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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

#481

Post by mgamache »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #459
WhompingWindows wrote: post #339

In my opinion, the main crux is this: there are moneyed interests who are motivated to generate mistrust and otherization based on political parties. In the USA, Fox News has a strong incentive to inspire hatred and fear of Democratic policy, and MSNBC has a strong incentive to inspire hatred of the GOP. The same is true for Twitter, FB, NYT, WSJ, WaPo, literally any media outlet. Hatred, fear, outrage, worry, anxiet…

We do not live in a society with two equal sides. The GOP has made destroying democracy/hating "the media" core to their platform, as opposed to centering their platform on some sort of policy goal. Do democrats hate the GOP? Sure, but their coalition is not nearly as structurally oriented around this fact.

The 2020 DNC platform was Orange Man Bad.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#482

Post by hervature »

mnw21cam wrote: post #467

> People are going to fight hard against this, partly because it’s annoying and partly because of (imho exaggerated) patient privacy related concerns. Somebody’s going to try make some kind of gated thing where you have to prove you have a PhD and a “legitimate cause” before you can access the data, and that person should be fought tooth and nail... I have a huge amount of respect for Scott, and the rational thinking…

> This is one of those cases where the thinking is quite different between the US and Europe. In Europe, you need to get the permission of everyone involved in the study before you can publish your data about them, if there is any chance that they can be identified from that data.

In the US there are all sorts of protections for research subjects both in terms of potential harm and privacy. In fact, there are mechanisms to be exempt on keeping consent documentation if that is the primary mechanism in which the subject could be harmed (for instance, in a data leak). His thinking is contentious at best and would generally be regarded as unethical. People seeking medical treatment should not have to agree to have their raw data disclosed and this falls under the undue influence principle of ethical research.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#483

Post by thedorkknight »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #417
peakaboo wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 1.5 years ago, ivermectin was discussed in "conspiracy" channels like Reddit, and many people were helped by it. The mass media ignored it for over a year and when they did started covering it, they said it was a horse dewormer. The fact is, what people think is trustworthy news today is pure propaganda. You cannot make an informed decision based on what you read in the mass media.. It's all completely controll…

> About 1.5 years ago, ivermectin was discussed in "conspiracy" channels like Reddit, and many people were helped by it. How were they helped by it when the evidence shows that it doesn't work for COVID-19?

Not to mention the lunacy of assessing efficacy of drugs by reading internet forums and social media. Why do scientists bother with expensive studies when they can just read Facebook? /s

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#484

Post by mgamache »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #16
roenxi wrote: post #6

This is exactly the sort of thing that YouTube, Twitter, et al are suppressing. Someone thoughtfully listening seriously to what the proponents of Ivermectin are saying, weighing it up and saying "looks good but you forgot...". You can't get this sort of excellent rebuttal without allowing a site like https://ivmmeta.com/ into the debate.

There is little evidence of such analysis being suppressed. I think it is just relatively rare, because it is a lot of work and takes particular skill. Most people who care about this research are indeed crackpots, unfortunately. Those who aren't have mostly moved on from Ivermectin because they have better things to do. Ivermectin is being tested in large RCTs, as it should. If it works, it will be used. If it doesn…

"There is little evidence of such analysis being suppressed"

Please think about that for a while...

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#485

Post by jacquesm »

blindmute wrote: post #367
jacquesm wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would you trust a local GP? They are almost certainly the least knowledgeable person in the chain of authority from which you could choose to trust. They will either follow the guidelines or their anecdotal experience. You could read the research papers and the guidelines yourself and have a better understanding of the issue than a given GP. For anything rare, you could probably read the subreddit about the diagn…

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/stacking the deck/fudging the data/angling for funding and so on and then finally I'd have to weigh those papers and all of their contradictions and arrive at some conclusion. The chances of me getting that wrong are just as high as the chances of my GP debugging a piece of software by reading papers about debugging.

For rare diseases the job of a GP is not to diagnose but to pass you on to someone who can. You also have the right to a second opinion here in case you don't trust the advice that you are getting and finally, you can ask for arbitrage if you are then still not happy.

That said, plenty of errors are made, but I don't think the software industry has any right to speak about mistakes made in other fields, our own house has been on fire for the last three decades in that respect and the only thing we've done to deal with it is to avow any responsibility.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#486

Post by phdelightful »

tristor wrote: post #400

I don't understand the point of the image of the meth seizure when discussing this study [1]. The last name is the same, but if you understand Mexican surnames, it is strongly unlikely that the two different people are in any way closely related. I like reading Scott's writing, but this really detracts from the overall quality of the article, because it seems like a vaguely racist dig without any relevance. [1]: http…

I also think it's humor. Scott probably just came across it while searching the name. When you search something on twitter, it is bolded in the results just like in the image.

The caption is an example of irony I think: incongruity between what is expected and what is presented, mixed with saying the opposite of what you mean. Quite clear from context. I laughed when I saw it.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#487

Post by mgamache »

jacquesm wrote: post #28
roenxi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the first anti-Ivermectin argument that you want to believe... I discounted a highly biased echo chamber in social media and more traditional media and went with 30-odd studies that appear to have been assembled in good faith even now. I changed my mind immediately on seeing "Parasitic worms are a significant confounder in some ivermectin studies, such that they made them get a positive result even when hon…

I have a pretty good memory for comment histories and you've been pushing this for far more than it is worth. That this single article would change your mind is fortunate, but I do not suspect that to hold true for the bulk of the conspiracy peddlers that remain.

"Conspiracy peddlers" -- IE People with a different standard of evidence than yourself.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#488

Post by jacquesm »

dekhn wrote: post #332
fallingknife wrote: post #161

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...

In 10 years, when most of the dust has settled, we'll be able to explain what we saw in Sweden and the surrounding countries as a combination of population density, interactions, medical policy, and randomness. It's hardly fair to consider only a small number of variables in cases like these.

That mirrors my expectation. Which by the way is a pet peeve of mine: the reliance on the 'R0' factor for reporting in the press, R0 is something you can at best establish when an epidemic has run its course, but it is being treated as this magic wheel that we can turn to ensure a desirable level of infections, which is complete madness, it's an output, and a delayed one at that, not an input.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#489

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

toolz wrote: post #396
HelloNurse wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't we risk force-evolving ivermectine resistant parasites with the same mechanism as antibiotic resistant bacteria?

The CDC estimates that _at least_ 30% of all anti-biotic prescriptions are inappropriately prescribed. I'd wager an over-prescription of Ivermectin (that by some unknown characteristic appears it would save massive numbers of lives) isn't likely to evolve parasites (which evolve much more slowly than bacteria to begin with) to be resistant in a dangerously meaningful way given what we see with bacteria resistance. Th…

>This is of course just a gut feeling

I see what you did there.

Re: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know

#490

Post by Wolf_Larsen »

resoluteteeth wrote: post #420
toolz wrote: post #395

The real story (in my opinion) behind Ivermectin are the studies not being conducted. Here you have a ton of studies claiming to have found benefit with a worldwide, massively available drug that has practically zero risks for most people (and it's an extremely well understood drug) and we don't have first world countries conducting RCTs to understand it better. So you have to ask yourself - when do we get high quali…

> The real story (in my opinion) behind Ivermectin are the studies not being conducted. Here you have a ton of studies claiming to have found benefit with a worldwide, massively available drug that has practically zero risks for most people (and it's an extremely well understood drug) and we don't have first world countries conducting RCTs to understand it better. First world countries are in the process of conductin…

> The thing to learn here is that there's no conspiracy, trials are underway, and science is already working properly.

Thank God! I was worried it may be a nuanced situation full of brazen conflicts of interest.

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