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

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#721

Post by bayesian_horse » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 7:33 AM UTC

pieter_mj wrote: post #362

bayesian_horse wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

As far as I know new vaccines may be in the pipeline, but the current vaccines work so well against the delta variant that it's not worth switching.

It will take a lot of time to gather enough data to confirm any new vaccine as actually being better and safer than Comirnaty against Delta... Just saying "This vaccines was especially designed for this" isn't enough.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#722

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 7:35 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #699

bayesian_horse wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most of them aren't sound. Those that aren't are still weak evidence and not really block-buster. Also, "there are no real downsides" is misinformation. If you let on that you are an expert when you aren't, and say "I reviewed them" then that's misinformation. Some is in the gray area, but even the gray area actually causes the kind of harm these policies try to prevent. I can't speak for Youtube, but that's my t…

There really are no real downsides to taking ivermectin at its usual therapeutic doses. I'm not an expert, but ivermectin is well enough understood that I don't need to be an expert to know that. That's why there are regularly ivermectin programs that dose literally every single person in a town with ivermectin for a month or so as a parasite extermination campaign. (I have somewhat less confidence in my second opini…

Unfortunately at the 'usual therapeutic doses' there is no effect at all, you're looking at a substantial increase. The biggest direct proof for anti-viral effect was an in vitro study at substantially elevated levels.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#723

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 7:39 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #707

jacquesm wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> given it is well tolerated with low risk of side effects That's not a given, that depends on the patient, the dose and a host of other factors. You may well end up harming someone significantly. You are in no position to proscribe any kind of medication to someone else unless you happen to be a licensed practitioner.

While it's true that virtually any substance has a toxic dose, avoiding that dose is straightforward for drugs as well-known and widely-used as ivermectin. There is no risk of harming someone significantly. (There's also, I think, no chance of being effective against covid at safe doses.) It is true, but unfortunate, that in many societies only licensed practitioners are in a position to prescribe (or proscribe) most…

You mean this straightforward?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29262479

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#724

Post by haberman » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 7:40 AM UTC

KittenInABox wrote: post #663

BurningFrog wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you accusing him of anything else than having an opinion, and arguing for it?

I think the fact is that he presents himself as speaking from a highly informed, relatively unbiased presentation of a subject he finds interesting. In fact, he is arguing for a position. Reading an article meant to be informative vs reading an article meant to convince you of a position are two very different things.

The ideal is that an author is unbiased before seeing the evidence, then forms an opinion based on the strength of the evidence. An article that chronicles such a journey, presenting an opinion but also the strongest counter-arguments to that opinion, is about the best one can hope for in scientific writing.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#725

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 7:42 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #708

jacquesm wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but he is in that chain of authority, and I'm not and if he passes on advice based on what he knows in general and what he knows about me I take it that he's not doing that because he wants to diminish the size of his practice. I could read the research papers and the guidelines, but for that I would first need a medical degree in the relevant (sub)fields, figure out who is and who isn't telling the truth/stackin…

> I take it that he's not doing that because he wants to diminish the size of his practice. But very likely (especially in the US, but also in other places), his considerations have to do with not increasing his malpractice insurance premium. Your and his interests are not aligned. And that chasm is larger than anyone likes to admit.

I'm not in the US and malpractice suits against doctors are extremely rare here.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#726

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 7:43 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #703

jacquesm wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1960's smoking was already considered very bad for your health, in fact a large 1951 study amongst the doctors themselves pretty much proved that, but that didn't stop lobbying and advertising by the Tobacco companies, including the use of actors posing as doctors from continuing to push the false narrative and if not for some pretty heavy legal restrictions they would still be doing this today (and they still…

> but it's the wrong conclusion to make that if doctors were wrong about smoking they are also wrong about everything else. Usually they are not. Indeed. And usually, there is no significant objection to the medical consensus, so it is irrelevant the "all medical advice" space. The interesting (from my perspective, but also from an information theoretic one) things are those about which there is disagreement. And the…

The quote 'science improves one death at the time' comes to mind.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#727

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 7:45 AM UTC

unanswered wrote: post #687

yxwvut wrote: post #35

This article is a nice counterpoint to what's felt like a trend of Scott's writing (outside of psychology) increasingly becoming contrarianism in search of evidence. Many pieces he's written in the last 1-2 yrs feel like he'll use some back-of-the-envelope calculation to get some ballpark (associative) estimate of some relationship and then base a worldview around it (or work backwards from the latter to the former),…

> contrarianism in search of evidence But that is literally what this article is, and Scott admits as much! He says that he chose worms as the most "trollish" possible response, despite a lack of any strong evidence at all that worms are the answer.

The funny thing is that for all of their supposed smarts the bulk of the commenters in favor of the 'new' worm theory are jumping on it, just like they jumped on Ivermectin in the first place. It is in a way an interesting experience to see this happen in real-time.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#728

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 7:48 AM UTC

JohnWhigham wrote: post #257

271828182846 wrote: post #252

> All the health officials in the world will shout “horse dewormer!” at you and compare you to Josef Mengele. Well, as a German I feel obligated to recommend those officials to read up on Josef Mengele and then reconsider throwing that name around so casually.

Blame the Twitterati for the normalization of calling people "Nazis" over slight political disagreements.

Usenet wants a word.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#729

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 7:49 AM UTC

jesterson wrote: post #696

tigershark wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when removing misinformation that can cause harm is censorship? If I had any say I would absolutely remove all your posts that are spreading the same lies, you are literally killing people by furthering a specific agenda and trying to convince people that the vaccines are dangerous and ivermectin is the only cure. It’s honestly shameful that hacker news is letting this happen.

Something that you (or anyone else) insubstantiatedly label as misinformation may just not be so. That's pure censorship - "I think this is wrong, therefore it has to be removed". That's the rigidity and simplemindedness as opposed to intellectual curiosity, doesn't spark intellectual discussion and creates echo chambers of people regurgitating the same narratives over and over. Fortunately people sharing your approa…

The earth may be flat after all. But making that statement absent actual proof is misinformation.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#730

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 7:51 AM UTC

analyte123 wrote: post #666

jacquesm wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VAERS will report all of the cases reported in, it is prior to analysis and once the analysis is done the final tally looks completely different. Any possible relation is reported (or actually, should be reported) to VAERS, so if you die the day after you took the vaccin, you will be listed there, whether or not that had anything to do with your vaccination will be determined later on. For another viewpoint: if every…

The "relative" interpretation of the VAERS data looks worse for the COVID vaccines than almost any other interpretation. There have been more adverse events reported in the past year for the COVID vaccines than for all other vaccines combined since the database's inception in 1990.

But of course there have been. Because there hasn't been a drive for a vaccine as strong as this one in decades.