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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

#741

Post by pieter_mj »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #721
pieter_mj wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>but the current vaccines work so well against the delta variant that it's not worth switching.

I disagree. The number of deaths has only been decreased fivefold when comparing first wave and 4th wave in Belgium. And yes, there are fully vaccinated people who are dying.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#742

Post by orbifold »

jacquesm wrote: post #240
orbifold wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (western) COVID vaccine manufacturers still make ~1000$/s in profit from them. Gates / BMGF are invested in literally almost all of them, even the obscure Indian ones, not just Moderna and BionTech

Yes. But compared to what this crisis has cost us to date that is a very small drop in the bucket. think trillions, not billions. And it's not over yet. And Gates has so much money he's probably invested in the whole F500. But the whole Gates/Soros/whichever bogeyman you want to add here story is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Yeah it also lead to trillions in wealth increase of the ultra rich. There also is a difference between deliberately investing in vaccine companies and then publicly advocation for patent protections to remain in place and buying a vanguard etf. Just because someone is the target of Crazy conspiracies doesn’t make their behavior less reprehensible.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#743

Post by Rastonbury »

_lb7x wrote: post #446
iszomer wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/…

[flagged]

Anecdotally, it seems to have gotten worse, I know STEM grads who I'd never think of being anti-science announcing they are "vaccine hesitant". We speak about it behind their backs but really no one even tries to discuss this with them.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#744

Post by cafard »

naasking wrote: post #439
nonameiguess wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Scott has a pretty decent natural talent for writing, he also has a MD, he's a board licensed practicing psychiatrist who has been working for a decade in the field, and he has spent at least the last twenty years gaining a pretty decent broad exposure to statistical and research methods. I don't believe he disclosed what Substack paid him, but he is in the "paid tier" and has said it was a mistake to even agre…

> I'm not sure the market exists for all journalists to be as highly qualified as Scott I'm not sure we need as many journalists as we currently have. Do we really need another rehashing of the latest culture war nonsense? If you strip out all of these pseudo-journalists and consider only journalists covering real facts and in-depth analysis, that's a considerably smaller group that could plausibly consist of a numbe…

There are a lot of real facts out there, more of them every day. Not all of them worth considering show up in spreadsheets at central sites, some have to be ascertained and reported by someone on the spot. And I would distinguish between reporting and commentary.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#745

Post by mewpmewp2 »

jesterson wrote: post #715
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's the current mentality towards vaccines in Singapore?

Short answer - it's complicated. Long answer - quite a significant number of people are resistant to vaccines, particularly to mrna-based ones. Government offered voluntary vaccination and managed to vaccinate around 50%, after that different coercion and segregation measures (mandating without actually mandating) were used to raise the number to 94% (among eligible population). Disappointment is starting to grow lat…

Interesting that younger generation is willing to go for the shots, according to my impression danger curve for the shots compared to covid is vaccines better for elderly, and worse for young. Not to mention all the unknown health implications for the future if spike protein can increase chances of cancer or similar.

I wonder if older gen has seen enough to not take everything at face value.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#746

Post by mewpmewp2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #580
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're thinking "I don't have easy access to that information, and I don't have the time or the funding to investigate", you're quite right. Medical researchers will have to carry the can here. Yeah, unfortunately, I've lost all my trust in anything that comes in from mainstream. I was to vaccinate myself, but then I found contradicting information, and from there I couldn't stop going to the rabbit hole, becaus…

> I was to vaccinate myself, but then I found contradicting information, and from there I couldn't stop going to the rabbit hole, because this doesn't make sense. Dodged a bullet there! How fortunate that you went to look for contradicting information, what are the chances?

Not sure what you mean here? I didn't have bias towards being anti-vaxx. In fact I was arguing with anti-vaxxers before and doing calculations how many lives would 1 vaccinated person save during summer given different R values, vaccine efficiencies etc.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#747

Post by mewpmewp2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #581
Nursie wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But it did give him what he was looking for: a reason not to get vaccinated. All of the above is just that: justification for that decision, and once looked at through that lens it makes a lot more sense.

What you are saying is that I made the decision first and then looked for the material?

I was strongly pro-vax before that, and I was debating anti-vax people.

Why would I want to make such a decision that would make me be hated by so many, stress me out of my mind, make people think I'm some sort of anti-science or anti-intellectual, etc?

If covid vaccines are truly safe and effective, I would have 0 motivation to believe in some sort of conspiracy, or not take it.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#748

Post by yxwvut »

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.

You’re totally right. I was more referring to his review of the merits of the various studies, which as a statistician I actually agreed with - I mostly read the article to understand the history of these studies, having no prior familiarity beyond the high level understanding that the evidence was weak. I expected this article to largely be pro-ivermectin-as-underdog given that the mainstream opinion is that it isn't, but I suppose this fits even more. His claim that it’s all able to be chalked up to worms is dubious at best - selection bias of one form or another (publication, metric selection, etc) seems substantially more likely. Sure enough, though his readership is credulously adopting this theory just as easily as they adopt his other contrarian points.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#749

Post by low_tech_love »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #592
low_tech_love wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it’s a joke. A very bad, tasteless, and racist joke. I get it!

How is it racist? Is any joke that targets a POC racist even if there is no racial content or nature to the joke?

I’m not in the mood to give a lecture on how the real racism is between the lines, if you can’t see it, good for you. The entire article is condescending against research done outside the main european/north-american axis, using words like “Egyptian” and “Mexican” to set the tone of the comments, as if to say “you know what to expect from these people”. There is absolutely no reason to connect the researcher and the criminal like he did other than prejudice. Surely I can find a criminal in the USA with your surname, but I bet you wouldn’t find it funny if I publicly implied you were related, or even worse, that you were connected to their crimes.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#750

Post by low_tech_love »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #639
comicjk wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like that, sure. Apart from the question of whether the joke is good or bad, I think it's pretty clear from the reactions here that it has a political valence.

I agree that is strong point that such comments trigger some readers. I imagine that any politically savvy author like this one evaluates the inclusion of jokes involving POC in their editing process today. As far as intent, I am more inclined to believe the author decided to leave it intentionally, not to endear the conservative reader, but because they believe that while some readers may be offended, that they didn…

The point remains that he singled out a latin-american surname in order to google and look for criminals to relate to. That means he expected to find something, and did. Would he think to do the same with an european surname? And more importantly, would it still sound cool and funny to his audience?
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