Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection: A Meta-Analysis

Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19 Infection: A Meta-Analysis
journals.lww.com

I took prophylactic ivermectin for a few weeks, and yes, it had a picture of a dog on the box, because that's the only kind I could find. You won't find human ivermectin where I live because there are no endemic parasites to treat - or at least, they are few. I stopped after getting my first shot - vaccines are the strictly superior version. But the cost-benefit situation was already clear last winter: it has a very good safety profile, and may help prevent and treat early Covid. No reason to ban people for saying that, or at least no medical reason, nor a humanitarian or social one. But it does get one virtual signaling points, because we have to get those heretics to vaccinate, even if we have to burn to the ground everything they might consider an alternative. When they have nothing left they'll realize we wanted what's good for them all along.

The obvious answer to such a situation is that science should be allowed to take its normal investigative course and all possible options be investigated and presented so long as the researchers behind them are also honestly examining evidence. And yes, this could very easily include ivermectin or anything else, because it already does in much of the world where this polarization bubble around this particular medicine, or certain other subjects, doesn't ridiculously exist to the same degree.

I shake my head thinking about people a few decades from now shaking their own heads at emotionally and ideologically driven stupidities like this in the middle of numerous other hysterias revolving around a global pandemic and the politics of the last few years..

Sorry about that. But I do want to push on a point, mostly because I have a good quote: "It's possible to make mistakes and still lose. That's not a weakness, it's life".

There is a disconnect between being right on the bets you make, and winning. In this case I could be wrong on ivermectin helping. It doesn't matter in the long run, because what matters is making decent enough bets (and of course, not being unlucky). Why "decent enough"? Because satisficing vs optimizing. I don't particularly care if the chance that ivermectin helps is 25% or 75%. I'm mostly looking at the cost, and if the potential gain is at least double digits. Then I'm looking _again_ at the potential cost, then again, then checking the dosage three times and doing a search to see if veterinarian pills are usually of much worse quality. Because it's not the precise probability of Ivermectin working that's instrumental here. Only that it has a probability high enough to be worth the bother: after that, it's all focus on the downside. And yeah, turns out the downside is small.

Not that any of that matters with tribal posturing, of course. "Ivermectin" = "Antivaxer" = "Trumpist" = "Evil" is a much much shorter association for our brains to make.