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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

#361

Post by Clubber »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #339

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, anxiet…

It's also good for the people in power. It's a pretty straight forward divide and conquer strategy. The US public want probably 80% of the same thing (economic), but we won't get it because we bicker about the 20% (cultural/wedge).

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#362

Post by pieter_mj »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #300
pieter_mj wrote: post #193

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.

"Significantly less effective" is still a lot higher than most new vaccines and higher than the prophylactics you propose. The loss in effectiveness isn't even that big of a deal. It only really matters for those most at risk. And it's hard to say how much longer the third dose will last, but knowing how the immune system works, I'd guess it will be more than 6 months, provided there is no escape mutation. Delta isn'…

True.

>Delta isn't an escape variant, btw, it's just a really fast worker.

It's faster, more transmissable, infectious, shorter incubation period and a 1000fold increase in generated virus particles compared to other variants.

But is also has mutations in its spike and nucleocapsid that warrant developing new vaccines, certainly when it's at the moment the dominant strain by far and even more virulent variations are to be expected.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#363

Post by shkkmo »

WithinReason wrote: post #95
lolspace wrote: post #75

> This is from ivmmeta.com, part of a sprawling empire of big professional-looking sites promoting unorthodox coronavirus treatments. I have no idea who runs it - they’ve very reasonably kept their identity secret Why are they hiding their identity? That means that it can be anyone who does this. ----------------- But even more important. The website also claims that each of the following individual medicines works:…

The problem is likely to be with the scientific approach of the studies included (they are not filtered) than the meta-analysis itself.

The article points out several ways that ivmmeta's meta-analysis may be flawed:

> Meyerowitz-Katz accuses ivmmeta of cherry-picking what statistic to use for their forest plot. That is, if a study measures ten outcomes, they sometimes take the most pro-ivermectin outcome.

> (how come I’m finding a bunch of things on the edge of significance, but the original ivmmeta site found a lot of extremely significant things? Because they combined ratios, such that “one death in placebo, zero in ivermectin” looked like a nigh-infinite benefit for ivermectin, whereas I’m combining raw numbers.

Given that there is a lot of complexity and debate on how to integrate studies with disparate primary outcomesbane measures, the fault may indeed lie with the ivmmeta analysis methodology.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#364

Post by pieter_mj »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #295
pieter_mj wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

But it doesn't avoid infection and is a lot weaker in protection as even a very old double-vaccination, much less a boostered one.

True, but it should be seen as an additional layer to the Swiss cheese model of pandemic defense. The vaccine is the main component, by far, but its number of holes are increasing.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#365

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

jacquesm wrote: post #210
gardnr wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many serious anti-Ivermectin arguments in the past I haven't seen any of these. I just run into irrational and offensive people like you that accuse me of wanting to drink bleach when I bring up the topic of Ivermectin. This article removed all doubt for me. I needed to see the thought process while pouring over the studies. You shouldn't make so many assumptions about people based on your political bias. Some peop…

> Some people want to understand. So go study medicine, assuming you have 10 years to burn and are willing to take a massive pay cut. The average HN'er probably knows how to program a computer and some of them may even know how to program one well. If a guy that runs a fishing boat with not even the most basic idea about programming, hardware, software, satellite systems, general relativity and integrating all of the…

I can pull out my phone, sit in my car, or grab my hiking GPS device to see 100% clear evidence that GPS works.

For things that aren't so obvious, the explanations need to be made more clearly.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#366

Post by rscho »

deadpannini wrote: post #284
rscho wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a doc. I am also a medical researcher, but you (and most other people here) _have_ to realize that the vast majority of practicing MDs are _not_ scientists, and understand almost nothing when reading medical studies. And that's fine, because it's not their job. The profession is bound by guidelines and expert opinion. Experts do research, formulate guidelines, and guidelines get applied by practitioners. And no,…

The dissonance here is intense. On the one hand, "practicing MDs ... understand almost nothing when reading medical studies", but also I don't "know better than the average doc [just] because [I've] read 10 studies." Is the idea that doctors deserve deference because they are conditioned to submit to guidelines formulated by experts? There is a lack of consensus on many long-standing, common medical questions, much l…

Your GP may try to lay out the state of research before you, but that does not change the fact that he/she will do one of those things:

1. Treat you according to guidelines/expert opinion, should you choose to.

2. Give you the opportunity to participate in a relevant study.

But _never ever_ will your GP formulate an experimental treatment plan based on his own research. Not GP's job, and big risk of liability. Your GP has at best a cursory view of the research happening in a certain field. COVID is different due to several good and bad reasons: hugely politicized, confusing messages from experts, and most of all novelty. 'Lack of medical consensus' usually means 'several treatments backed by experts are available', not 'do what you like'. COVID is too new for the dust around expert debates to have settled. That's what makes it different.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#367

Post by blindmute »

jacquesm wrote: post #194
beagle3 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the oath is a theatre prop and not much more. I reside in Israel these days, which has a system similar to NL ttbomk. The doctors that treat you (in the public system) are not incentivized other than to cure you, except perhaps through the occasional marketing cruise. But high up ministry of health people have been indicted (including through corona) for pushing and in some cases mandating useless treatments…

> WHO recommends against remdesivir. FDA and IMOH promote it as a wonderdrug. Who would you trust? My GP.

Why would you trust a local GP? They are almost certainly the least knowledgeable person in the chain of authority from which you could choose to trust. They will either follow the guidelines or their anecdotal experience. You could read the research papers and the guidelines yourself and have a better understanding of the issue than a given GP. For anything rare, you could probably read the subreddit about the diagnosis and get more trustworthy advice than from a GP.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#368

Post by idrios »

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…

This is also why trust in these institutions is at an all time low. When your decision-makers are telling you lies and half truths for your own good, it becomes harder to know when they're telling the truth. This is the environment that causes fringe groups and theories to thrive.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#369

Post by seanmcdirmid »

idrios wrote: post #368
romeros wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is also why trust in these institutions is at an all time low. When your decision-makers are telling you lies and half truths for your own good, it becomes harder to know when they're telling the truth. This is the environment that causes fringe groups and theories to thrive.

Or why they don’t trust doctors in general, because medicine is a very inexact science filled with lies and half truths along with real truths? I get that might be unnerving to many (even if medicine is overall beneficial), but these people really sound like a classic case of “perfect is the enemy of good.”

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#370

Post by PragmaticPulp »

commandlinefan wrote: post #350
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is worth reading purely for the writing alone. Scott Alexander is a treasure This post is a breath of fresh air for the blog and feels refreshingly well-researched. Between that and the unquestionable popularity of COVID-related discussion, it’s no wonder this article is popular. Scott is undeniably a good blog writer with an entertaining writing style that resonates with his reader base. However, I’ve become…

> ignoring obvious heritability of things like wealth and social status He addresses that in the section section - besides the intro, he leads with it: "the next generation becomes semi-famous fashion designers and TV personalities and journalists, which seem like typical jobs for people who are well-connected and good at performing class, but don't need to be amazingly bright. Sometimes they become politicians, anot…

True, but that's an example of the endless hedging I mentioned: His writing style is very good at throwing in little counter examples here and there to give a "both sides" type impression, but then he pokes holes in the counter-arguments in the build-up to the conclusion he actually wants to present.

If you read a few paragraphs past your quote, Scott comes right out and declares the "genetics" is the explanation that he thinks is correct:

> The other obvious answer is “genetics!” I think this one is right

He then applies some softball counter-arguments to the genetics argument to hedge and give the "both sides" treatment. However, the article is clearly structured to give a tour of possible arguments while subtly giving the most credence and the least hedging to the genetics argument. Combined with the not-so-subtle declaration from Scott that "I think this one is right" in the middle of the article, he expertly walks the reader into the conclusion he wants while making them feel like they came to that conclusion on their own after an objective tour of the research.

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