3 ms·

The bit most people are interested in is the potential prophylactic effect, not so much treatment once you have it (at least the people who are following the sc

The bit most people are interested in is the potential prophylactic effect, not so much treatment once you have it (at least the people who are following the science and not buying into the weird cute claims.) It having an apparent antiviral effect during treatment indicates there's a possibility for mechanism of action that can prevent catching covid. It might be noise in the data, but studying it in large trials is justified imo.

bayesian_horse 5y ago
A prophylactic effect would be, pardon me, stupid. There is even less evidence for that, and the vaccines clearly work better. Also you'd need to take Ivermectin continously for the next few years?? Compounding the cost and potential risks from sideeffects. Ivermectin is quite safe, but there are some risks, all drugs can go wrong every once in a while.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  You're not pardoned. You could have edited that, but decided not being rude wasn't worth the effort of deleting a single sentence? Maybe just don't write the first condescending thing that pops into your mind. If ivermectin worked as an antiviral prophylactic, it's another tool to use with better stability in storage and transportation, it's cheaper, and immediately useful for places that don't have refrigeration or access to vaccines, or can't use them for medical reasons. It could be effective against coronaviruses generally, which would be great. It would also probably mean a novel mechanism of action which could lead to new drugs. From a purely scientific standpoint, it's a wonderful thing to get more out of microbe based medicines since they're so easy to culture. Iterating over different chemistry using crispr solves many manufacturing issues, and makes drug r&d vastly more accessible around the world. A determined high school science geek could produce ivermectin, but mrna vaccines require multi million dollar labs. The evidence isn't strong, to be perfectly clear, but the payoff is more than just a "stupid" less effective vaccine alternative.
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    Not the idea of Ivermectin as prophylactic is stupid, but believing this is the case, as many people clearly do, in my opinion merits that verdict. Beyond the social media hype there is almost no rational reason to believe that. I even have a problem with writing "almost no", because I don't really trust what I've seen in that regard on face value.

bayesian_horse 5y ago

A prophylactic effect would be, pardon me, stupid. There is even less evidence for that, and the vaccines clearly work better. Also you'd need to take Ivermectin continously for the next few years?? Compounding the cost and potential risks from sideeffects. Ivermectin is quite safe, but there are some risks, all drugs can go wrong every once in a while.

robbedpeter 5y ago
You're not pardoned. You could have edited that, but decided not being rude wasn't worth the effort of deleting a single sentence? Maybe just don't write the first condescending thing that pops into your mind. If ivermectin worked as an antiviral prophylactic, it's another tool to use with better stability in storage and transportation, it's cheaper, and immediately useful for places that don't have refrigeration or access to vaccines, or can't use them for medical reasons. It could be effective against coronaviruses generally, which would be great. It would also probably mean a novel mechanism of action which could lead to new drugs. From a purely scientific standpoint, it's a wonderful thing to get more out of microbe based medicines since they're so easy to culture. Iterating over different chemistry using crispr solves many manufacturing issues, and makes drug r&d vastly more accessible around the world. A determined high school science geek could produce ivermectin, but mrna vaccines require multi million dollar labs. The evidence isn't strong, to be perfectly clear, but the payoff is more than just a "stupid" less effective vaccine alternative.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Not the idea of Ivermectin as prophylactic is stupid, but believing this is the case, as many people clearly do, in my opinion merits that verdict. Beyond the social media hype there is almost no rational reason to believe that. I even have a problem with writing "almost no", because I don't really trust what I've seen in that regard on face value.