4 ms·

I have no opinion whatsoever regarding whether or not ivermectin's purported mechanism of action against COVID is valid. However, this: > It also just isn’t t

I have no opinion whatsoever regarding whether or not ivermectin's purported mechanism of action against COVID is valid. However, this: > It also just isn’t the sort of thing there would be incentive to lie about is not true. There are two incentives to lie about this, if you are in any way associated with drug or vaccine manufacturers. 1.) Ivermectin is out of patent and dirt cheap; basically not profitable at all 2.) Emergency use authorization for the vaccines relied on there being no available alternative treatment Again, I have no opinion regarding whether or not ivermectin is remotely useful for COVID. But there are plenty of incentives aimed against any older generic being repurposed.

space_fountain 5y ago
You're discussing incentives that maybe some major drug companies might have, but they aren't the only ones around. I guess, the more accurate position is that there are strong upper bounds to how effective a secretly suppressed drug could be. Imagine that ivermectin just cured covid for a minute. The would be incredibly easy to prove in a study. I mean just observational studies would be glaringly obvious. What ambitious young scientist wouldn't want curing covid on their resume? So you have to believe, either the vast majority of scientists, the press, or government are complicit in this conspiracy and I don't see strong incentives for any of those groups.
- ralusek 5y ago
  Well that's the thing, is that there are literally millions of people in entire countries being prescribed it. India has dished out millions of doses for COVID, and there are many doctors and researchers completely convinced by clinical evidence. It's not as if there are no people picking up a signal, or that no studies are showing utility, it's that the available studies are methodologically questionable. But as you are aware, there are more formal studies taking place at the moment, and the official scientific consensus is that we don't yet know. Again, my argument against you was that you said that there was no motivation against it, and I said that wasn't true.
weaksauce 5y ago
> 2.) Emergency use authorization for the vaccines relied on there being no available alternative treatment That's simply so factually wrong it's tough to take it as serious. having a treatment that might lessen the severity of some percentage of the people that get covid has absolutely nothing to do with a prophylactic EUA for a vaccine that is wildly efficacious against mild and severe covid cases and stop you from getting it in the first place. Let's do a thought experiment even if that were true... that would mean the other vaccines that are under an EUA would have been revoked the moment Pfizer got their full approval which didn't happen. This is "there are naval insignias on the flags therefore we are not a constitutional democracy" level of conspiratorial thinking. > 1.) Ivermectin is out of patent and dirt cheap; basically not profitable at all that's the reason they threw it at the virus in the first place. They were looking for anything that might help.
- loonster 5y ago
  One of the reasons it got looked at was due to a scabies outbreak at Valley View Nursing Home in Toronto that coincidentally had a Covid outbreak at the same time in early 2020. Oddly enough, the residents that had scabies did better than the residents that didn't.
bsder 5y ago
There are more countries in the world than the US and many of them would welcome something like ivermectin if it worked. Sure, ivermectin is dirt cheap, but that doesn't mean somebody couldn't make a buck off of it. Not to mention that any doctor who actually proved something like that to be effective would be quickly hailed as a hero. This is the problem with the "Covid Conspiracists"--magically everything is 100% worldwide unified action with perfect lockstep and no deviations--in spite of the fact that many of these countries have primal hatred for one another.
- ralusek 5y ago
  Many countries are using ivermectin...Mexico, India, it's even being prescribed in the US and UK. What it is missing is quality studies, but there are millions of prescriptions being written based off of clinical discretion. So yes, there are more countries, and many ARE accepting ivermectin for treating COVID. And again, I don't know or care if it works, I'm vaccinated and wouldn't take it, nor am I a conspiracy theorist, your point is just not correct.
  - bsder 5y ago
    > What it is missing is quality studies Um, exactly? We have millions of scrips issued and still nobody can produce data. Now, what we can posit is that there is a worldwide conspiracy to suppress the fact that ivermectin is effective OR we can posit that ivermectin doesn't actually work very well for Covid. The problem with anecdotal medical treatments is that the human organism is highly variable. Just about any disease "treatment" will work for somebody, somewhere. But that's not enough to proclaim that something works. This is going to be especially true in countries where parasitic infestation (which ivermectin does treat) is more common. If a significant fraction of your population got their parasitic infestation cured, their Covid numbers are going to look quite a bit better, too. If we're trading on anecdotes, then I'll say that ivermectin doesn't work. We had lots of people taking ivermectin at various level in US Red State land. Their hospitals still got overrun. If anything, ivermectin use is correlated with more hospitalization. This is, in fact, a tautology--but not because ivermectin makes Covid worse (or better) but because people were getting poisoned by ivermectin and most ivermectin users were in red state areas which had lower vaccination rates. This is why you don't believe claims without data. > And again, I don't know or care if it works, I'm vaccinated and wouldn't take it, nor am I a conspiracy theorist, your point is just not correct. The problem is that your "I'm just a skeptic" ignores the fact that nobody can cough up any data. Continuing to promulgate things in the absence of data articulates your position quite clearly.

space_fountain 5y ago

You're discussing incentives that maybe some major drug companies might have, but they aren't the only ones around. I guess, the more accurate position is that there are strong upper bounds to how effective a secretly suppressed drug could be. Imagine that ivermectin just cured covid for a minute. The would be incredibly easy to prove in a study. I mean just observational studies would be glaringly obvious. What ambitious young scientist wouldn't want curing covid on their resume? So you have to believe, either the vast majority of scientists, the press, or government are complicit in this conspiracy and I don't see strong incentives for any of those groups.

ralusek 5y ago
Well that's the thing, is that there are literally millions of people in entire countries being prescribed it. India has dished out millions of doses for COVID, and there are many doctors and researchers completely convinced by clinical evidence. It's not as if there are no people picking up a signal, or that no studies are showing utility, it's that the available studies are methodologically questionable. But as you are aware, there are more formal studies taking place at the moment, and the official scientific consensus is that we don't yet know. Again, my argument against you was that you said that there was no motivation against it, and I said that wasn't true.

weaksauce 5y ago

> 2.) Emergency use authorization for the vaccines relied on there being no available alternative treatment That's simply so factually wrong it's tough to take it as serious. having a treatment that might lessen the severity of some percentage of the people that get covid has absolutely nothing to do with a prophylactic EUA for a vaccine that is wildly efficacious against mild and severe covid cases and stop you from getting it in the first place. Let's do a thought experiment even if that were true... that would mean the other vaccines that are under an EUA would have been revoked the moment Pfizer got their full approval which didn't happen. This is "there are naval insignias on the flags therefore we are not a constitutional democracy" level of conspiratorial thinking. > 1.) Ivermectin is out of patent and dirt cheap; basically not profitable at all that's the reason they threw it at the virus in the first place. They were looking for anything that might help.

loonster 5y ago
One of the reasons it got looked at was due to a scabies outbreak at Valley View Nursing Home in Toronto that coincidentally had a Covid outbreak at the same time in early 2020. Oddly enough, the residents that had scabies did better than the residents that didn't.

bsder 5y ago

There are more countries in the world than the US and many of them would welcome something like ivermectin if it worked. Sure, ivermectin is dirt cheap, but that doesn't mean somebody couldn't make a buck off of it. Not to mention that any doctor who actually proved something like that to be effective would be quickly hailed as a hero. This is the problem with the "Covid Conspiracists"--magically everything is 100% worldwide unified action with perfect lockstep and no deviations--in spite of the fact that many of these countries have primal hatred for one another.

ralusek 5y ago
Many countries are using ivermectin...Mexico, India, it's even being prescribed in the US and UK. What it is missing is quality studies, but there are millions of prescriptions being written based off of clinical discretion. So yes, there are more countries, and many ARE accepting ivermectin for treating COVID. And again, I don't know or care if it works, I'm vaccinated and wouldn't take it, nor am I a conspiracy theorist, your point is just not correct.
- bsder 5y ago
  > What it is missing is quality studies Um, exactly? We have millions of scrips issued and still nobody can produce data. Now, what we can posit is that there is a worldwide conspiracy to suppress the fact that ivermectin is effective OR we can posit that ivermectin doesn't actually work very well for Covid. The problem with anecdotal medical treatments is that the human organism is highly variable. Just about any disease "treatment" will work for somebody, somewhere. But that's not enough to proclaim that something works. This is going to be especially true in countries where parasitic infestation (which ivermectin does treat) is more common. If a significant fraction of your population got their parasitic infestation cured, their Covid numbers are going to look quite a bit better, too. If we're trading on anecdotes, then I'll say that ivermectin doesn't work. We had lots of people taking ivermectin at various level in US Red State land. Their hospitals still got overrun. If anything, ivermectin use is correlated with more hospitalization. This is, in fact, a tautology--but not because ivermectin makes Covid worse (or better) but because people were getting poisoned by ivermectin and most ivermectin users were in red state areas which had lower vaccination rates. This is why you don't believe claims without data. > And again, I don't know or care if it works, I'm vaccinated and wouldn't take it, nor am I a conspiracy theorist, your point is just not correct. The problem is that your "I'm just a skeptic" ignores the fact that nobody can cough up any data. Continuing to promulgate things in the absence of data articulates your position quite clearly.