Look, I don’t know if Ivermectin is effective for Covid or not. From what I have heard it seems like looking into it with an unbiased lens may be worth it. I don’t care if it is effective or not so much as I don’t think news and corporate interest should drive the national opinion.
I’m not even that scared about the anti viral that Pfizer is pushing. HIV drugs have been around long enough to establish a safety profile and weigh the risk vs reward. I do think, that despite reports ivermectin has a pretty solid safety record. However safe HIV drugs are, the commercials for them list significant side effects. Again I hesitate to post this as someone thinks I’m pushing ivermectin as a legitimate therapy. I truly do not know…
To me the sequence of the story commercial and the counter story made me feel a bit queasy.
People did look into this with an unbiased lens (did dozens of medical studies, many still ongoing) and so far there is no good evidence that it has any beneficial effect whatsoever. On the other hand now a bunch of people have overdosed from taking veterinary doses not intended for human consumption (there have been thousands of calls to poison control centers about Ivermectin in the past few months, and some have died).
From what I have seen everyone pushing Ivermectin is a grossly misinformed and non-credible amateur. Some of these snake-oil salespeople may have direct financial interest, while others just want to promote their own questionable agendas, e.g. trying to undermine/disparage some extremely effective vaccines.
This is a horrible example of something “worth looking into”.
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
Treating covid with ivermectin does seem like a bad idea, but it also doesn't really seem that dangerous overall. I'm sure there are deaths out there from people overdosing on it but they seem like a really rare event.
[0] - https://forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/10/20/calls-about-ive...
[1] - https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/15400.pdf
[2] - https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...
Not really.
> On the other hand now a bunch of people have overdosed from taking veterinary doses not intended for human consumption (there have been thousands of calls to poison control centers about Ivermectin in the past few months, and some have died).
You're falling for sensationalized propaganda. If you read the CDC advisory, there was only a five fold increase over the pre-pandemic baseline [1]. The pre-pandemic baseline for ivermectin poisoning is absurdly low.
> Some of these snake-oil salespeople may have direct financial interest
You mean like the financial interests of pharma companies who would prefer a treatment that wasn't off patent? If we're going to use financial incentives to infer credibility, pharma loses on this question hands down every time.
The truth is that the pharmacokinetics of ivermectin closely match Pfizer's new anti-COVID drug [2] (3CL protease inhibition).
[1] https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/han00449.asp
[2] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2021/cp/d1cp0296...
It certainly could turn out to be nothing. But on the other hand, why not get a doctors prescription until a couple of high quality studies have decided the issue? As you point out, the only real problem seems to be people taking it in unsafe dosages or through unreliable channels like a vet.
[0] Which is broadly consistent with the studies I've seen over at https://ivmmeta.com/ - not sure by how much, but it does seem to assist.
There isn't strong evidence, and you can't just eyeball studies and assume you understand them with no training.
I have cystic fibrosis, and I have tried to do things like this before by looking at studies on unverified treatments. It doesn't work. You just end up with snake oil. I have a masters in biomedical engineering, and I couldn't do it.
Interpreting studies is hard. Interpreting meta analysis accurately is super hard. Tons of studies are fake, or have bias, or have poor methodology. That website is total bullshit and is just throwing all the studies in to their statistical soup and mixing them together to come up with nonsensical results.
"There is evidence of a negative publication bias, and the probability that an ineffective treatment generated results as positive as the 65 studies is estimated to be 1 in 403 billion."
Lol, wtf?
I'm no medical anything but I do have extensive academic and statistical training. There is enough in these studies for someone to take Ivermectin as an "eh, why not?" gambit. There is evidence it is helpful, although the evidence isn't conclusive (or even especially strong). Some doctors are already prescribing it, quite reasonably.
Maybe the solution to this is to allow OTC sales of human grade Ivermectin. The drug is one of the safest in the world. No reasonable reason to deny the drug if someone wants it.
This is not true at all. Ivermectin has some nasty neurological effects (vertigo, seizures, blindness) at high doses.
This has been going on for decades, this is nothing new. What is new is the medium and the cost. TV is still expensive even today, while internet is cheap, its reach is much larger and it has permanent memory.
This is why we should support smaller independent outlets like TYT. We may or may not like their style, but they don't rely on corporate sponsors and that deserves respect. I am also happy about independent newsletter publishers (on substack, for example) - these are a drop in the ocean, but still a start.
I can't name a single large publication (left, right, center, liberal, conservative... whatever) that I trust or respect :(
An independent news source should be primarily funded by either non-patisans for good will or by viewers. I'll take Stephen Crowder over TYT any day.
But either way, Stephen Crowder has much of an agenda to gain viewers as TYT - if your viewers support you, then more viewers is more support.
If your viewers don't support you money-wise, then those interests are more indirect, such as a desire for implicit campaigning by donars, like TYT, or for corporate funding, like NBC/Fox.
If your goal is news then getting as close to the primary source is as important as possible, and unfortunately YouTube is making this even more difficult today. If your goal is interpretation you need to listen to a wide variety of experts to form an informed opinion that you can actually defend.
Ultimately, every news outlet is beholden to someone and most have made editorial choices to more palatable to the demographic they have acquired over the years.
>I don’t care if it is effective or not so much as I don’t think news and corporate interest should drive the national opinion.
Even more frightening is that a lot of people who think that don't have the same opinion on things like these that are way worse than anything NBC News does:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh4uS4f78o
They always focus and nitpick on media that's mostly following the science, and ignore the other side pushing drugs with unsound studies as some kind of magic drugs.
>From what I have heard it seems like looking into it with an unbiased lens may be worth it
And do you really think every country where covid isn't as politicized, like India, Brazil (both of who have extensive experience using ivermectin and HCQ for other users), China, UK, European countries, Canada etc. haven't looked at it with an unbiased lens?
Maybe listen to actual scientists with decades of drug development research experience instead of 'both siding' the conversation?
E.g https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ivermectin-covid-1...
Ivermectin has failed to be seriously studied, while the patentable drug got a good study out of the gate. I wonder why.
Canada usually waits for fda approval and data before it approves most things.
UK, Brazil and India have right wing govts, do you really think they would suppress real cures and destroy their economy and popularity of their leaders and parties due to lockdowns, hospitalizations, and the dead filling up burial grounds. If HCQ or IVR actually worked, a leader would have mandated it and would have become hugely popular for saving their country from a pandemic that other countries are getting roiled by. Imagine how much more popular Boris or Modi would become, it would literally seal their next election win.
Or maybe IVR or HCQ aren't good drugs against covid and are hyped up for political reasons by some and then pushed by others who aren't capable of properly reading or understanding scientific studies.
This conspiracy only makes sense to people who cannot think broadly, skeptically and logically.
But you are here to disparage a company that has developed a novel antiviral treatment and has applied for the authorization.
CNN has a liberal audience. If they ran multiple headlines on this (whether automated or just articles written by different editors) I'm sure the one that paints Rittenhouse as without any justification will get more clicks. And therefore its more likely those writers will be promoted internally based on performance + those who are covering the story will continue to cover the story instead of moving to something else.
Look at a site like Reddit. It takes user submitted headlines for news stories. And depending on the subreddit the headliens will always skew one way politically without the need for money dictating things.
It is insanely hard to present only facts and be truthful and impartial. It is quite easy to pick a narrative and stick to it, damn the facts.
MSM is funded by advertisers and big corporations. They’ll do what their money masters want them to - vilifying unions is a good example.