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Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

astralcodexten.substack.com

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Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#331

Post by tzs »

xenadu02 wrote: post #12

tl;dr: A lot of ivermectin COVID studies are garbage. When you throw them out it seems like there might be a mild positive correlation but that depends on your methodology. But when you look at the bigger picture the decent positive studies often come from areas of the world where parasitic worms are prevalent. There is a specific parasitic worm Strongyloides stercoralis that multiplies out of control sometimes causi…

> But when you look at the bigger picture the decent positive studies often come from areas of the world where parasitic worms are prevalent.

I bet someone could make decent money selling parasitic worm eggs or larvae or whatever the heck it is that gets into people that causes a parasitic worm infection so that people can infest themselves when they get COVID symptoms in order to make the ivermectin they then take more effective.

A depressingly large number of the people that end up on /r/HermanCainAward as nominees or winners would believe that is reasonable.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#332

Post by dekhn »

fallingknife wrote: post #161
jacquesm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that there is a lot of ego involved, and that certainly doesn't help. In NL we have a couple of nice examples of that. Pursuing herd immunity is a viable strategy only if you can actually achieve it. Sweden has done far worse than their neighbors in this respect. But given the fact that it drags on all you can say is that as long as we don't treat this as a global problem your local measures matter less than y…

That's not correct that Sweden has done much worse than its neighbors. It's actually below the median for Europe. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat...

In 10 years, when most of the dust has settled, we'll be able to explain what we saw in Sweden and the surrounding countries as a combination of population density, interactions, medical policy, and randomness. It's hardly fair to consider only a small number of variables in cases like these.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#333

Post by dekhn »

roenxi wrote: post #45
bayesian_horse wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion it should be an argument, especially for people who don't have that expertise. Also, even the "moderately convincing" evidence is in my opinion not nearly enough. It might be if Covid-19 were a modestly important disease with only a few labs and clinics running working on it. But it's not. Throw enough shit against the wall, eventually something will stick by chance. This is a globally distributed exper…

> In my opinion it should be an argument, It is a fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority . To make an argument, there needs to be an argument.

argument from authority is not a fallacy.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#334

Post by rossdavidh »

robocat wrote: post #71

With a meta-analysis, if you detect a high number of fraudulent studies, shouldn’t that negatively affect your trust of the studies which you didn’t detect any problem with? Let us imagine you looked at 100 papers, and you could tell 99 of them had severe problems, and one looked OK. That information would make you suspicious that the one paper also had severe problems, but that you just didn’t detect the problems. F…

If "With a meta-analysis, if you detect a high number of fraudulent studies..." applied here, perhaps so. But most of those eliminated were not for fraud, in fact only 2 were for fraud, the rest were flawed in ways which, I'm afraid, is equally common (or nearly so) in studies on any other topic. Also, not all of the studies he threw out showed ivermectin working, I recall at least one showed the opposite but that doesn't mean we throw out all studies showing ivermectin doesn't work.

Also, the whole point of the exercise is what do you find if you apply good statistical and methodological rigor, but don't have any anti-ivermectin bias.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#336

Post by deelowe »

romeros wrote: post #287
astrange wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has an earlier piece whose point is that the WHO can never be accurate, because they always have to prioritize "sounding trustworthy" over accuracy, and random blogs don't.

WHO has no other option than being inaccurate. Society needs a simple answer. Do this. Do that etc. Put on a mask. Wash your hands. Practice social distancing. Use approved vaccines. Take booster shots etc are pretty simple to follow. Likewise don't take non approved stuff. Easy to understand and simple to follow. Nuances will likely hurt and confuse the common man. That's why the news and celebs and politicians etc…

The public is much more capable of processing and understanding nuance than we give them credit for. It's just not as profitable for the MSM.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#337

Post by h2odragon »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #44
viktorcode wrote: post #38

Well, at least the parasite endemic among humans sure is in decline now

Or, alternately, the incidence of drug-resistant parasitic infections is on the upswing due to misuse of the drug.

I've read of growing Ivermectin resistance in some kinds of worms but not they kinds that were well targeted by it in the first place, just the ones that had good survival rates already. No citations, sorry; this was reading i did years ago. Might find references in tapeworm treatment discussion.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#338

Post by dragontamer »

csee wrote: post #183

While reading this piece I got a little depressed that most journalism is just such utter trash compared to it. I've read so many articles on ivermectin and none of them gave me even ten percent of the clarity that this article gave me. Can you imagine if writing and journalism of this calibre was commonplace among practising "journalists"? And look at how this piece compares to the CDC's and WHO's science communicat…

NIH is in charge of research. CDC takes the research and makes recommendations.

https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-...

NIH seems to have pretty good analysis into Ivermectin. For some reason or another, people don't know it exists. Its pretty straightforward frankly. Turns out that people on the internet are terrible at meta-analysis.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#339

Post by WhompingWindows »

In my opinion, the main crux is this: there are moneyed interests who are motivated to generate mistrust and otherization based on political parties. In the USA, Fox News has a strong incentive to inspire hatred and fear of Democratic policy, and MSNBC has a strong incentive to inspire hatred of the GOP. The same is true for Twitter, FB, NYT, WSJ, WaPo, literally any media outlet. Hatred, fear, outrage, worry, anxiety: they all drive viewers to advertisements.

One major example, these media groups facilitated making a huge rift on climate change belief. The fossil fuel industry saw in the GOP, and some moderate Dems like Manchin, an opportunity to create doubt and slow the transition off their fossil fuel products. Now, the GOP has leaned into anti-scientist, anti-elitist sentiment, fed by Fox News and others. They're not totally anti-science, they still use abortion science, ivermectin science, and all the wonders of modern life...but they ARE anti-scientist, anti-elitist, anti-university.

And Why? We're hating each other so media companies can make a few measly cents.

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