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Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

astralcodexten.substack.com

271–280 of 805 posts

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#271
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you have responded is a perfect illustration of the crowd we are talking about. You are trying to make a personal offence and claims without any references. That sounds like a blind repeating of the narrative, even if it wasn't intended to be so.

I'm not "trying to make a personal offence", I am explaining why you may find people mock you. Your view of the situation on the ground is incorrect. The studies you are claiming have not been done are a mere google search away. In fact in this case the link at the top of the HN discussion contains a lot of relevant information. Here's the major question I have for folks like yourself who are still on about ivermecti…

I wasn't soliciting for an explanation why people are trying to mock - too much studying of psychology provided enough information to answer this question. The answer, as it may come at a surprise for you, is not related to plausibility of statements. But that's totally different matter.

As for your question, let me give you a very simple answer. As a layman in certain area, I see few facts - several families who I know in person chose to take Ivermectin as part of their treatment when family member contracted covid. All of them successfully recovered from covid.

And at the same time, a person I know lost 2 legs shortly after "safe" jab due to blood cloths. Doctor said that if he wouldn't intervene and put him in ICU, he would be dead by now. Another person got cardiac arrest after jab (being 24yo) and was paid a lump sum (more than $200k) by government to suck it up and keep his mouth shut.

Certainly I am not going to draw any conclusions from those observations. Except one - why Ivermectin is so actively dismissed and the pharma jabs are so actively promoted? There is clearly some evidence ivermectin does help, but we have no means to know at what extend or at what price. This atmosphere of ignorance and narrative-pushing has nothing in common with intellectual curiosity, which is something we have to use when dealing with challenges like covid. Sadly not many of us are capable of that.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#272
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would excess deaths in summer in 0 - 45 age group, in Europe be compelling or is there some other explanation to those? I don't know, what figures are you referring to and what do you think those are evidence of? > For preventing spread ineffectiveness, would Gibraltar being #2 in the World by infection rate while having 99% vaccination be compelling? Taken in isolation, not particularly, no. What you appear to hav…

I have scanned through so many forums reading anecdotal stories, also downloaded VAERS data, and I definitely see a pattern, but this is not enough of compelling evidence for anyone. But let's just focus on what could be causing excess deaths during summer. Source: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ Scroll to Excess Mortality See 0-14 age group excess mortality growth during summer (EU approved vaccines for 12+…

VAERS data is not verified, as I said, it's self reported. It's useful but not necessarily great for basing hunches on.

According to your graph, excess mortality for ages 0-14 for this year is lower than it was in 2019, before the vaccine or the pandemic hit. And the excess mortality in the 15-44 age group is maybe 5000 people across 28 countries. Without knowing the variance in previous years, which is not given in those graphs, that's meaningless and could easily be down to the disease itself. I personally know a lot of people in this age group who have come down with the disease now, as they are starting to go out and socialise a lot more than they were a year ago. It's hard to see how the 'normal range' is calculated on the pooled deaths graphs as there only appears to be about 4 years data there, which is not a lot to go on.

So as I said before, what you have here is vague speculation. You can't tell from there that anything unusual is necessarily going on at all, let alone what might be causing it.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#273
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the correct answer to wait for more reliable studies? Which is what most "anti-ivermectin" folks were saying to begin with? If your primary goal is to have a miracle cure in hand that would allow you to push back against vaccine mandates, then this approach probably won't sit well. But if you are interesting in actually finding truth, than waiting for larger, more robust studies was the answer.

Why wait? Why not take ivermectin as a precautionary therapeutic given it is well tolerated with low risk of side effects? There's a chasm between the epistemic question of "does this drug really work?" and the pragmatic question of "does a risk-reward analysis under uncertainty say that I should take this mostly safe drug that might slightly reduce my covid severity?" FWIW, I wouldn't take ivermectin either as a pro…

> FWIW, I wouldn't take ivermectin either as a prophylactic or therapeutic, the evidence just isn't strong enough, but I don't really fault anyone that would add it into the stack of treatments upon a diagnosis in the hopes of a small net benefit.

If you're familiar with software development, this is akin to "there's a bug in my codebase and I'm just going to add a bunch of code that probably won't affect anything in the hope that it will fix the bug".

Meds shouldn't be administered in this way. It just ads noise to the system and will complicate things down the road.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#274
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, as the author cites from another researcher, the trials are a strong piece of evidence for "add[ing] ivermectin to mass drug administration programs." In other words, global medical welfare, where we just give everyone a bunch of a cheap and effective medications to counteract the most prolific diseases. When they invented antibiotics, people began predicting "the end of disease." Fast forward a few decades…

Veterinarian here, used to ivermectin as it should be used - as an anti parasitic. I fully agree with this view above.

Why would I take human medical advice from you? Are you saying there are no human uses beyond an anti parasitic?

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#275
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wait? Why not take ivermectin as a precautionary therapeutic given it is well tolerated with low risk of side effects? There's a chasm between the epistemic question of "does this drug really work?" and the pragmatic question of "does a risk-reward analysis under uncertainty say that I should take this mostly safe drug that might slightly reduce my covid severity?" FWIW, I wouldn't take ivermectin either as a pro…

What other prophylactic treatments do you take in your life before or after COVID? Because in my lifetime I can think of only a small number of classes of general prophylactic treatments I've ever seen a small number of groups of people take. - Silicon valley rationalist types taking stacks of vitamins despite having no evidence on bioavailability because they are generally without side effects and who knows, you mig…

The absolute best medical prophylactic is taking paracetamol before going to bed after a heavy night of drinking.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#276
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that edges you closer to an optimum health state is also beneficial to a certain degree to avoid corona infection. So zinc and vitamine D which enhance and modulate the immune system are recommended. It's not as clearcut as you make it seem. The current vaccines lose their effectiveness over time and are significantly less effective against the delta variant to start with.

What does "modulate the immune system" mean to you?

For instance Vitamin D helps decrease the risk of a cytokine storm after a (corona) infection, and not overreact. (have no references at hand currently, sorry).

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#277
post #8

"It feels right to me because it’s the most troll-ish possible solution. Everybody was wrong!" - I know this is said tongue-in-cheek, but this mischaracterizes the medical scientists who have been working themselves to the bone trying to understand this virus and disease. Actual medical science, and science in general, doesn't make claims beyond what we know for certain (or at least, we're very explicit about the cla…

"Actual medical science, and science in general, doesn't make claims beyond what we know for certain"

Unfortunately I read papers that do this, all the time. Science in general not only makes claims well beyond what's known for certain but does it so consistently that vast numbers of people, including many scientists themselves, have lost sight of the scientific method and have normalized bad, unscientific behaviour.

And this is ultimately how you end up with more than half of all drug trials being fraudulent or useless ...

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#278
post #49

This is worth reading purely for the writing alone. Scott Alexander is a treasure: > As best I can tell, this is some kind of Egyptian trial. It might or might not be an RCT; it says stuff like “Patients were self-allocated to the treatment groups; the first 3 days of the week for the intervention arm while the other 3 days for symptomatic treatment”. Were they self-allocated in the sense that they got to choose? Doe…

The patients got Sunday off of course

If the study was in Egypt, that would have been Friday.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#279
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not "trying to make a personal offence", I am explaining why you may find people mock you. Your view of the situation on the ground is incorrect. The studies you are claiming have not been done are a mere google search away. In fact in this case the link at the top of the HN discussion contains a lot of relevant information. Here's the major question I have for folks like yourself who are still on about ivermecti…

I wasn't soliciting for an explanation why people are trying to mock - too much studying of psychology provided enough information to answer this question. The answer, as it may come at a surprise for you, is not related to plausibility of statements. But that's totally different matter. As for your question, let me give you a very simple answer. As a layman in certain area, I see few facts - several families who I k…

> several families who I know in person chose to take Ivermectin as part of their treatment when family member contracted covid. All of them successfully recovered from covid.

Are you aware that this doesn't constitute any sort of evidence about ivermectin's effectiveness?

> a person I know lost 2 legs shortly after "safe" jab due to blood cloths.

Are you aware that coronavirus causes clotting much more frequently than the vaccine? I'm sorry for your friend, but if this were commonplace then every other person in the street would be an amputee, given how many billions of doses have been administered.

> Another person got cardiac arrest after jab (being 24yo) and was paid a lump sum (more than $200k) by government to suck it up and keep his mouth shut.

So how do you know about it? Wasn't a very good gag order then was it if you know and are spreading it on the internet? I'm just going to say it - I don't believe this story.

> why Ivermectin is so actively dismissed and the pharma jabs are so actively promoted?

Well because Ivermectin hasn't been shown to do anything for covid, but quacks are promoting it online. The vaccines, on the other hand, have been tested and found to be a useful way to reduce the consequences of the pandemic. A pandemic that's killed millions so far. So those are pushed. I mean seriously - how weird is that? Who would ever think, something that's been shown to help in a worldwide health crisis, and it's being pushed!

By the way, ivermectin is a pharma product too.

> There is clearly some evidence ivermectin does help

Where do you draw this from? This is not clear at all, this is a bland assertion.

> This atmosphere of ignorance and narrative-pushing has nothing in common with intellectual curiosity

I agree - you have shown no intellectual curiosity there, asking for studies to be done that have already taken place and you could easily find, and throwing vague allusions about cover-ups around. This isn't intellectual curiosity, it's clinging to a conspiratorial narrative. Perhaps you could use your knowledge of psychology to figure out why you prefer this narrative.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#280
post #90

Such good writing. I was anxious about trying to read it all, but he kept me hooked to the end. > I think it’s important to address ivermectin support on its own terms - as a potentially plausible scientific theory in a debris field of confusing evidence, which should be debated to the usual standards of scientific debate. I’ve tried to do that above. This is also how I’ve kind of tried to view things, yet I continue…

What arguments do they give you?
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