Ivermectin is a prescription drug in the United States. A doctor would most likely reject the request if a patient asked for it solely on a YouTube recommendation. So to answer your question, a prescribing doctor.
IMO YouTube isn't medically qualified to censor ongoing research or debate, just stick a disclaimer and be done with it.
Whoa whoa whoa. 1 year old mRNA vaccine's risks don't come with scare quotes. He often talks about the lack of long term data. mRNA covid vaccines might have been exceptionally safe so far, yet intellectual honesty demands we admit that indeed we don't have the long term data yet. Implying there would absolutely be no such risk is a fundamentalistic position itself.
Pretty much all risks are identified within a short period, it's very rare for there to be long term risks.So yes there may be some theoretical long term risk, but it's soo small that it is misleading to talk about it as a serious risk. Expecially compared to the real and known dangers of Ivermectin and covid.
Do those risks look proportional to you?
> Pretty much all risks are identified within a short period, it's very rare for there to be long term risks
I am not aware of any first principles in immunology that evidence this view. Maybe you do?
Youtube is qualified to say "This use of this drug is unresearched/unproven by the sources we build guidelines around", as are all private companies.
* If X died because of a "Take Ivermectin and you'll survive COVID" video on YouTube, who's to blame?
Assumption: Ivermectin has a net negative effect. Assumption: X relied on Ivermectin exclusively, rejecting the current standard of care procedures.
* If X died because Youtube censored "Take Ivermectin and you'll survive COVID" videos, who's to blame?
Assumption: Ivermectin is effective in certain cases, and X's life could have been saved if Ivermectin were used, possibly in conjunction with other standard procedures, up to and including vaccination.
The point of public conversation is to asses the cost/benefit tradeoffs of different courses of action, especially in presence of incomplete information. Additionally, reliable cost/benefit tradeoffs heavily inform the design of future information gathering campaigns. Given the public's heightened interest in Covid, it is unclear how to have necessary cost/benefit conversations other than in public. Censoring such conversations is potentially costing lives and is eroding the public's trust in the authorities.
The youtube algorithm and social platform is not some kind of careful dialog for mutual enlightenment. People aren't trying to rationally assess conflicting and limited evidence, and youtubes algorithm certainly doesn't reward any such painstaking work.
As such on youtube which is what this is about, any such discussion is not at all likely to inform; yet because convincing tales sell better, whatever claims are made, are likely to sound convincing to at least some people - truth and honesty are entirely orthogonal issues here, or worse actively selected against (because they're usually messy, unclear, and thus boring).
And thus on youtube the appropriate strategy is at a bare minimum draconian censorship. I mean, ideally they'd dump the sensationalism-boosting algorithm, but that ideal is obviously not a viable request to a platform that depends on user engagement (of any kind) for its survival.
Just because we don't want to live in an Orwellian nightmare doesn't mean all speech is necessarily a value-add, nor that there aren't any social dynamics that can reliably induce harmful speech. The world isn't that simple.
So while it's reasonable for people to seek certainty in uncertain times, that doesn't mean youtube is the place for everybody to debate ideal drug regimens.
Worse, youtube outcompetes traditional mass-media for ad dollars by exploiting precisely the sensationalism engine. The net result is an uninformed population fed sensationalism on all cylinders, with rampant censorship decided by a tiny clique. I have some doubts whether this is a recipe for a stable prosperous society.
Edit. Of course the bulk of the conversation should happen on technical grounds in the medical media in relative obscurity. But given the high profile of the covid pandemic, should a therapeutic drug with a stack of studies backing claims of positive impact, be discussed in mass-media?
When a "point of view" is having random unqualified people abuse medications, yes.
I've never before heard of people dying from vaccines so the usual safety bar for vaccines is obviously incredibly much higher than what we have here.
Please read this site terms of use. Post only substantive comments that contribute to discussion and avoid name-calling, and shallow dismissals.
If the brand new vaccines using a brand new technology are low risk, is really a matter of opinion. Basically it comes down to how much you trust the authorities and the how much you consider any given research or studies to be unbiased. (Particularly when the full data for the said studies remain unpublished)
You can plainly see that both of these are variable between different people, even within similar schools of thoughts.
So because someone does not share your opinion does not make them a liar.
If that is the case any one saying the new vaccines are "safe and effective", should also be an obvious lie, because the long term safety studies are not done, which objectively makes it a lie.
That's the nice thing about science though. It's based on (readily available, well recorded) evidence. Deciding that an individual is smarter and/or doesn't believe in science (aka the entire anti vax movement) may be a matter of opinion, but the actual data and risks are not.
> So because someone does not share your opinion does not make them a liar.
No, the lying part does.
How about the person who took it? We are presumably talking about adults, who we supposedly simultaneously trust with choosing a government that decides over life and death for millions in their own country and abroad.
Surely you're not complaining about this social media platform's established method for controlling the platforming of incorrect thought?!?
YouTube is chock-full of dubious health information. But only this one got banned.
Why?
For the record, since I've been muzzled from responding further, I don't believe that it was "money".
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
I still disagree strongly with your characterization of “substance” in this context though. E.g. when another user sent this (ad-hominem) challenge:
> Why is it that everyone who pushes Ivermectin as a miracle cure for COVID is also a conspiracy aficionado?
I responded with a simple and dispassionate explanation, rather than taking offense. Is there no “substance” in my entirely coherent, well-argued, and non-emotional reply?
> Simple. You have defined the latter as some variation on the former.
Perhaps you could call out my "what a pair of years" top-level comment as that was not responding to any of the nasty attacks in this thread, or even dogpiling on the excellent arguments that other people are making. But those kinds of comments function to put me on the record here with a timestamp, so I can link to them later. There is a tiny bit of substance even in those.
It sounds like you might prefer that I disengage and flag all of the nasty posts (e.g. another person in this thread implied that I am a murderer) so "the bureaucracy" can fix this conversation? Sorry, you are a great moderation team, but I am not going to do that, because I don't believe it is a real solution to anything. You cannot fix this kind of conversation from the top down - Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Trying will just disenfranchise the out-group further and make the echo-chamber effect worse. If that means this topic cannot be on HN, so be it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27562666
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27562679
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27562717
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27562722
Please stop posting like that. It's not hard, and doesn't need complex argumentation.
Add to that the built-in handicap because this community (like every other) values in-group opinions much more than out-group opinions, and it doesn’t make sense to even try better/longer arguments. I’m going to stop participating in controversy on this site, and move the infowar project over to audio chatrooms, where a conversation like this actually has a chance.
To everyone else: Arguing controversial topics with strangers, in Reddit-style text threads, is primitive and ineffective. The technology is insufficient for the task, and it will never get better.
This is very true. But I don't think it is a problem with technology.
It is just that you cannot really have a valuable insight by putting a 10000 idiots in a room and have them argue it out. In other words, you cannot replace one intelligent man with a 10000 idiots, hence the failure of HN and similar forums.
These things are only good for sharing interesting things, so the best way to use is to just use posted links, and never to engage in discussion.
"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."
My suggestion is to be more selective about sources, and perhaps to have an explicit policy. Individual papers tend not to be good sources, as people just use them as weapons to prop up their opinion. Mainstream media pieces aren't either, as they lack intellectual depth. I suggest blog posts by experts (David Gorski, Derek Lowe), pieces by top science journalists (Helen Branswell, Kai Kupferschmidt, Jon Cohen). Note I am not saying only mainstream views should be represented, quite the contrary. If and when Alina Chan posts something long form on lab leak (likely, as she's working on a book), that's a great candidate for spurring intellectually curious discussion.
I also remember today's Ivermectin post being flagged. Does that mean the moderators then chose to unflag it (despite the fact there'd already been at least two earlier "pro-Ivermectin" posts throughout the week)? According to the Hacker News FAQ, moderators "sometimes turn flags off when they are unfair."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
The whole Ivermectin saga does not deserve the attention that it is getting, those that are relentlessly pushing it are causing people not to get vaccinated and that in turn will prolong the epidemic and lead to people getting ill and some fraction of those will die.
I've read up on this thing as much as I could and it's quite simple: there is at this point in time zero hard evidence that it works in humans short of using it in dosage that is well outside the range that we have data on. It's just the HCQ story warmed over.
Can you make an argument that people going for natural immunity and relying on currently used COVID treatment protocols in case they decide it is needed will prolong the epidemic more than if they took the vaccine?
Maybe it will do the opposite, as 1) natural immunity may be stronger, last longer 2) some number of non-vaccinated people getting sick, getting isolated and taking effective treatment may on the whole infect less people than if that same number of people gets vaccinated and then interacts with other people and potentially spread the infection more because they don't get strong symptoms.
I'm not saying that you are incorrect, just that the argument that getting vaccinated solves the epidemic quicker isn't clear.
You seem to be on a tear today. FYI, I added my flag here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27577500
As well as adding a flag to one of the comments in that discussion that attacked you. I don't leave a lot of flags on HN. For various reasons, I'm pretty conservative in my use of flags.
I'm surprised to see this particular piece where I am currently commenting got so many upvotes and so many comments. I asked about the mechanism of how this drug works and got some meaningful engagement and also some really worthless engagement, in my opinion.* And then I lost interest. I couldn't readily see a meaningful connection.
But you are basically talking about censorship. Censorship grows interest in the forbidden topic. I wholly disagree with your position here.
If this is the garbage you claim it is -- and it may well be, I just don't know the topic well enough to affirmatively agree with you -- then there are vastly better ways to kill it without harming freedom of speech.
But who is to blame for the deaths of thousands of people, who could have been saved by Ivermectin, which in all probability is happening right now, and has been going on for many months, if not for the censorship of W.H.O, Youtube and media?
Entirely irrelevant when discussing YouTube, which we're doing now. YouTube is not a legitimate source for medical/drug information.
It is not a source, and never was a legitimate source of anything, but a media of communication. I am not sure why people mix the two up. If doctors in one part of their world can share their observations with doctors all over the world, it has tremendous value.
Now it seems that doctors can only share their observations with W.H.O and any inference should come from the top, which they could delay citing sorry "no research" for an arbitrarly long time..