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Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

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Re: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

#501

Post by effie »

dang wrote: post #477
effie wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is not evidence according to the standards of medical science. What the hell are you trying to say? That doctors treating patients observations can be dismissed because they don't talk the academic language or their results don't follow academic guidelines? There is more to medicine than just clinical trials. Many different things can count as evidence, even if they are not up to your academic standard. Docto…

Please don't cross into flamewar, especially on divisive topics. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

OK I could have worded that better, but I certainly did not want to get into a flamewar. I think there is a well visible point there still.

Re: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

#502

Post by nszceta »

RachelF wrote: post #420
injb wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conspiracy angles are coming from those who have been misled into thinking it has been more successful than it really has been, which leads to confusion about why it’s not being used everywhere. No, the "conspiracy angles" are coming from people who have seen youtube videos and HN posts disappearing just for discussing it.

Here's a good overview of why posts disappear: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/why-has-ivermectin-become-a-di...

I would like this translated into normal English. This is the basis of the argument of why posts disappear from the article, and I don't understand what the author is trying to say at all:

> One of the challenges of the pandemic period is the degree to which science has become intertwined with politics. Arguments about the efficacy of mask use or ventilators, or the viability of repurposed drugs like hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, or even the pandemic’s origins, were quashed from the jump in the American commercial press, which committed itself to a regime of simplified insta-takes made opposite to Donald Trump’s comments. With a few exceptions, Internet censors generally tracked with this conventional wisdom, which had the effect of moving conspiracy theories and real scientific debates alike far underground.

Re: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

#503

Post by meowface »

andreilys wrote: post #71
rkagerer wrote: post #61

This is the same active ingredient used to treat heartworm in dogs and kill other types of parasites.

It’s also been used to treat river blindness in humans, with billions of doses administered over several decades

Both of these are parasites, though. Things that kill parasites don't necessarily kill viruses.

It shows that it's probably not that risky to take at certain doses, but it implies nothing about efficacy.

Re: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

#504

Post by spadez »

ghoward wrote: post #453
boredprograming wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Basically none. The vaccines have been given to almost a billion people. And side effects have been tracked. How can we find this number? We already have it. If there was anything dangerous within even 3 orders of magnitude of those that have died because they didn't get the vaccine it would be front page news. Get vaccinated

What about long-term effects of the vaccines?

I asked why Covid vaccines are absent from VAERS list of reportable AEFIs

https://vaers.hhs.gov/docs/VAERS_Table_of_Reportable_Events_...

And the person you are responding basically said that the new vaccines are so safe that it didn't have to be on that list.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27513984

I don't mean this as a personal attack on that user, but It is really concerning how blind and apologetic some people are to the various things that can go wrong with a Vaccine.

Re: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

#505

Post by darwingr »

jean_valje4n wrote: post #390
injb wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conspiracy angles are coming from those who have been misled into thinking it has been more successful than it really has been, which leads to confusion about why it’s not being used everywhere. No, the "conspiracy angles" are coming from people who have seen youtube videos and HN posts disappearing just for discussing it.

Well a lot of people with biochem background also have a lot of skepticism about it too. Ivermectin works by interrupting nerve function of helminths(parasites). covid is a virus, not a multicellular organism with nerves. I'm not saying ivermectin is useless, but why it would work for covid doesn't make sense (yet at least). Maybe it has some other mechanism to slow down covid that isn't fully understood.

The mechanism has now been published in Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-021-00430-5

Re: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

#506

Post by Izkata »

tootie wrote: post #492
goldemerald wrote: post #7

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…

There isn't really. There's as much evidence as we had for hydroxy chloroquine. So, some but unconvincing. And since it's been widely deployed by several desperate governments you'd think we'd know more by now. Here's a breakdown of what we've learned: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/07/iv... Here's the latest bad news: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/science/coronavirus-iverm...

In the hundreds of HCQ studies out there, eyeballing it about 2/3 of them show some sort of positive result [0]. Early treatment with the dosage on the lower end of the tested spectrum has 100% positive results [1].

It was odd a week ago to see some of the media suddenly decide to report on one of these [2], like the "HCQ Bad!" blinders had finally been removed.

[0] https://c19hcq.com/

[1] https://hcqmeta.com/

[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9671029/Hydroxychlo...

Re: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

#507

Post by darwingr »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #292
goldemerald wrote: post #7

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…

> There seemed to be an overwhelming amount of evidence.... > ....there hadn't been a randomized trial the drug You don't see the contradiction here? Edit: because it must be made 100% obvious, clinical trial results are the definition of evidence in medical science.

It's an approved drug. Fully licensed and considered to have a wide safety profile.

Doctors don't need permission for off-label use. It's just not a thing. We're in strange territory where doctors (professionals) have been demoted to nurses and they can't profess.

Re: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

#508

Post by jimmydorry »

fda_hates_u wrote: post #491
javagram wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dexamethasone is an approved drug recommended by the FDA for treatment of Covid and it didn’t stop the vaccine EUA. The vaccines are 95-100% effective in trials, no other drug comes close.

Please do not spread fake news. All current vaccines are less than 1% effective. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...

For anyone reading the above comment:

* The quoted 95% etc. numbers are in terms of Relative Risk (ie, the ratio of attack rates with and without a vaccine—which is expressed as 1–RR) * These numbers are essentially a reported efficacy and useless to compare between studies held under different conditions.

With this in mind, from the lancet article linked above:

> However, RRR should be seen against the background risk of being infected and becoming ill with COVID-19, which varies between populations and over time. Although the RRR considers only participants who could benefit from the vaccine, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a vaccine, considers the whole population.

>__ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs: 1.3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1.2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1.2% for the J&J, 0.93% for the Gamaleya, and 0.84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.__

Re: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

#509

Post by noduerme »

galangalalgol wrote: post #409
jean_valje4n wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a lot of people with biochem background also have a lot of skepticism about it too. Ivermectin works by interrupting nerve function of helminths(parasites). covid is a virus, not a multicellular organism with nerves. I'm not saying ivermectin is useless, but why it would work for covid doesn't make sense (yet at least). Maybe it has some other mechanism to slow down covid that isn't fully understood.

there were some studies that seemed to show that it shrank melanomas. my guess is it is triggering the immune system response. but i just write software, so dont go chugging horse dewormer instead of seeing a doctor because this smart guy on hn said it would get rid of your melanoma.

This. A lot of things generate a broad immune response that would probably improve mild to moderate cases of just about anything. My gf secretly switched my usual horse dewormer for Sanka. On the third day I ate the postman, but I haven't had covid since.

Re: Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection

#510

Post by darwingr »

stordoff wrote: post #295
atlgator wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it works or not, there's no money to be made from Ivermectin. It's a very cheap generic drug. Why else would they stamp out all possible investigations of it just to ascertain truth?

Is the same not true for dexamethasone[1], which was the first successful finding from the RECOVERY trial[2]? That's how I've repeatedly seen it described[3] (FWIW, I was treated with dexamethasone for Covid-19 in October 2020). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethasone [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RECOVERY_Trial [3] "A cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives[...]" https://www.bbc.co.uk/new…

The same is NOT true for dexamethasone, well not exactly, since there was no directly competing drug. Dexamethasone, which you can probably confirm, is useful in the later stages of COVID where there's an inflammatory response. Since no other proposed medications were seeking an EUA as a "late stage" therapeutic, there's no chance the already approved Dexamethasone would have blocked the issuance of an EUA.

That's at least my understanding based on the proposed systemic problem in FDAs.

Conversely, in this proposed problem, it's said that ivermectin (and others) are only effective when used in the early stage or even prophylactic. Being already fully licensed medications, that could put the issuance of an EUA for vaccines or Remdesivir in jeopardy.

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