3 ms·

The main point of the critique, that people didn't take it consistently, is actually strengthening the study, isn't it? Even with only a partial treatment, you

• avs733 5y ago
  Not quite. My wife’s an epidemiologist (and a damn grouchy methods person…I get yelled at about study design A LOT). Her first check on any study like this is the denominator of different groups because that drives your results. This study has sketchy as hell denominators. They artificially inflate the denominator of the ivermectin group while also shifting infections to the non ivemecrim group…that skews the infection statistics by increasing the denominator artificially. The critique is basically saying “you are using the 139k people who said ‘sure’ when offered drugs as the denominator and you shouldn’t” If 75% of those people didn’t take the dang drugs (that’s a hypothetical not a claim). Then you 44% decrease in infections evaporates. This is terrible study design because of how they grouped people. They didn’t do follow up they didn’t ask whether people took the drugs (from what I can see) they didn’t have a placebo group of any form…they just offered people drugs and used those numbers to draw broad conclusions.