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Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

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Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#181
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Sweden, the country where the authorities apologized for messing up, that Sweden? People on average gained 10 kg? Really, I have no idea where you get this nonsense but clearly you are not interested in a factual debate but in one that gives you what you want: the ability to ignore this pandemic as though it doesn't exit. There are no ICU beds for the gerontocracy, there are simply ICU beds, and there is a limited nu…

Spain had 14,8% excess mortality than in normal years, Germany had 2,4% less dead, Sweden had 3% more dead. These numbers are adjusted for demographic changes. Sweden now looks pretty solid as well as Spain regarding new cases.

Sure, if you just compare it to Norway and Finland, it is very true that Sweden has worse values, more than 3 times as many dead at minimum. But the answer if it was the correct or wrong choice will be answered after the current seasonal outbreak or in a few years.

edit: Just looked it up again, Spain and Sweden are currently leading with Kosovo for having the lowest case incidence in Europe. Gibraltar has the highest and everyone is vaccinated there. I remember the articles about Gibraltar being the first immune country. They now have cancelled many official events.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about the vaccines in this context. The discussion is a lot more nuanced than that.

No it's not. What you are saying is everything is biased by money, therefore I can't trust anyone. What people are telling you is that you don't really understand the bias, not that the bias doesn't exist.

> everything is biased by money

I said that.

> therefore I can't trust anyone

I did not say that.

> What people are telling you is that you don't really understand the bias,

What I don't understand about it?

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#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 communication. It's a shame that clear thinking and communication is so scarce.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And for every story like yours - and I know of a few of those - there are examples of people who were absolutely convinced that their child had 'x' or 'y' when it in fact wasn't the case. It is great that you had the perseverance to see this through, and unfortunately it isn't rare at all that local medical care is not up to speed with rare diseases or misdiagnosing a rare disease as a more common one. I lost a siste…

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 after receiving a bribe.

The doctor at the hospital just got the memo “the recommended treatment in case of x is y”.

These indictments are for what can actually be proved. I’m sure there are more cases that have not been found, and also in other countries.

The only one who really has your best interests in my mind is yourself; if you are capable of doing research, you are likely more qualified for your own situation than specialists.

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

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#185
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I changed my mind. I was making pro-Ivermectin comments just yesterday. This is the first serious anti-Ivermectin argument I've seen.

This is the first anti-Ivermectin argument that you want to believe, but there have been many serious anti-Ivermectin arguments in the past. It's just that you don't have the background knowledge to digest them, but that doesn't stop you from wanting to believe that there is some kind of miracle cure that 'they' are suppressing. Now consider that this is just one example of a class of such issues and that there is an…

> 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 people want to understand. That doesn't make them foolish or antivaxers.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I said neighbors, not all of Europe. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland all did considerably better, and have demographics and local conditions that are closer together than comparing Sweden with the rest of Europe. It's a thinly populated Nordic country, so the comparison material should be countries that match those criteria, not the average of the EU, which runs the gamut of high density extremely interconnected…

In addition to that, it's worth pointing out that even the architect of the Swedish policy defending his strategy acknowledges it would have been dramatically worse if Swedes hadn't mostly worked from home and observed social distancing anyway (i.e. the exact opposite of what most anti-lockdown campaigners want). Also, they imposed strict external travel restrictions to ensure they never imported as many cases as the worse-performing European countries did, and deployed all sorts of restrictions short of lockdosn like banning gatherings of 8 people or more. It's really not the poster child for muh freedom

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#187
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consensus in the medical world is that if there is a link it is extremely weak, far weaker than you'd need to establish that 'millions died while they didn't have to' as you write, and that if it works it probably needs very high doses, higher than considered safe. At the same time, we have vaccines, which do work (though the slow roll-out and the many, many hold outs certainly don't help, as well as that it leav…

I agree with both of you. We can't 100% argue that the prevailing wisdom is infallible because of real examples of the opposite occurring rarely, like the ulcer case. However, on the balance I prefer to go with prevailing wisdom. It's a judgement call that requires a human to detail with probabilities and humans are very bad at probabilities.

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Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#188
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most scientists/doctors believe it to not work against Covid-19" wasn't a serious argument for you? It is a strange phenomenon that people are so ready to disagree with people who spent decades achieving exactly that kind of knowledge.

Most scientists/doctors believed at one point that ulcers were caused by "stress". My father lost half his stomach to an ulcer surgery. Nowadays ulcers are cured with antibiotics in the span of a week. Don't put much stock in what crowds "believe" to be true, _especially_ when _not_ believing it means they can't work in their field.

There are Helicobacter pillory ulcers. There are Cirrhosis ulcers. There are stress ulcers.

Who is spreading the misinformation that all ulcers are caused by H. Pillory?

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#189
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…

This is a huge factor. Dumbing things down creates a dumber audience. If you look at newscasts and newspapers from the 70's and compare them to today the difference is amazing.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#190
post #60

Funny how all this article ends up saying it's all a matter of trust. Which is exactly what medecine has always been about, and why ultimately you end up getting prescriptions by you own doctor, that you have a bound with and that you trust. The most insane thing that happened with this pandemic ( at least in europe) is how we decided to throw all this through the window and let states impose medical decisions on peo…

It's about what makes money. There's no money to be made from Ivermectin as you can't patent it. Money is what orchestrates the studies and the PR for any medicine.

In my country at least people were paying a LOT of money for Ivermectin. Someone was definitely making a mint.

Just a reminder that while snake oil was a "patent medicine" there were never any actual patents involved.

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