SARS CoV-2 virus, but with significant downsides, and with no tracking. This was not a controlled experiment, this was negligent homicide, recklessly endangering a population by abusing their misplaced faith in careless medical and pseudo-medical "professionals".
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    “Negligent homicide” is hyperbole. The medication itself is safe, safer than paracetamol / acetaminophen. If you are saying it gave too many people false hope and they died from Covid, isn’t that the problem everywhere else without false hope? Are deaths in Australia “better” than deaths in Brazil because Ozzies didn’t attempt the same treatment? Does ivermectin not function extremely well as a protease inhibitor? It probably doesn’t work anything for Covid, but it scientifically can prevent some viral binding despite that not being it’s primary function. So making an educated guess wrong is one thing, having people abuse pills is another, and killing people unintentionally through criminal actions is another still. Be rationale and reasonable. Because going overboard on accusations isn’t helping anyone nor adding to any scientific discussion.
    - IntrepidWorm 5y ago
      To be clear- many of the cases of serious injury or death were people taking wildly high doses of ivermectin, beyond any reasonable dosage. Ivermectin does have some safe use cases for human prescription: there is no acceptable evidence that it is effective in the least for treating or preventing Covid. https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-100956/v4 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-100956/v4 Much of the buzz was generated by the above preprint study, now retracted for some serious concerns that large portions were plagiarized and cherry-picked, and in some instances fabricated completely. https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/93658 https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/9365... One of the problems with ivermectin is that it is widely available and cheap. This is great if you are trying to treat river blindness or prevent your horse from contracting worms, but terrible when a deeply flawed (yet widely cited) purports it to be a miracle cure.
- ciconia 5y ago
  > I think everyone (who is reasonable) agrees the vaccine is the most effective tool we have against covid based on current scientific studies. Vaccination is perhaps the best solution in the short term, but to me it seems that preventive public health measures might be more effective over the long term. We know that the severe cases mostly happen to people who are already medically vulnerable (overweight, diabetic, cardiovascular disease etc). Governments could have used the last two years to execute on policies to reduce these chronic diseases: better food, better air quality, better water quality, a less stressful lifestyle. High blood pressure, high blood sugar, air pollution and obesity (not to mention smoking) are responsible for far more deaths than Covid-19 [1]. In addition, being exposed to any of those conditions is a risk factor for Covid-19. Logically, if we reduce the risk factors we can reduce both Covid-19 deaths and non-Covid-19 deaths! [1] https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution#air-pollution-is-responsible-for-5-million-deaths-each-year https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution#air-pollution-is-re...
  - bigodbiel 5y ago
    >air quality And that’s the reason why covid is still “not airborne”, despite the fact that, semantics aside, it’s anything but. The whole issue has become over politicized and academia has let itself take center stage of public policy. So now we have this fixation on pharmaceutical intervention, as it could have been some miracle panacea. The more time passes, the less reasonable it is sounding and the more the same academia turned public policy maker is doubling down on them.
  - javagram 5y ago
    > Governments could have used the last two years to execute on policies to reduce these chronic diseases: better food, better air quality, better water quality, a less stressful lifestyle. Governments have been working on these problems for decades already. Food/obesity is only getting worse in rich countries, air quality and water quality have seen marked improvements over the last half-century from lead reduction, decommissioning coal plants, emissions regulations for cars etc. However expecting government to dramatically reduce the number of overweight people suffering from diabetes in just 2 years without extreme authoritarian measures (e.g. concentration camp where they monitor your food intake) is pretty much just fantasy. Many different methods have been tried all over the world like education, food labeling, soda taxes, etc. and people continue to be fat when they can access and freely buy modern foods. The nice thing about a vaccine is that it’s far easier and cheaper to use and deploy than any of these other improvements. A vaccine costs $1 to $100 per person, while transitioning the entire economy to solar, wind, and nuclear power within a few years to improve air quality would cost what, $10,000s per person? If even possible at all.
aaron695 5y ago
> hoping to stave off COVID-19, but in a few rare cases that move prompted liver failure Ivermectin does not cause liver failure. There is no evidence of this. The Tweet about the one patient does not say the patient is getting a liver transplant, and they are not sure why there was liver issues. It can cause liver injury in a really small amount of cases, which should self correct. (I assume people do not think temporary liver injury <=> liver failure) It's a very safe drug. That's why is so important. But media lies and vilification of a 3rd world drug I guess are more important. > Among the “kit” drugs were the malaria pill hydroxychloroquine and the antiparasitic tablet ivermectin. These kits had many drugs in them, fuck society is lame. Ivermectin is on Twitter so that's all we headline. It would be interesting to actually know more about these kits. But curiosity is not a HN thing.
- bb88 5y ago
  Saying something is safe and effective doesn't make it so. That said, the numbers of death and continued infections don't lie. Brazil was ivermectin happy, but it didn't stop the infections and subsequent deaths. What is stopping infections and deaths? The vaccine. That's pretty clear. So why aren't you 100% behind the vaccine? Are you too wrapped up with your stance with Ivermectin that you can no longer change your view?
  - incrudible 5y ago
    The vaccines are not stopping infections. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
    - nojokes 5y ago
      I have commented about this load of crap elsewhere. In short: they add include complete nonsense - statistics from Africa and 3 specific outliers - Israel, Mongolia (both vaccinated very quickly) and Malaysia (got into large wave just before vaccination started to ramp up).
    - smorgusofborg 5y ago
Proven 5y ago
What a shit article, lol. Since it's all anecdotal, why didn't they contrast the experience from Brazil with ivermectin in Goa (India)?
ekianjo 5y ago
Where's the data in this article? No graphs, no publication? If I want a full conclusion I'd like to see more than a journalist's take on this.
- vcoelho 5y ago
  I guess that's the point? No solid evidence of ivermectin efficacy existed before the government launched a national-wide web form that prescribed it for anyone with Covid symptoms, or before major health insurers started testing on patients without their families consent, or people rushing to the pharmacy and clearing out their stock of those medicine.
  - bb88 5y ago
    That and it didn't stop the deaths. Now that vaccinations have taken hold we can probably expect the numbers to drop significantly.
doliveira 5y ago
Looks like Hacker News really switched. We can expect in a few weeks commentators defending anal ozone and HCQ aspiration for pregnant women as well, can't we?
- bb88 5y ago
  Yeah, it's been a shitshow for a while. Anti-vaxxers have taken over the site pretty much on this.

30 points by bb88 5y ago

dfdz 5y ago

I think everyone (who is reasonable) agrees the vaccine is the most effective tool we have against covid based on current scientific studies However this article about Ivermectin is not well reasoned: > As infection rates soared, some people were taking excessively high doses of the medicine every day, hoping to stave off COVID-19, but in a few rare cases that move prompted liver failure. >Other patients were unknowingly given the "kit" drugs by doctors in private hospitals instead of more standard treatments — and some of them died. These quotes from the article don’t support … anything. People had Covid, they took a treatment, but some died? Really? Could they at least pretend to use some statistics or even an antidotal control group?

rargramble 5y ago
No, because that goes against the narrative of demonizing ivermectin as some sort of dangerous drug. There's a reason all these outlets have been pushing the idea that it's a "horse dewormer."
- oblio 5y ago
  What's the angle, though. Cui bono?
  - jbotz 5y ago
    It's cheap? No US-based pharma corps are reaping big profits from it? Btw., I live in Brazil, and I went with one of my daughters to see a GP a few days ago because she had symptoms of respiratory illness and was worried it might be Covid (she had had recent contact with peers who afterward tested positive). The physician told her to get a test, and if it were positive (it wasn't) she should take Vitamin C, N-acytilcholine, Ivermectin, and Hydroxychloroquine. I'm not saying that I think this makes sense, just reporting what a Brazilian physician said 5 days ago. I also want to add that I'm fairly convinced that Ivermectin is probably useless for Covid, but I raise livestock and am a big fan of Ivermectin as a medication of first resort for my animals, and in some cases for ourselves as well... long before Covid I've taken Ivermectin for diverse parasitic infections with good results and no adverse effects.
    - oblio 5y ago
      Vaccines are cheap.
    - vcoelho 5y ago
      Once everyone starts taking it preemptively for covid, would it still be cheap?
simtel20 5y ago
Clinics distributed a box of pills with no proven efficacy for the SARS CoV-2 virus, but with significant downsides, and with no tracking. This was not a controlled experiment, this was negligent homicide, recklessly endangering a population by abusing their misplaced faith in careless medical and pseudo-medical "professionals".
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  “Negligent homicide” is hyperbole. The medication itself is safe, safer than paracetamol / acetaminophen. If you are saying it gave too many people false hope and they died from Covid, isn’t that the problem everywhere else without false hope? Are deaths in Australia “better” than deaths in Brazil because Ozzies didn’t attempt the same treatment? Does ivermectin not function extremely well as a protease inhibitor? It probably doesn’t work anything for Covid, but it scientifically can prevent some viral binding despite that not being it’s primary function. So making an educated guess wrong is one thing, having people abuse pills is another, and killing people unintentionally through criminal actions is another still. Be rationale and reasonable. Because going overboard on accusations isn’t helping anyone nor adding to any scientific discussion.
  - IntrepidWorm 5y ago
    To be clear- many of the cases of serious injury or death were people taking wildly high doses of ivermectin, beyond any reasonable dosage. Ivermectin does have some safe use cases for human prescription: there is no acceptable evidence that it is effective in the least for treating or preventing Covid. https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-100956/v4 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-100956/v4 Much of the buzz was generated by the above preprint study, now retracted for some serious concerns that large portions were plagiarized and cherry-picked, and in some instances fabricated completely. https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/93658 https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/9365... One of the problems with ivermectin is that it is widely available and cheap. This is great if you are trying to treat river blindness or prevent your horse from contracting worms, but terrible when a deeply flawed (yet widely cited) purports it to be a miracle cure.
ciconia 5y ago
> I think everyone (who is reasonable) agrees the vaccine is the most effective tool we have against covid based on current scientific studies. Vaccination is perhaps the best solution in the short term, but to me it seems that preventive public health measures might be more effective over the long term. We know that the severe cases mostly happen to people who are already medically vulnerable (overweight, diabetic, cardiovascular disease etc). Governments could have used the last two years to execute on policies to reduce these chronic diseases: better food, better air quality, better water quality, a less stressful lifestyle. High blood pressure, high blood sugar, air pollution and obesity (not to mention smoking) are responsible for far more deaths than Covid-19 [1]. In addition, being exposed to any of those conditions is a risk factor for Covid-19. Logically, if we reduce the risk factors we can reduce both Covid-19 deaths and non-Covid-19 deaths! [1] https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution#air-pollution-is-responsible-for-5-million-deaths-each-year https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution#air-pollution-is-re...
- bigodbiel 5y ago
  >air quality And that’s the reason why covid is still “not airborne”, despite the fact that, semantics aside, it’s anything but. The whole issue has become over politicized and academia has let itself take center stage of public policy. So now we have this fixation on pharmaceutical intervention, as it could have been some miracle panacea. The more time passes, the less reasonable it is sounding and the more the same academia turned public policy maker is doubling down on them.
- javagram 5y ago
  > Governments could have used the last two years to execute on policies to reduce these chronic diseases: better food, better air quality, better water quality, a less stressful lifestyle. Governments have been working on these problems for decades already. Food/obesity is only getting worse in rich countries, air quality and water quality have seen marked improvements over the last half-century from lead reduction, decommissioning coal plants, emissions regulations for cars etc. However expecting government to dramatically reduce the number of overweight people suffering from diabetes in just 2 years without extreme authoritarian measures (e.g. concentration camp where they monitor your food intake) is pretty much just fantasy. Many different methods have been tried all over the world like education, food labeling, soda taxes, etc. and people continue to be fat when they can access and freely buy modern foods. The nice thing about a vaccine is that it’s far easier and cheaper to use and deploy than any of these other improvements. A vaccine costs $1 to $100 per person, while transitioning the entire economy to solar, wind, and nuclear power within a few years to improve air quality would cost what, $10,000s per person? If even possible at all.

aaron695 5y ago

> hoping to stave off COVID-19, but in a few rare cases that move prompted liver failure Ivermectin does not cause liver failure. There is no evidence of this. The Tweet about the one patient does not say the patient is getting a liver transplant, and they are not sure why there was liver issues. It can cause liver injury in a really small amount of cases, which should self correct. (I assume people do not think temporary liver injury <=> liver failure) It's a very safe drug. That's why is so important. But media lies and vilification of a 3rd world drug I guess are more important. > Among the “kit” drugs were the malaria pill hydroxychloroquine and the antiparasitic tablet ivermectin. These kits had many drugs in them, fuck society is lame. Ivermectin is on Twitter so that's all we headline. It would be interesting to actually know more about these kits. But curiosity is not a HN thing.

bb88 5y ago
Saying something is safe and effective doesn't make it so. That said, the numbers of death and continued infections don't lie. Brazil was ivermectin happy, but it didn't stop the infections and subsequent deaths. What is stopping infections and deaths? The vaccine. That's pretty clear. So why aren't you 100% behind the vaccine? Are you too wrapped up with your stance with Ivermectin that you can no longer change your view?
- incrudible 5y ago
  The vaccines are not stopping infections. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
  - nojokes 5y ago
    I have commented about this load of crap elsewhere. In short: they add include complete nonsense - statistics from Africa and 3 specific outliers - Israel, Mongolia (both vaccinated very quickly) and Malaysia (got into large wave just before vaccination started to ramp up).
  - smorgusofborg 5y ago

Proven 5y ago

What a shit article, lol. Since it's all anecdotal, why didn't they contrast the experience from Brazil with ivermectin in Goa (India)?

ekianjo 5y ago

Where's the data in this article? No graphs, no publication? If I want a full conclusion I'd like to see more than a journalist's take on this.

vcoelho 5y ago
I guess that's the point? No solid evidence of ivermectin efficacy existed before the government launched a national-wide web form that prescribed it for anyone with Covid symptoms, or before major health insurers started testing on patients without their families consent, or people rushing to the pharmacy and clearing out their stock of those medicine.
- bb88 5y ago
  That and it didn't stop the deaths. Now that vaccinations have taken hold we can probably expect the numbers to drop significantly.

doliveira 5y ago

Looks like Hacker News really switched. We can expect in a few weeks commentators defending anal ozone and HCQ aspiration for pregnant women as well, can't we?

bb88 5y ago
Yeah, it's been a shitshow for a while. Anti-vaxxers have taken over the site pretty much on this.