10 ms·

Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

68 points by daegloe 5y ago

superflit2 5y ago
We don't need to discuss it anymore. The big tech and Narrative talkers already decided since the beginning what is good or bad for us. And what is truth or not. /s Maybe even a simple Buffy (Joe Rogan) guy may have some common sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHzGH3aLSgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHzGH3aLSgc
jjmellon 5y ago
The problem is that Ivermectin is off patent, so no drug company can make any money from it. Since there is no money for expensive research studies or clinical trials, all the research studies that get done will be low budget and subject to being called "lousy science". How about just properly reporting and studying the actual facts from one of the very large real world trials, like the one in India?
- tzs 5y ago
  > The problem is that Ivermectin is off patent, so no drug company can make any money from it. How then do you explain the numerous off-patent drugs that are currently in widespread production by the major drug companies?
  - superflit2 5y ago
    Imagine that you are creating a new patented drug that you could charge a lot and the whole govts in the world needed. Then have this other drug without patent that could do the same? or 80%? People got enraged about the Epi-Pen patent price gouging years back imagine what would happen if some rigorous study confirm that ivermectin is as good as or better? This is a sample on how media distorts the narrative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHzGH3aLSgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHzGH3aLSgc
- juanani 5y ago
  I think how effective modern ad campaigns are run are part to blame. You don't just shove your product as gold, you make sure to throw dirt on the alternatives. Which includes online troll armies these days. We're talking about leaving billions on the table and possibly being pushed out by your competition. A death sentence in modern day economy. it just sounds anti-narrative and is hard to swallow.
- catawbasam 5y ago
  Seems like governments should be funding proper studies, as they might benefit from a low cost treatment option.
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    that makes the assumption that there's incentive for the people running the government to do so. there's been a lot of information that's come to light, some of which some consider to be common knowledge, which indicates that there may be more incentive for our lawmakers not to do so
- geofft 5y ago
  I'm skeptical of the "there's no money in it" angle. Ivermectin advocates seem to be suggesting that you take it as a preventative measure for covid - i.e., that the way to stop the pandemic is to have everyone take ivermectin. Each individual ivermectin tablet, at current levels of demand and quality control, costs a couple of dollars. Compare that with the vaccine, which costs governments a couple tens of dollars, but people get at most four shots per year. I agree that there isn't money in licensing the ivermectin patent, but there is absolutely a lot of money to be made in manufacturing ivermectin itself, convincing people to take preventative ivermectin, and meeting worldwide demand. And every single pharmaceutical company can play that game - not just a couple of very rich ones in rich countries with research labs capable of making their own covid vaccine. Frankly, it should be a little bit surprising that not even one of them has tried this strategy.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  As I understand it, the largest produce of ivermectin is... one of the largest drug companies. Which doesn't have a COVID-19 vaccine, and whose website openly states that you should not take ivermectin for COVID-19. Your theory just doesn't make any sense.
  - lambdaba 5y ago
    It's way too cheap, iirc Dr. Kory was estimating it would cost like $12 per person to use Ivermectin as a preventative, and this is at current prices. Also, said company, Merck, is in the process of releasing a new drug that will cost in the thousands.
    - geofft 5y ago
      $12 per person per what unit of time? $12 gets you like three tablets. That's according to some claimed protocols enough to (probably) get you out of the hospital alive, but that's not a long-term preventative. Meanwhile, the government pays about $20 per dose of the vaccine. The difference between $12 and $20 is not substantial.
      - lambdaba 5y ago
        The dose for prevention is a fraction of the dose for people already infected. Maybe per year? I don't know, I don't recall the details, but even so that's without the economies of scale that would intervene if it was a worldwide effort. Re: vaccines, JP Morgan estimated Pfizer alone will make $100B from vaccines. I don't think manufacturing Ivermectin is complex enough that it would net ANY profit, the effort would be organized completely differently. Lastly, I don't think this is a conspiracy, either for money or politics, going for vaccines was just the easiest sell for both people and governments, and doing anything different would have been extremely difficult (see Sweden and lockdown policies).
        OminousWeapons 5y ago
        > Lastly, I don't think this is a conspiracy, either for money or politics, going for vaccines was just the easiest sell for both people and governments, and doing anything different would have been extremely difficult (see Sweden and lockdown policies). This is not true. Governments were and are being hammered by their inability to manage COVID. There is a massive incentive to find a therapeutic that can treat the infected rather than just a vaccine, which is how crazes surrounding Ivermectin and other unproven therapeutics got started to begin with. Not only that, but generic therapeutics that could be easily manufactured and transported to poorer nations are clearly the best option to solve this problem. Vaccines were the hardest sell and the worst option for governments given their long developmental timeline, the FUD surrounding them, and the clear complexities surrounding distribution and scarcity.
- User23 5y ago
  And why is Covid not really a thing in subsaharan Africa where everyone takes ivermectin anyway, because it’s a marvelous antiparasitic drug. You’d think the poorest parts of Africa with the worst medical systems in the world would be hit harder, but they’re not. And it’s probably not genetic since the African diaspora is hit hard by covid.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - geofft 5y ago
    There's a whole lot of other possible confounding hypotheses here: more frequent outdoor activity, increased ventilation in buildings, increased sunlight, lower population density, lower spread from international travelers, less robust reporting, the "worst medical systems in the world" resulting in a smaller relative fraction of the population at high risk of covid surviving everything else, less cultural offense at being told to wear a mask, etc.
  - papandada 5y ago
    Everyone takes it, routinely? Or gets prescribed it easily in the case of certain symptoms? My surface-level, limited perception in a couple countries I have friends/family in (Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria) is that there's little to no testing, but also not apparently a hospital emergency. Then again, these same people also seem to go to their local hospital for what is understood as typhoid and malaria every year or two at least. As a born and raised North American I get told by them that's normal.
  - dreyfan 5y ago
    Low population density, a largely outdoor existence, and a very low rate of testing and reporting.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      > Low population density, a largely outdoor existence, I'm not sure that I buy that; cities in Africa have large dense slums, where it's going to be hard to distance. And crowded transport to/from work. https://www.kulturevulturez.com/story-south-africa-slums-gangs/ https://www.kulturevulturez.com/story-south-africa-slums-gan... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi
- Azsy 5y ago
  The problem with Ivermectin studies is that people will actually review them, so no academic can build a reputation on fraudulent data. Since there is no way to fake thousands of data point, now expensive research studies and clinical trials are getting done, all the research studies that get done will be of higher budget and subject to being called "basic science" How about just properly reporting and studying the actual facts that some scientists will just make shit up, publication bias exists, and they can draw the wrong conclusions, like that one on Ivermectin? P.S. I would be happy if Ivermectin turned out to work, but statistically you expect a few false positives to emerge from doctors in the field doing small studies that agree and appear to point to a cure. If Ivermectin was as effective as say, antihistamine pills, you would get a flood of agreement.
- shlant 5y ago
  > all the research studies that get done will be low budget and subject to being called "lousy science" This is not true. Keep an eye out for TOGETHER[1], I-TECH[2], PRINCIPLE[3] and ACTIV-6[4] results (with TOGETHER already having dropped IVM for futility) [1] https://www.togethertrial.com/ https://www.togethertrial.com/ [2] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04920942 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04920942 [3] https://www.principletrial.org/ https://www.principletrial.org/ [4] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530
- phonypc 5y ago
  The lousy studies aren't lousy because of the constraints of an insufficient budget. They're based on fraudulent/fabricated data. As far as the "real world trial" of India, the peak of their delta wave roughly coinciding with an updated treatment guideline including ivermectin is hardly strong evidence. A) Correlation isn't causation. B) An updated treatment guideline doesn't indicate people were actually taking ivermectin. C) Using it as a treatment (i.e. after a case occurs) can't possibly be responsible for preventing cases. There was some buzz about it being offered as a prophylactic, but it never panned out. D) The peak of the wave coinciding with the update necessitates that the reproduction rate was dropping before the update Further, just look at Peru for a clear demonstration that it isn't the miracle some would like to believe it is.
ssijak 5y ago
Why would not some government fund the proper research into Ivermectin and Covid and be done with it. A lot of money was already thrown into the problem, throwing a bit more into a possible cheap and safe preventive treatment is a no brainer, unless I am missing something. Even this article suggests that there are some studies showing promise for Ivermectin, well, go create a big proper one and put an end to this debate. I can't stand Ivermectin zealots and anti-Ivermectin knowitalls.
- jfengel 5y ago
  If the government funds it, that will make it suspicious in the eyes of many people. There are already a number of high quality studies, and they are interpreted through people's own lens of preconception. The article points out a real problem in medical literature, but the public perception problem is much worse. Medical literature is at least trying to reach a truthful consensus.
  - abricot 5y ago
    Can you explain what "truthful consensus" means in this situation? The article does not give me any hope that medical literature is "trying" anything.
    - jfengel 5y ago
      Most researchers are interested in the truth. There are incentives for people to be lazy and fast, which leads to bad science, but most of the time they would rather be right. They'll even defend bad results, but out of self protection rather than outright intent to mislead. So there are plenty of problems, but of an entirely different character from the outright propaganda by non-scientists practicing ideological confirmation bias.
      - over_the_raibow 5y ago
        > Most researchers are interested in the truth No they are not. They are interested in having a source of income and a career first. Reaching the wrong conclusions can leave them without a job, or funding or stall their career advancement. Modern academia does not select for truth.
jfengel 5y ago
It's as though medical literature is going through the same process that the Internet did: built with the assumption of good behavior, and that good actors would swamp bad ones. That turns out to be untrue, and correcting it after the fact is much harder.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  This is the fundamental problem of our time. Trust has been traditionally built via personal relationships. But that doesn’t scale, and every attempt people have made to try to curb the bad actors at scale is a cat-and-mouse problem that is eventually worked around. So media influencers of dubious provenance can establish a following and there’s no credible voice with enough “engagement” to debunk them (the truth is boring), so they become the trusted source. Nobody knows who to trust anymore. And until we solve that problem at global scale, the grifters and con men will rule the world.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    The exception I keep pondering is Wikipedia. It has many problems, but most of the time I get decent information. I expected it to be overrun by trolls and spammers. While they do exist, they don't dominate the way most other forums do without appointed police.
    - marton78 5y ago
      This is not the case in German language Wikipedia, though. There are many examples there of users with high reputation abusing their power and pushing their personal agendas.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
Hopefully the NIH funded ACTIV-6 Trial will provide more definitive evidence on Ivermectin, given that it is a US based study and has 15,000 participants. However, I don't know how the trial stacks up against prior work in terms of dose, and the estimated completion date is DEC 2022. 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... https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530
- unanswered 5y ago
  Suppose the raw results from the trial are that ivermectin is effective. What do you yourself expect to hear in such a circumstance? From the study, from the media, etc?
d1a2n 5y ago
The Actually Real Scandal About Ivermectin is something like the anthropic principle but about the fact that I know that nothing positive about Ivermectin would ever be allowed on the Atlantic. Is Ivermectin at best barely above useless for covid? Maybe. Is it crucial and it's a crime against humanity for being suppressed? Maybe, and I'm inclined to say probably because the same people who lie about everything are mighty certain that Ivermectin is something that doesn't help covid and anyone who says otherwise is a horse paste eating moron.
- pfisch 5y ago
  The people saying ivermectin works are the same people saying hcq worked last year. The people pushing the vaccine are the only people who have consistently been curing serious illnesses for the last 100 years. The ivermectin group are the people who have been pushing snake oil for the last 1000 years and cured nothing.
  - d1a2n 5y ago
    Wow you've really convinced me bud you definitely sound nuanced and educated, now I know that the vaccine = good and supported by smart people and ivermectin = bad and supported by dumb people, I know exactly which side I want to be on.
    - pfisch 5y ago
      The antivaxxers are all out in force pushing ivermectin, which is not well supported by evidence. I didn't say anyone was dumb, but people have been fighting against vaccines and pushing snake oil for the entire history of vaccines.
  - silver-arrow 5y ago
    Curing serious disease? That’s rich.
    - dralley 5y ago
      What do you mean? Smallpox is extinct, diptheria, pertussus and polio are nearly extinct, and measles mumps and rubella would be nearly extinct if not for pockets of antivaxers creating a constant stream of outbreaks. Go look up how many diseases these people killed prior to the vaccines, and then a few years after. You are absolutely taking for granted what we've accomplished through the use of vaccines.
vixen99 5y ago
As an observation not an argument, irrespective of what comes to be accepted as to the efficacy of ivermectin, there seem to be an awful lot of doctors and other professionals across the world prepared to trash their personal reputations & sometimes their careers if "claims about the drug are based on shoddy science—but that science is entirely unremarkable in its shoddiness." is true.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  The mectin hucksters are hopeful that their careers will be sufficiently boosted by their repeated appearances on Joe Rogan and that tens of millions of cognitively-impaired COVID-19 survivors will be easily duped into throwing money away on their next scam.
didjathinkmess 5y ago
Why take the biased article at its word? Luckily we have access to all of these studies and can do the research ourselves (thanks Internet!) https://ivmmeta.com/ https://ivmmeta.com/ The current count of medical studies that show Ivermectin being beneficial for treating or preventing COVID-19 is 64. Out of those 64, 44 of them are peer reviewed. Or we could throw the baby out with the bathwater because this article cherry picked a few of the worst studies to shape a narrative.
- ivraatiems 5y ago
  How do we know that this article is biased and yours is not? Why should we trust this source and not the one linked above?
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    They're both biased, and both will be using any facts they mention in a way that's best for their narrative. everything is like this. The problem is that we have this utopian notion that somewhere there is an Unbiased Grand Truth that should be given to us in exchange for our attention. We assume and expect that we're being given the Gold Standard Truth when we read anything now. And then we get upset when we peel the foil off and discover it wasn't even chocolate.
  - didjathinkmess 5y ago
    That's up to the reader to judge. I always advise doing your own research. For example look at the history of the Atlantic, which political side do they align with, have they ever said anything unbiased about Ivermectin, etc. Another thing to consider: one is an article and one is a site which points to medical studies so it's difficult to compare the two. You can weave a biased narrative easily with one article. It's a lot more difficult to do that across 60+ studies. Trust nothing, do your own research always.
  - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
    Because it links to the individual studies.
- 5y ago
oblib 5y ago
It's probably not a coincidence that the same people saying "Masks don't work and the proof is I can smell my farts when I wear them", "The virus is a hoax", "The vaccines have a tracking chip in them" are the same folks saying "ivermectin prevents and cures covid". I live in the Missouri Ozarks, near Branson, and I am surrounded by them. I've been following the use of ivermectin since around June 2020 and still have not seen any definitive proof it works better than a placebo. But I did suspect there might be a run on it over a year ago so I bought an extra package of it for my two burros. Just a few days ago I had to use it. About a month ago I asked an employee at the feed store I buy it at how their stock of it was holding up. He told me "We're selling out within 24 hours of getting a shipment in." It won't matter if rigerous studies determine it doesn't work at all, they won't care. These are folks who are still refusing to get vaxxed, wear a mask, and social distance. They don't care that over 670,000 of their fellow citizens have been killed by it here. They don't believe that either. They're "Mad as hell" and they're "not going to take it anymore".
- over_the_raibow 5y ago
  Masks really don t work.
- listenallyall 5y ago
  > 670,000 of their fellow citizens have been killed by it here Are we still just straight repeating govt propaganda to scare the general public? Did Colin Powell's death not make it extremely clear how inflated these totals are? Gen. Powell was 84 with Parkinson's and an incurable blood cell cancer (and fully vaccinated, btw). But sure, Covid "killed" him. Chalk up one more to help justify the lockdowns and eliminating your freedoms.
  - dwaltrip 5y ago
    Please link to a reputable source explaining how Colin Powell didn’t die of Covid-19 complications. Thanks.
  - oblib 5y ago
    I spent the better part of a year trying to talk to folks here where I live about masks, preventives, vaccines and social distancing. Nothing made a difference. Gen. Powell's cause of death was covid. He was in several high risk groups. If he got ran over by a speeding car and died the next day would you insist his cause of death was his age?
ivraatiems 5y ago
It's important to remember that by and large, people decide what they support on the basis of what makes them emotionally feel better, and then find evidence for it. People who castigate the medical and pharmaceutical industries for being corrupt and then wholeheartedly advocate for one treatment or another as "the solution" based on articles they found on the Internet from unknown sources aren't and were never operating from a place of logic - as though nobody on the Internet was ever maliciously motivated or trying to make a buck. There's no point in a discussion based on "the evidence" with these individuals, except maybe to point out the cognitive dissonance at play.
felipeqq2 5y ago
Brazil received strong govt propaganda for ivermectin use. Some people even got liver problems due to Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine overdose [1]. Yet, the country is one of the most affected by the pandemic. It has more than 600k deaths. For comparison, India is around 6x bigger regarding population, and only had 454K deaths. That's the real-world Ivermectin study. If it worked, you can be sure that Brazil would be in a much better situation. [1] https://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2021/03/29/apos-descobrir-problema-no-figado-por-causa-do-uso-excessivo-da-ivermectina-baiana-lamenta-bobagens-que-a-gente-faz.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2021/03/29/apos-desc... (in Portuguese)
frazbin 5y ago
Say it with me folks: horse dewormer.
- __del__ 5y ago
  hors... glutamate-gated chloride channels.

68 points by daegloe 5y ago

We don't need to discuss it anymore. The big tech and Narrative talkers already decided since the beginning what is good or bad for us. And what is truth or not. /s Maybe even a simple Buffy (Joe Rogan) guy may have some common sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHzGH3aLSgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHzGH3aLSgc

jjmellon 5y ago

The problem is that Ivermectin is off patent, so no drug company can make any money from it. Since there is no money for expensive research studies or clinical trials, all the research studies that get done will be low budget and subject to being called "lousy science". How about just properly reporting and studying the actual facts from one of the very large real world trials, like the one in India?

tzs 5y ago
> The problem is that Ivermectin is off patent, so no drug company can make any money from it. How then do you explain the numerous off-patent drugs that are currently in widespread production by the major drug companies?
- superflit2 5y ago
  Imagine that you are creating a new patented drug that you could charge a lot and the whole govts in the world needed. Then have this other drug without patent that could do the same? or 80%? People got enraged about the Epi-Pen patent price gouging years back imagine what would happen if some rigorous study confirm that ivermectin is as good as or better? This is a sample on how media distorts the narrative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHzGH3aLSgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHzGH3aLSgc
juanani 5y ago
I think how effective modern ad campaigns are run are part to blame. You don't just shove your product as gold, you make sure to throw dirt on the alternatives. Which includes online troll armies these days. We're talking about leaving billions on the table and possibly being pushed out by your competition. A death sentence in modern day economy. it just sounds anti-narrative and is hard to swallow.
catawbasam 5y ago
Seems like governments should be funding proper studies, as they might benefit from a low cost treatment option.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  that makes the assumption that there's incentive for the people running the government to do so. there's been a lot of information that's come to light, some of which some consider to be common knowledge, which indicates that there may be more incentive for our lawmakers not to do so
geofft 5y ago
I'm skeptical of the "there's no money in it" angle. Ivermectin advocates seem to be suggesting that you take it as a preventative measure for covid - i.e., that the way to stop the pandemic is to have everyone take ivermectin. Each individual ivermectin tablet, at current levels of demand and quality control, costs a couple of dollars. Compare that with the vaccine, which costs governments a couple tens of dollars, but people get at most four shots per year. I agree that there isn't money in licensing the ivermectin patent, but there is absolutely a lot of money to be made in manufacturing ivermectin itself, convincing people to take preventative ivermectin, and meeting worldwide demand. And every single pharmaceutical company can play that game - not just a couple of very rich ones in rich countries with research labs capable of making their own covid vaccine. Frankly, it should be a little bit surprising that not even one of them has tried this strategy.
jcranmer 5y ago
As I understand it, the largest produce of ivermectin is... one of the largest drug companies. Which doesn't have a COVID-19 vaccine, and whose website openly states that you should not take ivermectin for COVID-19. Your theory just doesn't make any sense.
- lambdaba 5y ago
  It's way too cheap, iirc Dr. Kory was estimating it would cost like $12 per person to use Ivermectin as a preventative, and this is at current prices. Also, said company, Merck, is in the process of releasing a new drug that will cost in the thousands.
  - geofft 5y ago
    $12 per person per what unit of time? $12 gets you like three tablets. That's according to some claimed protocols enough to (probably) get you out of the hospital alive, but that's not a long-term preventative. Meanwhile, the government pays about $20 per dose of the vaccine. The difference between $12 and $20 is not substantial.
    - lambdaba 5y ago
      The dose for prevention is a fraction of the dose for people already infected. Maybe per year? I don't know, I don't recall the details, but even so that's without the economies of scale that would intervene if it was a worldwide effort. Re: vaccines, JP Morgan estimated Pfizer alone will make $100B from vaccines. I don't think manufacturing Ivermectin is complex enough that it would net ANY profit, the effort would be organized completely differently. Lastly, I don't think this is a conspiracy, either for money or politics, going for vaccines was just the easiest sell for both people and governments, and doing anything different would have been extremely difficult (see Sweden and lockdown policies).
      - OminousWeapons 5y ago
        > Lastly, I don't think this is a conspiracy, either for money or politics, going for vaccines was just the easiest sell for both people and governments, and doing anything different would have been extremely difficult (see Sweden and lockdown policies). This is not true. Governments were and are being hammered by their inability to manage COVID. There is a massive incentive to find a therapeutic that can treat the infected rather than just a vaccine, which is how crazes surrounding Ivermectin and other unproven therapeutics got started to begin with. Not only that, but generic therapeutics that could be easily manufactured and transported to poorer nations are clearly the best option to solve this problem. Vaccines were the hardest sell and the worst option for governments given their long developmental timeline, the FUD surrounding them, and the clear complexities surrounding distribution and scarcity.
User23 5y ago
And why is Covid not really a thing in subsaharan Africa where everyone takes ivermectin anyway, because it’s a marvelous antiparasitic drug. You’d think the poorest parts of Africa with the worst medical systems in the world would be hit harder, but they’re not. And it’s probably not genetic since the African diaspora is hit hard by covid.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- geofft 5y ago
  There's a whole lot of other possible confounding hypotheses here: more frequent outdoor activity, increased ventilation in buildings, increased sunlight, lower population density, lower spread from international travelers, less robust reporting, the "worst medical systems in the world" resulting in a smaller relative fraction of the population at high risk of covid surviving everything else, less cultural offense at being told to wear a mask, etc.
- papandada 5y ago
  Everyone takes it, routinely? Or gets prescribed it easily in the case of certain symptoms? My surface-level, limited perception in a couple countries I have friends/family in (Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria) is that there's little to no testing, but also not apparently a hospital emergency. Then again, these same people also seem to go to their local hospital for what is understood as typhoid and malaria every year or two at least. As a born and raised North American I get told by them that's normal.
- dreyfan 5y ago
  Low population density, a largely outdoor existence, and a very low rate of testing and reporting.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > Low population density, a largely outdoor existence, I'm not sure that I buy that; cities in Africa have large dense slums, where it's going to be hard to distance. And crowded transport to/from work. https://www.kulturevulturez.com/story-south-africa-slums-gangs/ https://www.kulturevulturez.com/story-south-africa-slums-gan... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi
Azsy 5y ago
The problem with Ivermectin studies is that people will actually review them, so no academic can build a reputation on fraudulent data. Since there is no way to fake thousands of data point, now expensive research studies and clinical trials are getting done, all the research studies that get done will be of higher budget and subject to being called "basic science" How about just properly reporting and studying the actual facts that some scientists will just make shit up, publication bias exists, and they can draw the wrong conclusions, like that one on Ivermectin? P.S. I would be happy if Ivermectin turned out to work, but statistically you expect a few false positives to emerge from doctors in the field doing small studies that agree and appear to point to a cure. If Ivermectin was as effective as say, antihistamine pills, you would get a flood of agreement.
shlant 5y ago
> all the research studies that get done will be low budget and subject to being called "lousy science" This is not true. Keep an eye out for TOGETHER[1], I-TECH[2], PRINCIPLE[3] and ACTIV-6[4] results (with TOGETHER already having dropped IVM for futility) [1] https://www.togethertrial.com/ https://www.togethertrial.com/ [2] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04920942 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04920942 [3] https://www.principletrial.org/ https://www.principletrial.org/ [4] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530
phonypc 5y ago
The lousy studies aren't lousy because of the constraints of an insufficient budget. They're based on fraudulent/fabricated data. As far as the "real world trial" of India, the peak of their delta wave roughly coinciding with an updated treatment guideline including ivermectin is hardly strong evidence. A) Correlation isn't causation. B) An updated treatment guideline doesn't indicate people were actually taking ivermectin. C) Using it as a treatment (i.e. after a case occurs) can't possibly be responsible for preventing cases. There was some buzz about it being offered as a prophylactic, but it never panned out. D) The peak of the wave coinciding with the update necessitates that the reproduction rate was dropping before the update Further, just look at Peru for a clear demonstration that it isn't the miracle some would like to believe it is.

ssijak 5y ago

Why would not some government fund the proper research into Ivermectin and Covid and be done with it. A lot of money was already thrown into the problem, throwing a bit more into a possible cheap and safe preventive treatment is a no brainer, unless I am missing something. Even this article suggests that there are some studies showing promise for Ivermectin, well, go create a big proper one and put an end to this debate. I can't stand Ivermectin zealots and anti-Ivermectin knowitalls.

jfengel 5y ago
If the government funds it, that will make it suspicious in the eyes of many people. There are already a number of high quality studies, and they are interpreted through people's own lens of preconception. The article points out a real problem in medical literature, but the public perception problem is much worse. Medical literature is at least trying to reach a truthful consensus.
- abricot 5y ago
  Can you explain what "truthful consensus" means in this situation? The article does not give me any hope that medical literature is "trying" anything.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    Most researchers are interested in the truth. There are incentives for people to be lazy and fast, which leads to bad science, but most of the time they would rather be right. They'll even defend bad results, but out of self protection rather than outright intent to mislead. So there are plenty of problems, but of an entirely different character from the outright propaganda by non-scientists practicing ideological confirmation bias.
    - over_the_raibow 5y ago
      > Most researchers are interested in the truth No they are not. They are interested in having a source of income and a career first. Reaching the wrong conclusions can leave them without a job, or funding or stall their career advancement. Modern academia does not select for truth.

jfengel 5y ago

It's as though medical literature is going through the same process that the Internet did: built with the assumption of good behavior, and that good actors would swamp bad ones. That turns out to be untrue, and correcting it after the fact is much harder.

wayoutthere 5y ago
This is the fundamental problem of our time. Trust has been traditionally built via personal relationships. But that doesn’t scale, and every attempt people have made to try to curb the bad actors at scale is a cat-and-mouse problem that is eventually worked around. So media influencers of dubious provenance can establish a following and there’s no credible voice with enough “engagement” to debunk them (the truth is boring), so they become the trusted source. Nobody knows who to trust anymore. And until we solve that problem at global scale, the grifters and con men will rule the world.
- jfengel 5y ago
  The exception I keep pondering is Wikipedia. It has many problems, but most of the time I get decent information. I expected it to be overrun by trolls and spammers. While they do exist, they don't dominate the way most other forums do without appointed police.
  - marton78 5y ago
    This is not the case in German language Wikipedia, though. There are many examples there of users with high reputation abusing their power and pushing their personal agendas.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

Hopefully the NIH funded ACTIV-6 Trial will provide more definitive evidence on Ivermectin, given that it is a US based study and has 15,000 participants. However, I don't know how the trial stacks up against prior work in terms of dose, and the estimated completion date is DEC 2022. 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... https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530

unanswered 5y ago
Suppose the raw results from the trial are that ivermectin is effective. What do you yourself expect to hear in such a circumstance? From the study, from the media, etc?

d1a2n 5y ago

The Actually Real Scandal About Ivermectin is something like the anthropic principle but about the fact that I know that nothing positive about Ivermectin would ever be allowed on the Atlantic. Is Ivermectin at best barely above useless for covid? Maybe. Is it crucial and it's a crime against humanity for being suppressed? Maybe, and I'm inclined to say probably because the same people who lie about everything are mighty certain that Ivermectin is something that doesn't help covid and anyone who says otherwise is a horse paste eating moron.

pfisch 5y ago
The people saying ivermectin works are the same people saying hcq worked last year. The people pushing the vaccine are the only people who have consistently been curing serious illnesses for the last 100 years. The ivermectin group are the people who have been pushing snake oil for the last 1000 years and cured nothing.
- d1a2n 5y ago
  Wow you've really convinced me bud you definitely sound nuanced and educated, now I know that the vaccine = good and supported by smart people and ivermectin = bad and supported by dumb people, I know exactly which side I want to be on.
  - pfisch 5y ago
    The antivaxxers are all out in force pushing ivermectin, which is not well supported by evidence. I didn't say anyone was dumb, but people have been fighting against vaccines and pushing snake oil for the entire history of vaccines.
- silver-arrow 5y ago
  Curing serious disease? That’s rich.
  - dralley 5y ago
    What do you mean? Smallpox is extinct, diptheria, pertussus and polio are nearly extinct, and measles mumps and rubella would be nearly extinct if not for pockets of antivaxers creating a constant stream of outbreaks. Go look up how many diseases these people killed prior to the vaccines, and then a few years after. You are absolutely taking for granted what we've accomplished through the use of vaccines.

vixen99 5y ago

As an observation not an argument, irrespective of what comes to be accepted as to the efficacy of ivermectin, there seem to be an awful lot of doctors and other professionals across the world prepared to trash their personal reputations & sometimes their careers if "claims about the drug are based on shoddy science—but that science is entirely unremarkable in its shoddiness." is true.

jeffbee 5y ago
The mectin hucksters are hopeful that their careers will be sufficiently boosted by their repeated appearances on Joe Rogan and that tens of millions of cognitively-impaired COVID-19 survivors will be easily duped into throwing money away on their next scam.

didjathinkmess 5y ago

Why take the biased article at its word? Luckily we have access to all of these studies and can do the research ourselves (thanks Internet!) https://ivmmeta.com/ https://ivmmeta.com/ The current count of medical studies that show Ivermectin being beneficial for treating or preventing COVID-19 is 64. Out of those 64, 44 of them are peer reviewed. Or we could throw the baby out with the bathwater because this article cherry picked a few of the worst studies to shape a narrative.

ivraatiems 5y ago
How do we know that this article is biased and yours is not? Why should we trust this source and not the one linked above?
- h2odragon 5y ago
  They're both biased, and both will be using any facts they mention in a way that's best for their narrative. everything is like this. The problem is that we have this utopian notion that somewhere there is an Unbiased Grand Truth that should be given to us in exchange for our attention. We assume and expect that we're being given the Gold Standard Truth when we read anything now. And then we get upset when we peel the foil off and discover it wasn't even chocolate.
- didjathinkmess 5y ago
  That's up to the reader to judge. I always advise doing your own research. For example look at the history of the Atlantic, which political side do they align with, have they ever said anything unbiased about Ivermectin, etc. Another thing to consider: one is an article and one is a site which points to medical studies so it's difficult to compare the two. You can weave a biased narrative easily with one article. It's a lot more difficult to do that across 60+ studies. Trust nothing, do your own research always.
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago
  Because it links to the individual studies.
5y ago

oblib 5y ago

It's probably not a coincidence that the same people saying "Masks don't work and the proof is I can smell my farts when I wear them", "The virus is a hoax", "The vaccines have a tracking chip in them" are the same folks saying "ivermectin prevents and cures covid". I live in the Missouri Ozarks, near Branson, and I am surrounded by them. I've been following the use of ivermectin since around June 2020 and still have not seen any definitive proof it works better than a placebo. But I did suspect there might be a run on it over a year ago so I bought an extra package of it for my two burros. Just a few days ago I had to use it. About a month ago I asked an employee at the feed store I buy it at how their stock of it was holding up. He told me "We're selling out within 24 hours of getting a shipment in." It won't matter if rigerous studies determine it doesn't work at all, they won't care. These are folks who are still refusing to get vaxxed, wear a mask, and social distance. They don't care that over 670,000 of their fellow citizens have been killed by it here. They don't believe that either. They're "Mad as hell" and they're "not going to take it anymore".

over_the_raibow 5y ago
Masks really don t work.
listenallyall 5y ago
> 670,000 of their fellow citizens have been killed by it here Are we still just straight repeating govt propaganda to scare the general public? Did Colin Powell's death not make it extremely clear how inflated these totals are? Gen. Powell was 84 with Parkinson's and an incurable blood cell cancer (and fully vaccinated, btw). But sure, Covid "killed" him. Chalk up one more to help justify the lockdowns and eliminating your freedoms.
- dwaltrip 5y ago
  Please link to a reputable source explaining how Colin Powell didn’t die of Covid-19 complications. Thanks.
- oblib 5y ago
  I spent the better part of a year trying to talk to folks here where I live about masks, preventives, vaccines and social distancing. Nothing made a difference. Gen. Powell's cause of death was covid. He was in several high risk groups. If he got ran over by a speeding car and died the next day would you insist his cause of death was his age?

ivraatiems 5y ago

It's important to remember that by and large, people decide what they support on the basis of what makes them emotionally feel better, and then find evidence for it. People who castigate the medical and pharmaceutical industries for being corrupt and then wholeheartedly advocate for one treatment or another as "the solution" based on articles they found on the Internet from unknown sources aren't and were never operating from a place of logic - as though nobody on the Internet was ever maliciously motivated or trying to make a buck. There's no point in a discussion based on "the evidence" with these individuals, except maybe to point out the cognitive dissonance at play.

felipeqq2 5y ago

Brazil received strong govt propaganda for ivermectin use. Some people even got liver problems due to Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine overdose [1]. Yet, the country is one of the most affected by the pandemic. It has more than 600k deaths. For comparison, India is around 6x bigger regarding population, and only had 454K deaths. That's the real-world Ivermectin study. If it worked, you can be sure that Brazil would be in a much better situation. [1] https://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2021/03/29/apos-descobrir-problema-no-figado-por-causa-do-uso-excessivo-da-ivermectina-baiana-lamenta-bobagens-que-a-gente-faz.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2021/03/29/apos-desc... (in Portuguese)

frazbin 5y ago

Say it with me folks: horse dewormer.

__del__ 5y ago
hors... glutamate-gated chloride channels.