7 ms·

I find this highly likely the reason (making truth, again, much more nuanced than it seems). Also it's disturbing to look up the statistics and realize that a s

I find this highly likely the reason (making truth, again, much more nuanced than it seems). Also it's disturbing to look up the statistics and realize that a surprising percentage of the US has undiagnosed parasites. It changes depending on definition used but it's quite substantial... https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3m88j/millions-of-americans-have-a-parasite-and-dont-realize-it https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3m88j/millions-of-americans... It doesn't even need to be tapeworm. There are a ton of parasites that can be reactivated...

yieldcrv 4y ago
Its really dismaying to me that this is "political". It distracts the credentialed people and respected institutions from considering this hypothesis. All the studies are reactionary like "I told you so!" while testing the wrong thing and exacerbating why this is political at all. Its simple geography. Suburban and rural areas are living in greater squalor than anyone would care to admit. Hence the tapeworms. The people in those areas are not considered or serviced well by Democrats and happen to be Republican. The people there made an incorrect conclusion due to a correlation, the people elsewhere called them dumb and eventually did study after study on the incorrect conclusion just to say "you're dumb". The causation in those areas are not considered or well serviced.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  I completely agree. It's amazing because, arguably, both sides are correct! Science: It does nothing against COVID! (True, in isolation.) Lived Experience: It sure helped me! (And it actually probably did!) Also, your comments about squalor - most of the test subjects probably don't live in rural areas where they would be more likely to get the parasites... And if you do live in such an area, ivermectin may actually be a completely reasonable treatment strategy (for the same reasons that "lots of rest," "stay hydrated," etc. are beneficial). Yikes.
- tdeck 4y ago
  > Its simple geography. Suburban and rural areas are living in greater squalor than anyone would care to admit. Hence the tapeworms. Would be nice to present any evidence at all for this claim. The vice article that parent post linked to doesn't talk about tapeworms or about area geography. Why would people in suburban areas be so much more at risk for tapeworms than people in urban areas? This feels like the height of motivated reasoning.
  - baseballdork 4y ago
    Also, wouldn't we expect to see this in these studies?
    - yieldcrv 4y ago
      because that only appears if that's what was studied. which it wasn't. this study and many others aren't checking patients to see if Ivermectin is by coincidence being used for what it was approved for - tapeworm treatment. they are doing studies on people with covid.
      - baseballdork 4y ago
        > because that only appears if that's what was studied. Why would that be the case? If there's a statistically significant portion of the population suffering from parasites and this treatment improves outcomes for those people in a statistically significant way, then why isn't that going to show up in a study looking for improvement of outcomes?
        yieldcrv 4y ago
        Because they still never tested us they had tapeworms This hypothesis is guessing that this distribution of the population did and that’s why they are convinced they are seeing such positive correlations when using Ivermectin after a Covid ailment. Supporting aspects are that Covid affected a broad enough population for the tapeworm statistics to map 1:1 with a population, and that many severe covid cases and deaths were exacerbated by opportunistic infections. So we have to look for what the opportunistic infections could be? How strange that a horse dewormer happens to work moderately okay in those regions.
giardini 4y ago
The article has a few errors/omissions about the so-called "kissing bug": There is a family of insects, "assassin bugs", having a hypodermic proboscis, that manifest the "kissing bug" behavior. They land and pierce the skin with the proboscis. At 14 I was bitten on the arm. A burning sensation alerted me, whereupon I noted a young red-and-black assassin bug on my arm and brushed it off. In contrast my 8-year-old cousin was bitten by a large (1-1/2" long) assassin bug and screamed for an hour. There is no such thing as a "mild bite" and I fail to see how one could sleep through it. As well, the burning and pain is caused b/c the insect injects digestive enzymes into its prey to kill and eat it (like a spider). The larger the bug, the more enzymes. The "kissing-bug" moniker dates from at least the early part of the previous century: a North American infestation of assassin bugs occurred (near Chicago IIRC) and it was indeed a newsworthy event: I once saw a copy of an old newspaper article about the outbreak. The astonishing thing is how far north this was reported decades ago. It is only within the last 30 years that medical authorities have even begun to admit that Chagas Disease could be present in the continental USA and there was much debate about its presence in Texas, one of the southernmost states.

yieldcrv 4y ago

Its really dismaying to me that this is "political". It distracts the credentialed people and respected institutions from considering this hypothesis. All the studies are reactionary like "I told you so!" while testing the wrong thing and exacerbating why this is political at all. Its simple geography. Suburban and rural areas are living in greater squalor than anyone would care to admit. Hence the tapeworms. The people in those areas are not considered or serviced well by Democrats and happen to be Republican. The people there made an incorrect conclusion due to a correlation, the people elsewhere called them dumb and eventually did study after study on the incorrect conclusion just to say "you're dumb". The causation in those areas are not considered or well serviced.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
I completely agree. It's amazing because, arguably, both sides are correct! Science: It does nothing against COVID! (True, in isolation.) Lived Experience: It sure helped me! (And it actually probably did!) Also, your comments about squalor - most of the test subjects probably don't live in rural areas where they would be more likely to get the parasites... And if you do live in such an area, ivermectin may actually be a completely reasonable treatment strategy (for the same reasons that "lots of rest," "stay hydrated," etc. are beneficial). Yikes.
tdeck 4y ago
> Its simple geography. Suburban and rural areas are living in greater squalor than anyone would care to admit. Hence the tapeworms. Would be nice to present any evidence at all for this claim. The vice article that parent post linked to doesn't talk about tapeworms or about area geography. Why would people in suburban areas be so much more at risk for tapeworms than people in urban areas? This feels like the height of motivated reasoning.
- baseballdork 4y ago
  Also, wouldn't we expect to see this in these studies?
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    because that only appears if that's what was studied. which it wasn't. this study and many others aren't checking patients to see if Ivermectin is by coincidence being used for what it was approved for - tapeworm treatment. they are doing studies on people with covid.
    - baseballdork 4y ago
      > because that only appears if that's what was studied. Why would that be the case? If there's a statistically significant portion of the population suffering from parasites and this treatment improves outcomes for those people in a statistically significant way, then why isn't that going to show up in a study looking for improvement of outcomes?
      - yieldcrv 4y ago
        Because they still never tested us they had tapeworms This hypothesis is guessing that this distribution of the population did and that’s why they are convinced they are seeing such positive correlations when using Ivermectin after a Covid ailment. Supporting aspects are that Covid affected a broad enough population for the tapeworm statistics to map 1:1 with a population, and that many severe covid cases and deaths were exacerbated by opportunistic infections. So we have to look for what the opportunistic infections could be? How strange that a horse dewormer happens to work moderately okay in those regions.

giardini 4y ago

The article has a few errors/omissions about the so-called "kissing bug": There is a family of insects, "assassin bugs", having a hypodermic proboscis, that manifest the "kissing bug" behavior. They land and pierce the skin with the proboscis. At 14 I was bitten on the arm. A burning sensation alerted me, whereupon I noted a young red-and-black assassin bug on my arm and brushed it off. In contrast my 8-year-old cousin was bitten by a large (1-1/2" long) assassin bug and screamed for an hour. There is no such thing as a "mild bite" and I fail to see how one could sleep through it. As well, the burning and pain is caused b/c the insect injects digestive enzymes into its prey to kill and eat it (like a spider). The larger the bug, the more enzymes. The "kissing-bug" moniker dates from at least the early part of the previous century: a North American infestation of assassin bugs occurred (near Chicago IIRC) and it was indeed a newsworthy event: I once saw a copy of an old newspaper article about the outbreak. The astonishing thing is how far north this was reported decades ago. It is only within the last 30 years that medical authorities have even begun to admit that Chagas Disease could be present in the continental USA and there was much debate about its presence in Texas, one of the southernmost states.