Talking about this study on Youtube is forbidden according to their TOS. "Don’t post content on YouTube if it includes any of the following: Treatment misinformation: Content that recommends use of Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 Claims that Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine are effective treatments for COVID-19" https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en
I find this extremely worrying, to be honest. They are legal and widely used drugs in most countries. They might not be miracle drugs to treat COVID-19, but I don't see the point in this ban.
The issue isn't the drug. It's the claim. The drug could be legal for use in the US, and there would still be an issue (unless there were studies good enough to pass FDA scrutiny that demonstrated the drugs effectiveness). In the US, you don't get to make medical claims that you can't prove are valid.
Now, the other questions are whether Youtube should be considered "in the US", and whether Youtube should be an enforcement arm of the FDA. That's the worrying part.
I find this extremely worrying, to be honest. They are legal and widely used drugs in most countries. They might not be miracle drugs to treat COVID-19, but I don't see the point in this ban.
Because people are idiots and will try and self-medicate, potentially making themselves really ill.
I know that is the “theory” behind the censorship, but I’d suspect the true number of people choosing to do that is a lot smaller than people think. And frankly…if not censoring kills a few idiots and saves many more by allowing the medical professionals to fine tune a treatment, that’s a lot better than killing many to save a few idiots by making potential lifesaving treatment experimentation off limits.
> I truly hope in the coming years the censorship of this topic will be the catalyst for allowing free speech to prevail on social media. If someone died because of a "Take Ivermectin and you'll survive COVID" video on YouTube, who's to blame? Should YouTube not take steps to prevent the spread of misinformation that could kill people? edit Big downvotes, no response. Great system.
Here's a response: YouTube is chock-full of dubious health information. But only this one got banned. Why? For the record, since I've been muzzled from responding further, I don't believe that it was "money".
This doesn't address the parent's question - it's only a criticism of YouTube's potential hypocrisy.
This is a conspiracy theory. Why is it that everyone who pushes Ivermectin as a miracle cure for COVID is also a conspiracy aficionado?
Simple. You have defined the latter as some variation on the former.
No, "there is a worldwide conspiracy to suppress Ivermectin so that Big Pharma can make vaccines" is clearly a conspiracy theory, it's not a tautology.
Here's a response: YouTube is chock-full of dubious health information. But only this one got banned. Why? For the record, since I've been muzzled from responding further, I don't believe that it was "money".
And here’s the correct response to you: Money.
You've posted something like 9 unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments in this thread. That has a seriously damaging effect on discussion, especially when the topic is divisive as this one is. I'm sure you don't intend that, but the effects work that way regardless of intent: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
I heard about Ivermectin for the first time this week and was shocked how much it seemed that I had stepped into conspiracy theory land. There seemed to be an overwhelming amount of evidence over the last year that this repurposed drug is effective at treating Covid during a variety of stages (preventative, first positive test, ICU admittance, and even long haul). But since there hadn't been a randomized trial the dr…
> I truly hope in the coming years the censorship of this topic will be the catalyst for allowing free speech to prevail on social media. If someone died because of a "Take Ivermectin and you'll survive COVID" video on YouTube, who's to blame? Should YouTube not take steps to prevent the spread of misinformation that could kill people? edit Big downvotes, no response. Great system.
It doesn't have to be so black and white on youtube's response. They could, for example, but a disclaimer pre-roll ad saying "Don't take medical advice from youtube." There's a difference between Brett's interview, where they discussed the scientific merits of a drug, and someone saying "Here's how much drug you need to buy at your farm store, and how to dilute it." In any case, the analysis for banning topics doesn't consider the risk of how many lives could have been saved if Ivermectin actually is pandemic ending. Some professionals speculate hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been prevented if Ivermectin was given back in November. I don't know either way, but surely the discussion is worth not being banned.
Without randomized trials you cannot recommend a drug because you cannot exclude confounders. It seems wrong to me to even speak of "overwhelming evidence" without a randomized trial or other sound ways to control or identify for confounders (e.g. causal models).
While randomized trials are certainly the gold-standard for determining if you should give a new drug to treat an arbitrary disease, that process is far too conservative during a pandemic where a huge majority of the world cannot access proper medical care. Ivermectin is already massively produced, used throughout the world, and cheap to manufacture (compared to new anti-Covid drugs). Even months ago before the benef…
> The sudden drop in Covid cases in India as the clearest indicator to me.
What's the alleged connection here? Are you claiming that some non-trivial number of patients in India were treated with this? How many, and at what point after being infected? And just how did the treatment affect the case numbers? Generally you'd expect the vast majority of secondary infections to happen before the diagnosis, not after, so a treatment seems totally irrelevant to the case numbers.
Remember if Ivermectin was considered a safe treatment, there would have been no Emergency Use Authorization for vaccines. There was huge incentives to suppress the Ivermectin story until the vaccines were approved. Merck claimed it's own drug (off patent) did not have enough safety data. This is a drug taken by millions of people every month for decades.
This is a conspiracy theory. Why is it that everyone who pushes Ivermectin as a miracle cure for COVID is also a conspiracy aficionado?
All I said was there was a disincentive and claimed it's being wrongly characterized as 'unsafe' by the company that brought it to market. Are either of those statements incorrect?
Because people are idiots and will try and self-medicate, potentially making themselves really ill.
I know that is the “theory” behind the censorship, but I’d suspect the true number of people choosing to do that is a lot smaller than people think. And frankly…if not censoring kills a few idiots and saves many more by allowing the medical professionals to fine tune a treatment, that’s a lot better than killing many to save a few idiots by making potential lifesaving treatment experimentation off limits.
How are youtube videos by people who haven't studied biology since high school going to help medical professionals to fine tune a treatment?