The CDC's stance is "we don't know, there's trials ongoing", not "it doesn't work".
CDC has a webpage pointing to the FDA / NIH web-pages.
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As far as I can tell, "IVM doesn't work vs COVID19" is the official stance of US health research institutes. There are further studies because the politics of it kinda demand a study, but no one expects the studies to have a good result. (Nothing like monoclonal antibodies, which are being used to save lives right now).
This isn't a "we don't know" stance. FDA is very explicit to not use IVM for COVID19.
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...
> Currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19. Clinical trials assessing ivermectin tablets for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in people are ongoing.
From https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/han00449.asp
> Ivermectin is not authorized or approved by FDA for prevention or treatment of COVID-19. The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel has also determined that there are currently insufficient data to recommend ivermectin for treatment of COVID-19. ClinicalTrials.govexternal icon has listings of ongoing clinical trials that might provide more information about these hypothesized uses in the future.
Those are "we don't know" stances. Or at least, "we're not certain".
But it works. And people are freaking out about COVID19 so much that its free. Maybe we should start a debate about the moral hazards of giving highly expensive (though effective) COVID19 treatments to population centers who have refused to take the $20 vaccine?
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If people want the "cheap miracle drug that works", that was dexamethasone, at a price tag of like $15 or so. And the vaccine of course. I don't know why they're going for IVM.
As a steroid, its an innately risky treatment (steroids suppress your immune system). But its been shown that the cheap steroid dexamethasone, when used in correct doses, can greatly decrease mortality rates. So yeah, take with assistance of a doctor (to make sure your situation is the right use case), but we already have a "cheap miracle drug" success story here if people just want some hope or optimism in their lives. Dexamethasone was credited for cutting out 50% of deaths or something along that magnitude.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s128...
I’m not saying that logic is flawed, but we should at least be consistent. If healthcare is a human right, you can’t then judge my life choices that got me there.
Numerous hospitals have reached triage of care. We now have to talk about how to conserve scarce resources. We need to pick "winners and losers". No one likes this discussion, but it must happen.
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez...
* https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21062484/signed-mec-l...
Now that we're reaching this level of crisis, hospitals are beginning to ration off care. I know the ethicists have theorized the proper ethics to this situation over the past year, but as citizens / voting members of the public, its our job to form an opinion about these ethics think-tanks, and whether or not we should support certain viewpoints or not.
Health care cannot "be a right" if we cannot afford said health care for everyone. If we cannot afford health care for everyone (literally not enough hospital beds), some mechanism needs to be used to prioritize who gets care or not. No amount of policy can squeeze blood from a stone: if we don't have enough hospital beds anymore, then we must systematically deny care in some regards. (And whatever system we choose will hopefully be fair)
Money, for all of its problems, is an effective prioritization methodology... and simple to understand. You give care to those who can afford it. People always criticize the methodology but in the absence of better choices, I'm going to default to it.
I think there's some hypotheticals saying that maybe the vaccinated should have priority (since the unvaccinated are the group who is causing the crisis, we should "punish" the unvaccinated in this regards). I think I can accept that as an answer as a higher priority.
1. You can either kick out some people in beds (making room for the new patients).
2. Or, you turn away the patients (and wish them the best of course).
Those are the only two choices. When you're out of beds, you're out of beds. Governors across the country have been pulling in student nurses, and increasing nurse pay to encourage retired nurses back into the hospitals. But eventually, you run out of nurses / beds / resources, and run up against this hard limit. We have an ability to magically summon new nurses, but all those abilities have been used up by now (we had a nursing shortage _before_ COVID19 happened after all)
The correct answer, from an "ethics" perspective, is to be ready for the situation, and ethically prioritize the different cases.
But all of them "need" the hospital bed. But the physics of the situation means that some of them are going to go home without treatment.
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Then tomorrow, 20 more patients come in, and you repeat the process. The day after that, another 20 patients. Etc. etc. You then repeat this situation until the COVID19 surge is over.
The $31 joke is about IVM: lice / parasite remover that people are taking because they think it cures COVID19. At least, that was my interpretation of the joke.
https://www.nih.gov/research-training/medical-research-initi...
We also happen to have months worth of studies of IVM already. Given what has happened in literally the last dozen studies, we have a good idea of what will probably happen in that study.
That's 16 high quality studies on IVM already in the link I posted above. Do you think the results of study #17 will change things?
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I mean, maybe it will. But I wouldn't bet on it. Studies in science have this thing where they usually replicate results.
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/6/989
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.21.21260223v...
https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/...
So we just don't know, and it's too early to place any bets one way or the other. That's how science works.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/ivermecti...
https://gidmk.medium.com/is-ivermectin-for-covid-19-based-on...
Not to even mention that the only realistic effect it would have is blunting the effects of IL-6. There’s better options for antagonizing IL-6 with less of a side effect profile, specifically tocilizumab and sarilumab.
If you refer to blocking nuclear import, ORF6 in SARS-CoV and other sarbecoviruses already does that to begin with. Adding SARS-CoV ORF6 to a MHV model actually made it more pathogenic, so there is little benefit to not blocking nuclear import.
Here are some associated material on the topic:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/JVI.01012-07
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01308-07
https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/JVI.79.17.11335-11...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221112472...
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
The quality of COVID-19 research has been pretty bad across the board with researchers racing to publish and journals doing weak reviews. But I haven't seen any credible allegations of fraud against the specific studies that I linked above.
There are multiple other hypothesized mechanisms of action beyond antagonizing IL-6. It's not completely clear what, if anything, is actually happening in vivo.
https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/...
Otherwise we would have to maintain the same sort of equipose about literally ever possible substance - peanut butter could be an effective COVID treatment, until someone does a proper study, we just don't know.
https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-...
Because the treatments that work (ie: Monoclonal Antibodies) are being hugely invested into right now. IIRC, the government just spent a few billion dollars buying more doses of them.
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The thing about COVID19 vaccine boosters is that the CDC has basically blessed them, but the FDA has not yet. As such, there's a vigorous debate going on right now whether the 3rd dose is needed. (Immunocompromised individuals are already allowed to get the 3rd dose however. The only questions with regards to the booster is the general public). Yes, different agencies will disagree on things. CDC is most focused on public health, FDA is most focused on safety. Their goals / purposes are different, and therefore will lead to situations where they disagree like this. The White House then has to resolve the difference and make a stance. Since the White House is having meetings on the subject, it makes the news a lot.
For some "alternative treatments", like Ivermectin, there's no major body who believes it works in the USA. CDC says it doesn't work. FDA says it doesn't work. NIH doesn't have any research showing any reasonable degree of efficacy.