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

Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

astralcodexten.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 805 posts

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#401

Post by red_trumpet »

jacquesm wrote: post #76
robocat wrote: post #71

With a meta-analysis, if you detect a high number of fraudulent studies, shouldn’t that negatively affect your trust of the studies which you didn’t detect any problem with? Let us imagine you looked at 100 papers, and you could tell 99 of them had severe problems, and one looked OK. That information would make you suspicious that the one paper also had severe problems, but that you just didn’t detect the problems. F…

A good rule is to simply wait. Bad science has a way of being negated over the longer term. But if you want results today you could always try to replicate the experiment (which is one of the reasons why asking scientists to show their data in raw from should be mandatory in my opinion).

Depends. If you are a doctor treating COVID, you wouldn't want to miss out on an effective medicine, right?

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#402

Post by blindmute »

rscho wrote: post #371
blindmute wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is actually an expert in a subfield of medicine, not only do doctors not understand it at all, but the experts making guidelines often recommend the exact opposite of what is the best treatment for the patient, usually for liability reasons, but occasionally for true lack of understanding. The quality of research is so poor that often times there are more flawed studies showing X than proper studies wh…

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 null and even now isn't super clear, the word of experts was basically meaningless. Trust them if you don't care enough to look into it, but if you're Joe I'd say just go ahead and believe whatever you understand to be correct until there's a better consensus.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#403

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #316
Shank wrote: post #49

This is worth reading purely for the writing alone. Scott Alexander is a treasure: > As best I can tell, this is some kind of Egyptian trial. It might or might not be an RCT; it says stuff like “Patients were self-allocated to the treatment groups; the first 3 days of the week for the intervention arm while the other 3 days for symptomatic treatment”. Were they self-allocated in the sense that they got to choose? Doe…

> This is worth reading purely for the writing alone. Scott Alexander is a treasure This post is a breath of fresh air for the blog and feels refreshingly well-researched. Between that and the unquestionable popularity of COVID-related discussion, it’s no wonder this article is popular. Scott is undeniably a good blog writer with an entertaining writing style that resonates with his reader base. However, I’ve become…

Most of the writing is fantastic, but I'm very disappointed by the take that "everyone was wrong", by the implication that doctors didn't know they should treat for worms before giving immunosuppressants. Guess what, doctors in the developing world already knew that, it was always the standard practice on Brazilian hospitals. In fact, ivermectin was in very high demand in hospitals before it was suspected to be a Covid19 treatment. That whole paragraph reads like some really bad exceptionalism (it it doesn't exist here it doesn't exist).

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#405

Post by s1artibartfast »

native_samples wrote: post #283
matthewmacleod wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A number of people (myself included) would perhaps pay less attention to ivermectin as in covid drug if crowd would really take it and do studies instead of just publicly mocking people who are trying to look into it " A number of people—probably not including myself, if I'm honest—would take this statement more seriously if it wasn't a complaint that a thing which has already happened , and continues to happen , isn…

Somehow society managed to take an entirely new, experimental medical technology, run trials and launch it to the world population in zero - large scale useful studies of ivermectin produced by the western medical establishment. As I was reading the article, this is really what leaped out at me. There are lots of people and doctors who think ivermectin works. It's clearly a question worth investigating. Why are all t…

There is currently a 15,000 patient study funded by the NIH which includes the evaluation of ivermectin.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530

IT is slower than most would like, but it is one of many in a long list of publicly funded studies.

https://www.nih.gov/research-training/medical-research-initi...

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#406

Post by tqi »

romeros wrote: post #383
romeros wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHO has no other option than being inaccurate. Society needs a simple answer. Do this. Do that etc. Put on a mask. Wash your hands. Practice social distancing. Use approved vaccines. Take booster shots etc are pretty simple to follow. Likewise don't take non approved stuff. Easy to understand and simple to follow. Nuances will likely hurt and confuse the common man. That's why the news and celebs and politicians etc…

I need to clarify. I am not implying that WHO / CDC is lying outright. It's just that they have to be very careful and choose the right message to convey to the general public. It does mean you might have to downplay some things which might be true but will cause more harm than good if emphasized. I personally can never do that but I won't judge people who are in a situation where every thing they say has a huge impa…

I think that rationale is patronizing nonsense. At best, this behavior is short-sighted and forgets erosion of trust is cumulative.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#407

Post by fragmede »

mumblemumble wrote: post #356
WithinReason wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In nature, both the antiparasitic and the parasite will have a tendency to end up in places that you don't necessarily want them to be for the purposes of motivated hypothetical reasoning.

aka the chicken will urinate out some amount of ivermectin, unprocessed by the chicken, and then some amount will make it elsewhere that will allow for natural selection to take place (eggs or wherever). Once is infinitesimal, but give every animal some ivermectin for funsies, and you've now bred ivermectin resistance.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#408

Post by rscho »

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…

Your Joe is the average HN reader. My Joe is my average patient. I completely agree that the word of experts is meaningless on matters where dust had no time to settle. I however maintain that practitioners have to follow guidelines and experts regardless because I believe in the principle (if not the current application) of evidence-based medicine, and that Joe should not be allowed free access to any drug he wants to prevent frequent self harm.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#409

Post by pdonis »

romeros wrote: post #287
astrange wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has an earlier piece whose point is that the WHO can never be accurate, because they always have to prioritize "sounding trustworthy" over accuracy, and random blogs don't.

WHO has no other option than being inaccurate. Society needs a simple answer. Do this. Do that etc. Put on a mask. Wash your hands. Practice social distancing. Use approved vaccines. Take booster shots etc are pretty simple to follow. Likewise don't take non approved stuff. Easy to understand and simple to follow. Nuances will likely hurt and confuse the common man. That's why the news and celebs and politicians etc…

> 1. Be 100% accurate and risk confusing people 2. Be strategic about it and for the greater good.

Humans have a very poor track record at actually advancing any "greater good" when they choose option 2. In practice, "the greater good" turns out to be whatever helps those particular humans keep their power and status. That's why option 1 is the only acceptable one.

> We need a narrative and the cost is accuracy.

If this is actually true (I don't think it is), then our civilization is doomed.

> We need to have more empathy for people who are the decision makers and have to make difficult choices.

No, we need to stop thinking that certain people should be given the power to be "decision makers" and tell the rest of us what to do. The only acceptable thing for people in public health positions to do should be your option 1 above.

Post reply on HN