Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 493 posts

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#281

Post by swader999 »

hackingforfun wrote: post #159
anshorei wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being designed to help people doesn't make it good. There's reason to believe vaccinating using a non-sterilizing vaccine during a pandemic exerts an evolutionary pressure on the virus that will lead to the vaccine becoming ineffective and the the virus endemic. Considering the current effectiveness of the vaccines a fully vaccinated population will be worse off than a fully recovered population (though the…

I appreciate your answer and agree that in general it's good to keep safe in any we can, including the things you mentioned. I also agree that the discussion is quite polarized, however, at this point I tend to think the vaccine benefits outweigh the cons. I'm wondering, at what point, if ever, would you decide that the COVID vaccines are safe / worth it? Honest question. Also, as someone else mentioned here [1], isn…

The vaccines are suitable for the vulnerable - older with comorbidities. Vaccinating the entire population with a leaky vaccine and a virus that can shift and live in animal reservoirs is a recipe to breed more dangerous variants.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#282

Post by rory »

shapefrog wrote: post #265
rory wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important difference between these drugs is that opiates are incredibly addictive, while ketamine is less addictive than tobacco or alcohol. Ivermectin isn't addictive at all. Ironically, the opioid crisis is caused far more by people's trust in mainstream medicine than by any internet fad.

> people's trust in mainstream medicine Mainstream medicine says it is incredibly addictive with an incredibly low lethal dose. People like to get high, a lot. Probably second only to triggering the libs / whatever the lib version is.

> In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical community that patients would not become addicted to opioid pain relievers and healthcare providers began to prescribe them at greater rates.

> Increased prescription of opioid medications led to widespread misuse of both prescription and non-prescription opioids before it became clear that these medications could indeed be highly addictive.

I assumed this was well-known.

https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/index.html

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#283

Post by p1necone »

rory wrote: post #25

Ivermectin probably doesn't do anything to fight Covid-19, but the American media has really shown their corruption in the way they've treated it. It's clearly a safe drug to take in human-designed doses, and it's cheap to produce. Laughing at people for poisoning themselves with "horse dewormer" instead of pointing out that they are turning to the vet store because their access to medicine has been marginalized is s…

There's thousands of safe medications that probably do nothing to stop covid. Just because one of them has been latched on to by right wing nutjobs doesn't mean it makes any sense for people to take that over the stuff that's actually been shown to help.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#284

Post by pigeonhole123 »

mlyle wrote: post #236
chana_masala wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Officially the FDA and CDC say there have been 0 deaths from adverse events. I agree, that's way too neat of a number for the real world.

You're saying re: vaccines? There's been several deaths believed to be caused by the vaccines and attributed as such by the FDA/CDC. And, you know, a few hundred thousand lives saved.

Not a troll: how do you know that number? Pfizer’s own RCT showed no difference in all cause mortality after six months

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#285

Post by mpalczewski »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #273
mechE321 wrote: post #71

The Bayesian gambler in me wants to think this: The studies on ivermectin seem to be split between "good effect" and "no effect," and there don't seem to be any (by my extremely informal review! going off of memory here) in the camp of "bad effect." Seems reasonable to take ivermectin as a decent gamble to me while we wait on the dang science to get its head out of its butt.

The reasonable thing is get vaccinated immediately. You could also stick chili peppers in your butt, that probably won't hurt either. It has as much ability to help as horse dewormer.

Calling it horse dewormer is either propaganda, or just a plain bad faith argument. The inventors of this drug won a Nobel prize for the discovery and it’s use in humans. It’s recognized as an essential drug.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#286

Post by wombatpm »

simpleguitar wrote: post #93
ajross wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes the quality of scientific research in this area has been rather bad with rushes to publish and ineffective peer review Well, sure, but what else is new? The Ivermectin paper was surely bad, but it wasn't outrageously bad nor unexpectedly so. The mania that resulted isn't, at it's core, about bad science. This won't fix the problem.

> The Ivermectin paper was surely bad, but it wasn't outrageously bad nor unexpectedly so. Oh, yes it was bad. Very very bad. Outrageously bad. The data was mostly fabricated: https://gidmk.medium.com/is-ivermectin-for-covid-19-based-on...

But the larger problem has been the the non-scientific audience running with with things to support their political narrative. If someone from the right infosphere were to promote skinned habanero inserted rectally as a potential prophylactic therapy there would be lawsuits demanding that treatment for people's family members and a furious debate on twitter as to whether habanero or ghost peppers should be used.

Bad science has always been around, you learn how to spot them in grad school. It just now the larger population is learning that bad papers exist.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#287

Post by wombatpm »

mpalczewski wrote: post #285
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasonable thing is get vaccinated immediately. You could also stick chili peppers in your butt, that probably won't hurt either. It has as much ability to help as horse dewormer.

Calling it horse dewormer is either propaganda, or just a plain bad faith argument. The inventors of this drug won a Nobel prize for the discovery and it’s use in humans. It’s recognized as an essential drug.

But people are purchasing the horse version. What is the conversion between a 50 mg tables and a tube of paste for a 1200 lb animal? By using the wrong formulation you run the risk of liver damage due to an overdose of ivermectin.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#288

Post by swader999 »

_2d30 wrote: post #100
gonational wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind linking me to the evidence that this is incorrect? Posts like mine are being censored across-the-board on the Internet because of "interests". I mean, how much more evidence could you possibly linked to then 119 studies, yet my comment was flagged out of existence. We are literally living in a George Orwell novel and the people with jackboots are just ordinary citizens, putting the boots on their own n…

I vouched for your comment. You're allowed to believe whatever irrational things you'd like and comment about them as much as you'd like as far as I'm concerned. Seems it got flagged to death even after the vouch, though. Let's, however, consider your inane views on the RNA vaccines (note that not only is this what everyone refers to them as, it's also the case that they are very specifically NOT therapies as they ar…

The Together trial only did 3 doses and only 400 mcg/kg - nobody else is finding results at that dosage rate either. Needs to be 5 days or longer, 600mcg/kg the earlier the better.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#289

Post by trompetenaccoun »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #273
mechE321 wrote: post #71

The Bayesian gambler in me wants to think this: The studies on ivermectin seem to be split between "good effect" and "no effect," and there don't seem to be any (by my extremely informal review! going off of memory here) in the camp of "bad effect." Seems reasonable to take ivermectin as a decent gamble to me while we wait on the dang science to get its head out of its butt.

The reasonable thing is get vaccinated immediately. You could also stick chili peppers in your butt, that probably won't hurt either. It has as much ability to help as horse dewormer.

"Reasonable" based on what risk/effect-analysis? For what age group? I don't know how many 60 year olds browse HN but I'm not going to take either experimental treatment for a disease I don't even have any reason being scared of, based on the actual data we have. The more hysterical part of society can argue about this and inject themselves with whatever they like for all I care, just leave the rest of us out of it. Not everyone wants to live in fear and under dystopian rights restrictions.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#290

Post by shadowgovt »

Clubber wrote: post #188
shadowgovt wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your circumstance is one of the flaws in the US system. Having been given a solid diagnosis once for that initial $150 charge, instead of relatively-inexpensive maintenance of health that could be done without doctor intervention, we require doctors to re-see and re-prescribe when a patient has a chronic condition. There is some wisdom in that (while "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebra" is a good maxim,…

>Having been given a solid diagnosis once for that initial $150 charge, instead of relatively-inexpensive maintenance of health that could be done without doctor intervention, we require doctors to re-see and re-prescribe when a patient has a chronic condition. >There is some wisdom in that It's pretty convenient for the doctors as well. $150 to write some shit on a pad and sign it. Good work if you can get it.

Humans are very complicated, and writing the wrong stuff on a pad can get someone killed.

Amoxicillin isn't available without a prescription because using the wrong antibiotic on a disease can make the patient worse.

Post reply on HN