Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know • Hacker News Board

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#471

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #419

dekhn wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

romeros is right. public health people have to do third-order thinking to maximize the overall health impact. I haven't done RCTs but we studied them in detail in my stats class in grad school.

no they don't. They just need to be honest about what they do know and what they don't and don't assert something is true when it's "we're not sure". Just do zero-order thinking. Don't patronize the public. Guess what. If you don't trust the public. Why should the public trust you?

The public has been taught by people who don't do science that knowledge and truth are supposed to be immutable. When faced with scientists who acknowledge that their understanding and advice is contingent, the public as a statistical entity says "WTF?" and chooses not to trust.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#472

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

deadpannini wrote: post #352

nickspacek wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. Perhaps the idea is that neither you nor the avg doc can conclude much from reading 10 studies. Therefore, defer to the experts? As to why the COVID situation is different, presumably because prostate cancer screening affects only you (and perhaps your family in the case of a true/false positive/negative diagnosis), and COVID represents a threat to everyone around you, and everyone around them, etc.

I wasn't clear. Most of the time, as with prostrate screenings, one of the following is true: - There is no expert consensus (on treatments, etiology, etc.). - Consensus exists, but the level of consensus is overstated. - There is broad consensus, but with relatively low confidence. A generalized public health threat like a pandemic doesn't change the epistemological calculus, nor the sociology of knowledge.

There is a fourth option:

- there a consensus, it is broad and it has good experimental support and high confidence

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#473

Post by s1artibartfast » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

comicjk wrote: post #249

low_tech_love wrote: post #129

It was a fun read, but implying that a drug dealer from Kern county is related to a published researcher from Mexico just because they have the same surname is not really cool.

I agree. I wonder, though - the author has written a lot about political signaling and trust. I wouldn't put it past him to add a joke that's deliberately anathema to liberals, in order to relax the hackles of the conservatives he's trying to convince to use real medicine.

Why do you think the joke could be joke could be viewed as anathema to liberals in particular?

I was trying to dissect this comment and couldn't figure out the political angle.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#474

Post by naasking » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

blitzar wrote: post #464

naasking wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the CDC, 3.7 million people in the US are infected with Trichomoniasis. That's at least 10%. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0508-npi.html

3.7/329.5 != 10%

Haha, math fail.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#475

Post by Wolf_Larsen » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

tristor wrote: post #400

I don't understand the point of the image of the meth seizure when discussing this study [1]. The last name is the same, but if you understand Mexican surnames, it is strongly unlikely that the two different people are in any way closely related. I like reading Scott's writing, but this really detracts from the overall quality of the article, because it seems like a vaguely racist dig without any relevance. [1]: http…

You may be a good candidate for Ivermectin, sir. I believe you have worms in your brain.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/bakersfieldcity...

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#476

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

blindmute wrote: post #402

rscho wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that experts are doing a stellar job or that they're special in any way, far from it. I have slaved enough under 'true experts' to know the extent of the catastrophe. We even had a truly spectacular example of failure at the start of the pandemic with the 'intubate early and withhold steroids' expert opinion. This particular one, I won't ever forget. What I'm saying is only that: - on average, experts…

>on average, experts do spectacularly better than Joe Schmoe. Including science degree holders thinking they understand medical studies while missing the whole political and social context of the field. I'm saying that, when the data is unclear and Joe is thorough, I don't even think that's true. Or at least it's not spectacularly better. My point is that for something like Ivermectin where the data was initially nul…

The medical profession gets it wrong with some regularity, but this Ivermectin thing fell out of the sky without any support, and was touted as the miracle cure that big pharma was withholding in order to protect their profits.

So even if the data is unclear we can safely conclude that it isn't a miracle cure and never was. And Joe Schmoe here isn't talking about some condition that he's been walking around with for a while and has studied extensively, Joe Schmoe here is a guy who believes doing your own research is watching youtube videos by people who have done their own research reading a bunch of papers without understanding any of it.

The problem is that that gets in the way of achieving the goal: beating this pandemic, and that isn't going to happen with ivermectin. (Or HCQ for that matter).

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#477

Post by Jefenry » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #457

WhompingWindows wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should clarify that Ivermectin works better in higher-worm-prevalence areas. It's not remotely true that 10% of Americans have undetected worms. The praised study in the post highlights 12.5% as "high" prevalence, so 10% would be nearly high -- not true in the developed world.

According to the CDC, 3.7 million people in the US are infected with Trichomoniasis. That's at least 10%. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0508-npi.html

I think you missed a decimal place. There's very nearly 333 million people in the US, so 3.7 million infected is 1.1%

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#478

Post by saalweachter » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #157

jacquesm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article doesn't move the needle at all for those that have a basic understanding of the mechanisms at work and who don't fall for the first conspiracy theory that gets lobbed their way. What you should do instead is to listen to your medical authorities who even if they do make mistakes have your best interests at heart, contrary to those that are pushing the quackery in an attempt to further destabilize our soc…

You may disregard my pseudonymous self’s statement, but one of my children had a weird disease, which I managed to figure out watching YouTube videos of similar symptoms and reading Wikipedia (at first, then pubmed etc) Over 40 doctors, most of them MD/PhDs, from 4 of the 10 top ranked hospitals in the world for the relevant issue, told me I’m an idiot, because that disease is a 1:10,000,000 thing, it can’t be the ca…

I think you need to be careful to distinguish between two different kinds of failures of the medical system here.

In your anecdote, you suffered a failure to diagnose, and specifically, a failure to diagnose a rare disease.

This is unfortunate, and bad, and a problem to try to figure out, but it is a completely different sort of failure than what other people are proposing for HCQ or IVM, that there is a highly effective and inexpensive treatment that the medical establishment is failing to recognize despite apparently having such clear evidence in its favor that people on Facebook can understand it.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#479

Post by boston_clone » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

iszomer wrote: post #357

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…

> Now, the GOP has leaned into anti-scientist, anti-elitist sentiments, fed by Fox News and others.. I wouldn't fault them for your view of their broad sentiments on this trend but I think if you went back over the last twenty years, these sentiments were more often aligned for the left-wing. "The real conversation has to be about what solutions we're in favor of." -- Dan Crenshaw, on the Daily Show https://youtu.be/…

The last twenty years gives us a few administrations from which we can asses policy making decisions: Bush; Obama; Trump; and now Biden.

Of those four, I don't think it's possible to make a good-faith argument that Obama and Biden administrations have been more anti-science than either Bush's or Trump's. A single sound bite from Dan Crenshaw talking about shifting the focus of conversation towards solutions doesn't refute the fact that Trump had directed the EPA to remove statements about climate change from their website, withdrew our participation from the Paris Accords, and made public statements drenched in falsehoods about how climate change is a hoax. Similarly, Bush rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and allowing Exxon to have an active role in making climate change policy goes completely against your assertions.

Could you provide some sources to substantiate your viewpoint? I'd love to know if I'm just being overly biased here, or if we've fallen prey to disinformation campaigns.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#480

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

WithinReason wrote: post #340

mumblemumble wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural selection.

How will natural selection act on parasites if there are no parasites in the animal?

The drug may end up in the manure, and the parasites may encounter it there at a marginally-lethal dose. When the parasite progresses further in its life cycle, its offspring may be resistant when they infect the next livestock animal.

Most parasites have a life-cycle that includes time spent outside the preferred host animal, including in zoonotic species that may not have symptomatic infections. They may acquire resistance in any stage, in any place they encountered the drug.