I heard about Ivermectin for the first time this week and was shocked how much it seemed that I had stepped into conspiracy theory land. There seemed to be an overwhelming amount of evidence over the last year that this repurposed drug is effective at treating Covid during a variety of stages (preventative, first positive test, ICU admittance, and even long haul). But since there hadn't been a randomized trial the drug had, not only been dismissed, but heavily censored over social media. I still cannot believe how much the discussion has been silenced in the same way people discuss "covid vaxx causes magnetism". The fact the interview between Bret Weinstein and Pierre Kory was banned from youtube for non-WHO/CDC/NIH approved covid treatments is a tragedy. I truly hope in the coming years the censorship of this topic will be the catalyst for allowing free speech to prevail on social media.
> The fact the interview between Bret Weinstein and Pierre Kory was banned from youtube for non-WHO/CDC/NIH approved covid treatments is a tragedy.
Banning academics from talking on a platform is a high-risk strategy. It was always possible YouTube would do more harm than good implementing their stupid policy.
Note that their ban might be taking out anyone who wants to talk about Ivermectin neutrally or negatively because of the risk of being censored. It is possible (probable, even) that YouTube is now presenting a biased sample of videos sampled only from people who believe strongly enough in the drug to try and circumvent the ban.
My guess is that if Ivermectin turns out to be useless despite the evidence, a lot of the buzz I've heard will have been generated by YouTube squelching debate meaning that only the pro- side even attempts to get the message out on social media. Because I've only heard of wall-to-wall positive coverage on YouTube and I don't trust the consistency.
" But since there hadn't been a randomized trial "
This is not true. A quick search shows 71 trials covering ivermectin, of which 6 of which are complete, interventional[1], and have results
Yes, it has been explored, trialed, and experimented with quite significantly.
The results show that there might be something there, but it’s not a miracle cure.
The conspiracy angles are coming from those who have been misled into thinking it has been more successful than it really has been, which leads to confusion about why it’s not being used everywhere.
Dexamethasone is an approved drug recommended by the FDA for treatment of Covid and it didn’t stop the vaccine EUA. The vaccines are 95-100% effective in trials, no other drug comes close.
That would depend on the efficacy of the existing possible treatment. Ivermectin is 70%, so it's not as effective as a vaccine. But it's a hell of lot better than nothing.
"I heard about Ivermectin for the first time this week"
This is what is extremely disturbing. This result of the control of information occurring in our society.
What's more, it is not just the literal control, but the social conditioning. Within the group of those who have known for a long time, there is a reluctance to share that with anyone else as society will apply any number of taboo labels to such individuals to make them outcasts.
I heard the earth was flat only a few months ago too—it does not make either claim any more likely to be true.
And FWIW, I have seen many ivermectin articles on HN (check my past comments), and all seem to say roughly the same thing, so they get rather annoying in my feed at this point.
It's an approved drug. Fully licensed and considered to have a wide safety profile.
Doctors don't need permission for off-label use. It's just not a thing. We're in strange territory where doctors (professionals) have been demoted to nurses and they can't profess.
That's not really contradictory. Lots of covid treatments have been discovered in hospital settings by doctors trying desperately to find something to help their patients.
Large RCTs are considered the "gold standard" but you are outright misleading if you are saying that large RCTs are the SOLE definition of evidence in medical science.
Or you know nothing about medical science.
Observational trials, natural experiments, etc. all constitute evidence.
As well, there have been over 25 RCTs performed globally on Ivermectin to date.
Is that sort of like how the normal process for vaccine approval is the _definition_ of "safe", and yet government officials and media keep insisting that vaccines approved on an emergency use basis are "safe"?
The scientific method is a process. Evidence is just one part of the bigger picture.
That a widely-disputed "leader" is "promoting" a treatment in a country as diverse and with as many systemic issues as Brazil, has no necessary bearing nor indication of that treatments actual use or resultant efficacy.
That you have a friend that took it and went to the ICU is similarly meaningless. What dosage did he take? What other predispositions did he have? How badly was he exposed? What other treatments were used? Did he keep taking it throughout, or not? You say he's recovering now, would he have died without it, then?
> I doesn't help at all. I have a coworker who as using ivermectin as prophylactic and went to ICU (he is recovering now).
This is an anecdote, and it is dangerous to generalize from it. I have several family members who seemed to respond well to Ivermectin, and recovered better than their initial condition would have indicated.
There isn't really. There's as much evidence as we had for hydroxy chloroquine. So, some but unconvincing. And since it's been widely deployed by several desperate governments you'd think we'd know more by now.
In the hundreds of HCQ studies out there, eyeballing it about 2/3 of them show some sort of positive result [0]. Early treatment with the dosage on the lower end of the tested spectrum has 100% positive results [1].
It was odd a week ago to see some of the media suddenly decide to report on one of these [2], like the "HCQ Bad!" blinders had finally been removed.
Both the articles you cite mainly complain about lack of data, but they both predate the study posted here. The NY Times is 3 months old. This study may or may not be good, but neither article address that question.
Without randomized trials you cannot recommend a drug because you cannot exclude confounders. It seems wrong to me to even speak of "overwhelming evidence" without a randomized trial or other sound ways to control or identify for confounders (e.g. causal models).
I’ve included every double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial I could find of ivermectin as a treatment for covid. Using only double-blind placebo-controlled trials means that only the highest quality studies are included in this meta-analysis, which minimizes the risk of biases messing up the results as far as possible. In order to be included, a study also had to provide mortality data, since the goal of the meta-analysis is to see if there is any difference in mortality
....
What we see is a 62% reduction in the relative risk of dying among covid patients treated with ivermectin. That would mean that ivermectin prevents roughly three out of five covid deaths. The reduction is statistically significant (p-value 0,004). In other words, the weight of evidence supporting ivermectin continues to pile up. It is now far stronger than the evidence that led to widespred use of remdesivir earlier in the pandemic, and the effect is much larger and more important (remdesivir was only ever shown to marginally decrease length of hospital stay, it was never shown to have any effect on risk of dying).
I understand why pharmaceutical companies don’t like ivermectin. It’s a cheap generic drug. Even Merck, the company that invented ivermectin, is doing it’s best to destroy the drug’s reputation at the moment. This can only be explained by the fact that Merck is currently developing two expensive new covid drugs, and doesn’t want an off-patent drug, which it can no longer make any profit from, competing with them.
While randomized trials are certainly the gold-standard for determining if you should give a new drug to treat an arbitrary disease, that process is far too conservative during a pandemic where a huge majority of the world cannot access proper medical care. Ivermectin is already massively produced, used throughout the world, and cheap to manufacture (compared to new anti-Covid drugs). Even months ago before the benefits were known, the risks of taking the drug were very small, especially when the treatment guidelines were to do practically nothing.
Still, the many pieces of non-randomized evidence can still clearly point towards this drugs efficacy. The sudden drop in Covid cases in India as the clearest indicator to me.
Does that mean that the covid vaccines shouldn't be recommended as there's no randomized trials on their long-term effects? Just curious as I'm not well versed on this topic.
Related post from Matt Taibbi on his Substack, about Bret Weinstein with a short interview of him. With recent takedowns of his videos, many viewers are anticipating his channel will be banned outright by Google/YouTube:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-bret-weinste...
Whether it works or not, there's no money to be made from Ivermectin. It's a very cheap generic drug. Why else would they stamp out all possible investigations of it just to ascertain truth?
Is the same not true for dexamethasone[1], which was the first successful finding from the RECOVERY trial[2]? That's how I've repeatedly seen it described[3] (FWIW, I was treated with dexamethasone for Covid-19 in October 2020).
People down vote this - they gasp saying "no way could this be true" - yet they complain about big pharma right up until the "right" virus/disease/whatever science thing comes along and their tribe picks it up and runs with it - they're now the savior. The left/right don't realize they both have faith/religion of government. These politicians do not speak for you or me. Voting only leads to consequence without recourse.
You're commenting on a metaanalysis that summarizes 15 published trials, aren't you? Maybe you should spend less time on YouTube inspired guessing. Social media isn't relevant here. YouTube is not the center of the Galaxy. Medical doctors don't make their decisions based on YouTube videos -- at least I hope so.
Edit: sorry for the wrong position in the thread. Should have gone to the parent post.
> You're commenting on a metaanalysis that summarizes 15 published trials, aren't you?
The worrying split here is on HN I get to read 15-study meta-analysis posted by Steph C, int13 Labs CEO.
On YouTube, a PHD holder in a medical field discussing the same 15 study meta-anlysis might expect to have their video pulled.
It is quite worrying that the powers-that-be at YouTube are taking this radically anti-speech approach. It isn't like studies posted on HN are automatically good and on YouTube automatically bad. The YouTubers are probably more qualified to bring attention to studies.
> Many people pushing Ivermectin have a vested interest in proving the vaccines are unnecessary.
What is their vested interest in a generic, cheap, decades old, off patent drug? Vested interests tend to be in new, patented treatments. That's where big pharma profit is. So let's try a rephrase: Many people pushing patented treatments have a vested interest in proving off patent alternatives are unnecessary.
For example, here's Merck warning against using Ivermectin for Covid-19:
Then a few months later, "Merck Announces Supply Agreement with U.S. Government for Molnupiravir, an Investigational Oral Antiviral Candidate for Treatment of Mild to Moderate COVID-19"
Ok, I was confused by this line of reasoning, so did some digging. I believe it's one of the popular antivax disinfo conspiracy theories. Here's my reading.
The line of reasoning hinges on the vaccines being "experimental" and only being distributed under an Emergency Use Authorization, as opposed to a full approval. The FDA policies for EUA indicate they're only to be used when there is no adequate, approved, and available alternative. This makes a lot of sense - if (let's say) someone comes up with a new flu vaccine (an mRNA one, to continue this example, as that would be kinda exciting), you really want it to go through the full approval process instead of EUA, even if it is better. That's because we have plenty of good, approved flu vaccines.
So, the theory goes, if we had an approved treatment for Covid, then the EUA for the vaccines would be illegal. And so that creates incentives for the pharmaceutical companies to suppress a miracle cure like (they claim) ivermectin.
To anybody with the capacity for rational thought, this is obviously bullshit. We have fully approved treatments already, including remdesivir. The idea that a treatment for Covid, even a pretty good one, would make vaccines unnecessary makes no sense.
I am fairly confident in making the following prediction. Full FDA approval for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines is likely by the end of the year[1], at which point the above line of reasoning will no longer be applicable. Antivaxxers will smoothly transition to another line of argument.
I do think this "theory" is one reason you see a significant overlap between pro-ivermectin and antivax, for example in the comments of Bret Weinstein videos.
IMO vaccine are pushed as miracle drug. There is probably fanatic peoples in both though. You might also want to check remdisivir, drug that is not efficient, but they pushed it far enough to get a contract of 1 billion, and effectively 0.2 billion have been spent on it.
My mom is on dialysis, has diabetes and hypertension. Recently for a surgery we had to do a covid test. Dad also took the test. Both were positive.
The nephrologist prescribed ivermectin for mom. She had mild fever for 3 days and recovered. Dad had no obvious symptoms and recovered(he was not prescribed ivermectin, hence did not take it). The govt doctors don't prescribe it just vitamin c, zinc and dolo. This is india btw.
If you don't have a proven, understood mechanism (which ivermectin doesn't for a virus like Covid) then you have to rely on trials, and those just don't stand up.
> If you haven’t had to mess with drug discovery for a living, it’s understandable that you hear that Some Person Somewhere was very sick, took New Therapy X, and suddenly got better, and then assume that there it is, the cure has been found. But that’s not how it works. Real results stand up when you run larger, better-controlled trials, but most early results don’t turn out to be all that real.
> If you don't have a proven, understood mechanism (which ivermectin doesn't for a virus like Covid) then you have to rely on trials, and those just don't stand up.
Please, there are a ton of antiviral drugs without an understood mechanism. We don't even know how Acetaminophen (Tylenol) works!
> What happens to confidence in public health and USG if ivermectin turns out to be safe and effective for COVID, and the genetic vaccines turn out to have signficant safety issues? This looks like a very plausible scenario from where I sit.
Next we'll find that the cheap and well-understood hydroxychloroquine is actually relatively effective Covid-19 treatment!
It's disturbing how much the suppression of Covid "wrong-think" over the last year has resulted in useful results and information only very slowly coming out (and generally, in the process, giving a feeling of vindication to the conspiracy theorists).
I have always been, and continue to be, against the idea that "this is such a novel emergency we just need to ignore all the processes that we know and trust". If anything, in those times, when we don't know what is going on, those principles are exactly the type of things we should stick to. I strongly believe it would have done us better over the past year.
> against the idea that this is such a novel emergency we just need to ignore all the processes that we know and trust
There is a pretty well trodden path for new medicine to prove their effectiveness, which all Covid measures have gone through. If ivermectin, hydroxichloroquine or any other alternative drug goes through due course they would have no difficult being accepted.
The reason discussions have been censored is precisely because people have been rallying around a drug like a football club before they’ve had their effectiveness scientifically proven, and demanding to skip the traditional due diligence.
And for some context: this paper was submitted to a mainstream journal in March and rejected for lack of evidence. This publisher who picked it up is not exactly a reputable one (and will benefit immensely from citations of this study).
Ivermectin is a cheap drug, Mercer (who produces ivermectin) is trying to produce their own covid19 drug.
Further, if there are viable alternative treatments we shouldn’t be using a vaccine still in phase 2/3 trials that haven’t even been tested on animals... the entire emergency use authorization is only allowed if there aren’t safe alternatives.
Ivermectin is generally safe to take, and a known drug with known risks. If it was shown to be effective the vaccine rollouts should be stopped. So, there’s a lot of political and financial reasons to not publicize it.
A treatment isn't an alternative to vaccination. Millions of people have been vaccinated so we know it's safe, while tons of people have died from covid so we know it's not safe.
You can't get EUA for the vaccines if there's a working treatment. The doctor who promoted Hydroxychloroquine and zinc treatment, Dr. Zelenko, is still banned from Twitter for spreading COVID disinformation.
There's both actual conspiracies in this world, and well poisoning to damage the conversations. When you look at the amount of money these companies stand to make from producing billions of vaccinations, you should not be surprised.
> You can't get EUA for the vaccines if there's a working treatment.
Veklury (remdesivir) was approved by the FDA for the treatment of Covid-19 in hospitalized individuals on October 22, 2020. This was a full approval, not an emergency use application: https://www.fda.gov/media/137574/download
We've continued using the vaccines under the existing EUAs even after a treatment was approved.
In fact, the FDA has even granted an EUA for a vaccine after approving Veklury: the Janssen/J&J vaccine received its first EUA on February 27, 2021. https://www.fda.gov/media/146303/download
Even if ivermectin was a perfect treatment for Covid, and even if an approved treatment would pull all the vaccines off the market -- despite that not happening after the FDA approved Veklury -- by the time ivermectin made its way through the approval pipeline to be labelled for this indication, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would very likely have received approval as well. So there's no "billions of vaccinations" at risk should another treatment be found to be effective and approved.
> You can't get EUA for the vaccines if there's a working treatment.
Per the FDA: ""Under section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), when the Secretary of HHS declares that an emergency use authorization is appropriate, FDA may authorize unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical products to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions caused by CBRN threat agents when certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.""
And that falls apart under some scrutiny... it says "adequate, approved, and available alternatives." "adequate" being efficacious which is debatable without testing. "approved" which that drug is absolutely not approved for covid use. "available" being enough supply which is debatable if it turns out to be effective and widely used. I see no reason why the EUA for the vaccines would be threatened by this drug also being used in an EUA fashion. if they are going for actual approval for that drug it would take as long as the vaccine to get.
> When you look at the amount of money these companies stand to make from producing billions of vaccinations, you should not be surprised.
I think that when you look at everything through the conspiratorial lens... all you see are conspiracies.
Lots of others have debunked this here. Yet with all this conspiracy stuff there’s a big elephant in the room that no one seems to ever talk about: Covid is a global virus. The FDA can block and approve whatever treatments in the US, but it has no authority in Brazil or Thailand. If all these conspiracy drugs worked well yet the FDA blocked it for some malicious intent, the rest of the world would approve and use it. Particularly since these conspiracy drugs have all been around forever, are generics, and exist globally. Yet we aren’t seeing this emerging despite massive world wide deaths.
Pfizer, a company that has contributed probably trillions of dollars to global GDP over the past 6 months, is massively underperforming the stock market when you compare pre-pandemic to now [1]. The stock price in theory should price in all the future cash flows from the vaccine. What is your basis that the pharma companies are making tons of money on these vaccines?
It isn't like the vaccines are pure profit. The pharma companies have to develop them, they have to produce them, they have to distribute them, and if they charge too much they get into massive political trouble. It seems like it is basically a giant marketing effort for pharma companies where everybody in the world is benefiting.
1: For example, from Feb 1st, 20 to today, Pfizer is up 10% and the Vanguard total stock index VTI is up 35%
Dr. Zelenko held studies that 'showed' that HCQ had 100% cure rate by excluding people that moved to an ICU from the treatment group. The studies turned out to be complete bunk. He's a fraud.
Source for the EUA stuff? Source that HCQ and zinc are viable treatments? The problem isn't that some of these things might be viable, the problem is we don't know which of the literally hundreds of treatments are actually going to be viable when going through the proper testing and approval process. You can't just scream conspiracy when there much better explanations
I've been monitoring this for a long time now. I have ivermectin on hand for deworming my two mini burros.
Of course, you're not supposed to use it on humans but they say that about fish mox too. But as time went on it was pretty clear to me that it was working to prevent covid from becoming severe in the countries that were using it for that because they had nothing much else to use. I saw many reports of it working.
I also read about vitamin D, melatonin, famotidine, and aspirin helping to reduce severity of infections. So, when my wife and I got our 1st and 2nd jab of the Pfizer vaccine we took all of those and had no reaction to it at all. Our daughter took it before her first jab and had no reaction but didn't for her 2nd and she did get sick. As soon as she told us she wasn't feeling good we dosed her with those and just an hour or so later she was feeling good again.
I haven't been infected and now I've reached full immunity so none of that proves anything at all but it's still been worth knowing.
If Ivermectin worked on COVID-19, the manufacturer of Ivermectin that has made no money on vaccines for COVID-19 would probably be pushing it wouldn't they?
There have been some studies that found it effective in vitro, but as noted in other comments, at several times the safe dosage in vivo.
Actually the EMA link says that current evidence for ivermectin is insufficient and it cannot currently be recommended outside of trials. This not the same as claiming that it does not work or that it is hazardous, although many journalists can seemingly not tell the difference. The FDA’s advisory is mostly about people overdosing on veterinary ivermectin. They emphasize that overdose and medication interactions are possible, veterinary ivermectin is not a good substitute for human ivermectin, and that ivermectin is not an approved treatment for COVID-19. Again, even within the paradigm of blindly listening to authoritative sources, this is not an assertion that normal doses of ivermectin for off-label use are dangerous and should be prohibited for prescription, let alone an order for tech companies to censor the mere mention of it.
When the FDA’s advisory came out, there were articles (eg [1]) referring to ivermectin-the-molecule as a “horse de-wormer” and drawing no distinction between animal and human use (and it has been proven safe and effective in humans, just not for COVID). The level of discourse around this feels like I am reading 90s drug war content.
It seems it is you who is misrepresenting the ema link.
Key quote: "Although ivermectin is generally well tolerated at doses authorised for other indications, side effects could increase with the much higher doses that would be needed to obtain concentrations of ivermectin in the lungs that are effective against the virus. Toxicity when ivermectin is used at higher than approved doses therefore cannot be excluded."
IE, the dose needed for covid could quite possibly be harmful.
Database of all ivermectin COVID-19 studies. 93 studies, 55 peer reviewed, 56 with results comparing treatment and control groups: https://c19ivermectin.com
Kory et al 2021. Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19. American Journal of Therapeutics, 28(3): e299: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/
Nardelli et al 2021. Crying wolf in time of Corona: the strange case of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Is the fear of failure withholding potential life-saving treatment from clinical use?. Signa Vitae, 1: 2. https://oss.signavitae.com/mre-signavitae/article/20210508-3...
Nearly all of your links are broken. I think you copy-pasted the text of links that had been truncated with a "...", where the part prior to "..." is not sufficient to constitute a valid web address.
For instance, the link for Carvallo et al 2010 should be this, which resolves:
https://medicalpressopenaccess.com/upload/1605709669_1007.pd...
Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has been identified.
•While many treatments have some level of efficacy, they do not replace vaccines and other measures to avoid infection. Only 27% of ivermectin studies show zero events in the treatment arm.
•Elimination of COVID-19 is a race against viral evolution. No treatment, vaccine, or intervention is 100% available and effective for all current and future variants. All practical, effective, and safe means should be used. Not doing so increases the risk of COVID-19 becoming endemic; and increases mortality, morbidity, and collateral damage.
If Ivermectin worked on COVID-19, the manufacturer of Ivermectin that has made no money on vaccines for COVID-19 would probably be pushing it wouldn't they?
Surprise, Merck is now working on anti-viral drug whose profits would be eaten into by an off-patent drug (ivermectin)
> If Ivermectin worked on COVID-19, the manufacturer of Ivermectin that has made no money on vaccines for COVID-19 would probably be pushing it wouldn't they?
No, because it's out of patent. There's little profit to be made. Merck is instead pushing a new drug that they will have a monopoly on.
"Merck Announces Supply Agreement with U.S. Government for Molnupiravir, an Investigational Oral Antiviral Candidate for Treatment of Mild to Moderate COVID-19"
As for Ivermectin effectiveness, it looks promising. There was an evidence based clinical review posted on Nature earlier this week:
"As per data available on 16 May 2021, 100% of 36 early treatment and prophylaxis studies report positive effects (96% of all 55 studies). Of these, 26 studies show statistically significant improvements in isolation. Random effects meta-analysis with pooled effects using the most serious outcome reported 79% and 85% improvement for early treatment and prophylaxis respectively (RR 0.21 [0.11–0.37] and 0.15 [0.09–0.25]). The results were similar after exclusion based sensitivity analysis: 81% and 87% (RR 0.19 [0.14–0.26] and 0.13 [0.07–0.25]), and after restriction to 29 peer-reviewed studies: 82% and 88% (RR 0.18 [0.11–0.31] and 0.12 [0.05–0.30]). Statistically significant improvements were seen for mortality, ventilation, hospitalization, cases, and viral clearance. 100% of the 17 Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) for early treatment and prophylaxis report positive effects, with an estimated improvement of 73% and 83% respectively (RR 0.27 [0.18–0.41] and 0.17 [0.05–0.61]), and 93% of all 28 RCTs."
For treating what? This study looked at trying to reduce mild COVID-19 symptoms. In fact, the current strongest evidence is for prophylaxis, as well as treating more severe cases. Also the study didn’t show that it was ineffective, it showed that it couldn’t disprove the null hypothesis. Please get your facts straight, before throwing a link to a overly specific RCT to prove your point.
If Ivermectin worked on COVID-19, the manufacturer of Ivermectin that has made no money on vaccines for COVID-19 would probably be pushing it wouldn't they?
You are misinformed. Merck has a particular formulation of Ivermectin that they sell but the vast majority of it is made off patent by other manufacturers for very little profit. If they had an exclusive patent on a drug that they could make any flimsy case for effectiveness against Covid I'm sure they would be pushing it, the way Gilead has with remdesivir.
For the curious, reasonably recent discussions from several TWiV episodes on Ivermectin. [3] is quite recent (Jun 9). [4] reviews a study which is mildly encouraging. I think it's fair to say that the jury is still out, and it does deserve more investigation.
Fun fact: Vincent Racaniello's wife worked on Ivermectin at Merck, and on a recent livestream (the 6/16 one) he suggested it would be reasonable to take it, especially because it's known to be safe.
The best way to prevent this from happening would be to allow doctors to prescribe it, so people don't screw up the dose by buying it from veterinary supply stores.
You may get myocarditis from the vaccines, but that doesn't stop anyone from calling them "safe."
The issue isn't the drug. It's the claim. The drug could be legal for use in the US, and there would still be an issue (unless there were studies good enough to pass FDA scrutiny that demonstrated the drugs effectiveness). In the US, you don't get to make medical claims that you can't prove are valid.
Now, the other questions are whether Youtube should be considered "in the US", and whether Youtube should be an enforcement arm of the FDA. That's the worrying part.
Unproven medical treatments are a kind of speech that the US government has aggressively suppressed with the approval of the courts for many years. That situation was abused to suppress the works of Wilhelm Reich (~70 years ago) but I don't see that kind of abuse here. Youtube isn't subject to the first amendment 'cause it's not the government BUT also the first amendment hasn't protected this kind of expression for a long time. Just sayin'.
Edit: and as other said, that the drug is legal is irrelevant and disingenuous. We're talking a new treatment system.
This is an interesting link. I wasn’t aware they specifically discouraged talking about specific medications. I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted heavily as if you said something offensive..
There were two people, a husband and wife. It was also reported after that police were investigating her for homicide because she was actually very much anti-Trump and had a history of brutalizing her husband publicly. Appears that she gave him a large dose that killed him and took a tiny one herself likely to create some sort of weird alibi.
I am an MD, Data Scientist and epidemiologist. There are three pieces of information which makes me feel something fishy about the study:
1. Sample sizes for all selected studies are very small, and even though they used mixed effects models to treat confounding, there is no way to check what the authors did, since they didn’t shared the code or the data, which is inadmissible since this is a meta analysis and there is no private data involved
2. Any tree chart of Risk Ratios or Odds Ratios that show drastic positive effects must raise one’s eyebrow about partiality in the authors
3. Real world data from Brazil, where they have great death data surveillance AND mass-distribution of ivermectin didn’t show any excitement. Brazil just crossed more than half million deaths as of Jun 19th 2021, and there is a high likelihood of surpass U.S. in deaths.
Based on what we already know about vaccine and PFF2/N95 mask efficacy and safety, it becomes hard to defend approaches such as ivermectin, instead of promoting practices and technologies that showed undeniable success in the real world, instead of doubtful medicines supported by obscure statistics and ideological discourse.
Thanks for the relevant comment - it must be intriguing for anyone who is not used with hearing about the “real world evidence” term in medical sciences.
Usually the highest level of evidence is attributed to randomized controlled trial studies. As the name says, they are performed in a high level of control, to evaluate in a more “insulated” way, the effects of a drug/intervention in a given outcome (reduce death, cure a disease, etc). Unfortunately, we can’t always relate these academic studies with the “real world”, due to an almost infinite number of confounding variables, or in the worst case scenario, if a scientist is manipulating the experiment environment (e.g. selecting a patient population with more likelihood for the desired effect).
This is one of the reasons why you will see with increasing frequency the terms “Real World Evidence (RWE) study” in reputable journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, or The Lancet.
These studies occur taking data from epidemiological surveillance, or patient medical records, and usually do a “reality check” on data found in these trials.
It concluded Ivermectin "did not reduce all-cause mortality, length of stay or viral clearance in RCTs in COVID-19 patients with mostly mild disease. IVM did not have effect on AEs or SAEs. IVM is not a viable option to treat COVID-19 patients."
But wait... Before you upvote or downvote me, I want to say this proves something entirely different than what we may think. It proves that there's lots of studies -- some say one thing, some say another. I can produce a study which seems to convincingly prove one side of an issue -- and somebody else can produce a different study which seems to show the opposite.
This article is a pre-print with severe mistakes (in particular they inverted the results for the treatment and control groups in one of the studies, you can't make this up). Read the comments. It's highly unlikely the piece will be published.
Read this peer-reviewed and accepted meta-analysis instead [0]. Conclusion: low- to moderate-certainty evidence of a positive effect depending on the endpoint. Higher certainty would come from higher-powered studies.
The issue I've seen with various studies who claim statistically insignificance when using Ivermectin is because they use too low of a dose and/or don't use it long enough (3 to 5 days instead of 14 days) and/or they don't start using it at first symptoms (in part I've read this can be because can take days for COVID positive tested person to enrol in a study hence giving the virus more time to replicate/take strong hold).
"Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers
progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally."
We don't have extensive studies that injecting bleach helps as well.
There is a huge liability to those companies if it would end with deaths or health issues ("Facebook only looked for profits and didn't care that people were killed by misinformation")
You should not get medical advice from social media, and Facebook is also not the right place to discuss medical research.
Ironically few days ago people here commented that HN was linking to a rant on Facebook about performance in Python affected by shared libraries.
FB was considered not suitable for that kind of discussion and link was changed to bug database, yet some people don't have problem about discussing medical treatment there.
Just to be clear, if we changed a URL from one source to another, that would be rooted in 10+ years of HN moderation practice and would have been about the specific articles, for example we would tend to replace a "rant" with a more substantive/original source. It would imply nothing about FB being "considered not suitable". Plenty of FB articles have been discussed here over the years; though there tend to be issues with login walls and whatnot and I think the community tends to prefer the open web for content.
Readit News
Banning academics from talking on a platform is a high-risk strategy. It was always possible YouTube would do more harm than good implementing their stupid policy.
Note that their ban might be taking out anyone who wants to talk about Ivermectin neutrally or negatively because of the risk of being censored. It is possible (probable, even) that YouTube is now presenting a biased sample of videos sampled only from people who believe strongly enough in the drug to try and circumvent the ban.
My guess is that if Ivermectin turns out to be useless despite the evidence, a lot of the buzz I've heard will have been generated by YouTube squelching debate meaning that only the pro- side even attempts to get the message out on social media. Because I've only heard of wall-to-wall positive coverage on YouTube and I don't trust the consistency.
Where else can it be discussed? No major media would allow it on their networks for fear of the cancel mobs coming with torches and pitchforks.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=ivermectin&cond=...
[1] This should mean an RCT, but I haven't time to read through each and check they are
The results show that there might be something there, but it’s not a miracle cure.
The conspiracy angles are coming from those who have been misled into thinking it has been more successful than it really has been, which leads to confusion about why it’s not being used everywhere.
https://www.fda.gov/media/97321/download#page12
Go to page 12 in the PDF (document page 8) then read section D.
Pharma companies could not distribute experimental treatments unless they lied to us about existing useful drugs. Reminder:
Pfizer: Phase 3 trial estimated end date 2023 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728
Moderna: estimated end date 2022 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04470427
Johnson & Johnson (it’s actually a Janssen Product which is a subsidiary of J&J): estimated end date 2023 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04505722
AstraZeneca: estimated end date 2023 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04516746
This is what is extremely disturbing. This result of the control of information occurring in our society.
What's more, it is not just the literal control, but the social conditioning. Within the group of those who have known for a long time, there is a reluctance to share that with anyone else as society will apply any number of taboo labels to such individuals to make them outcasts.
And FWIW, I have seen many ivermectin articles on HN (check my past comments), and all seem to say roughly the same thing, so they get rather annoying in my feed at this point.
> ....there hadn't been a randomized trial the drug
You don't see the contradiction here?
Edit: because it must be made 100% obvious, clinical trial results are the definition of evidence in medical science.
Doctors don't need permission for off-label use. It's just not a thing. We're in strange territory where doctors (professionals) have been demoted to nurses and they can't profess.
Or you know nothing about medical science.
Observational trials, natural experiments, etc. all constitute evidence.
As well, there have been over 25 RCTs performed globally on Ivermectin to date.
The scientific method is a process. Evidence is just one part of the bigger picture.
I doesn't help at all. I have a coworker who as using ivermectin as prophylactic and went to ICU (he is recovering now).
That you have a friend that took it and went to the ICU is similarly meaningless. What dosage did he take? What other predispositions did he have? How badly was he exposed? What other treatments were used? Did he keep taking it throughout, or not? You say he's recovering now, would he have died without it, then?
This is an anecdote, and it is dangerous to generalize from it. I have several family members who seemed to respond well to Ivermectin, and recovered better than their initial condition would have indicated.
I fucking love HN - downvoting valid questions for criteria.
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Here's a breakdown of what we've learned: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/07/iv...
Here's the latest bad news: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/science/coronavirus-iverm...
It was odd a week ago to see some of the media suddenly decide to report on one of these [2], like the "HCQ Bad!" blinders had finally been removed.
[0] https://c19hcq.com/
[1] https://hcqmeta.com/
[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9671029/Hydroxychlo...
I’ve included every double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial I could find of ivermectin as a treatment for covid. Using only double-blind placebo-controlled trials means that only the highest quality studies are included in this meta-analysis, which minimizes the risk of biases messing up the results as far as possible. In order to be included, a study also had to provide mortality data, since the goal of the meta-analysis is to see if there is any difference in mortality .... What we see is a 62% reduction in the relative risk of dying among covid patients treated with ivermectin. That would mean that ivermectin prevents roughly three out of five covid deaths. The reduction is statistically significant (p-value 0,004). In other words, the weight of evidence supporting ivermectin continues to pile up. It is now far stronger than the evidence that led to widespred use of remdesivir earlier in the pandemic, and the effect is much larger and more important (remdesivir was only ever shown to marginally decrease length of hospital stay, it was never shown to have any effect on risk of dying).
I understand why pharmaceutical companies don’t like ivermectin. It’s a cheap generic drug. Even Merck, the company that invented ivermectin, is doing it’s best to destroy the drug’s reputation at the moment. This can only be explained by the fact that Merck is currently developing two expensive new covid drugs, and doesn’t want an off-patent drug, which it can no longer make any profit from, competing with them.
Still, the many pieces of non-randomized evidence can still clearly point towards this drugs efficacy. The sudden drop in Covid cases in India as the clearest indicator to me.
https://ascopost.com/issues/june-10-2014/randomized-trials-v...
OTOH there was a lot of hype around remdesivir, despite it being barely effective. Pharma is really a weird world
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-drug-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethasone
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RECOVERY_Trial
[3] "A cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives[...]" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53061281
What's the explanation for why dexamethasone was allowed but ivermectin is being suppressed?
Dozens of (mostly Phase 2 and 2/3 combined) ivermectin trials as a Covid therapeutic are ongoing, no one has stamped them out.
Edit: sorry for the wrong position in the thread. Should have gone to the parent post.
The worrying split here is on HN I get to read 15-study meta-analysis posted by Steph C, int13 Labs CEO.
On YouTube, a PHD holder in a medical field discussing the same 15 study meta-anlysis might expect to have their video pulled.
It is quite worrying that the powers-that-be at YouTube are taking this radically anti-speech approach. It isn't like studies posted on HN are automatically good and on YouTube automatically bad. The YouTubers are probably more qualified to bring attention to studies.
It may work, but that's why you get recommendations for "vaccine made me magnetic" and other garbage like that whenever you search for videos.
It's the same group that was pushing hydroxychloroquine as a miracle drug
What is their vested interest in a generic, cheap, decades old, off patent drug? Vested interests tend to be in new, patented treatments. That's where big pharma profit is. So let's try a rephrase: Many people pushing patented treatments have a vested interest in proving off patent alternatives are unnecessary.
For example, here's Merck warning against using Ivermectin for Covid-19:
https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-use...
Then a few months later, "Merck Announces Supply Agreement with U.S. Government for Molnupiravir, an Investigational Oral Antiviral Candidate for Treatment of Mild to Moderate COVID-19"
https://www.merck.com/news/merck-announces-supply-agreement-...
The line of reasoning hinges on the vaccines being "experimental" and only being distributed under an Emergency Use Authorization, as opposed to a full approval. The FDA policies for EUA indicate they're only to be used when there is no adequate, approved, and available alternative. This makes a lot of sense - if (let's say) someone comes up with a new flu vaccine (an mRNA one, to continue this example, as that would be kinda exciting), you really want it to go through the full approval process instead of EUA, even if it is better. That's because we have plenty of good, approved flu vaccines.
So, the theory goes, if we had an approved treatment for Covid, then the EUA for the vaccines would be illegal. And so that creates incentives for the pharmaceutical companies to suppress a miracle cure like (they claim) ivermectin.
To anybody with the capacity for rational thought, this is obviously bullshit. We have fully approved treatments already, including remdesivir. The idea that a treatment for Covid, even a pretty good one, would make vaccines unnecessary makes no sense.
I am fairly confident in making the following prediction. Full FDA approval for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines is likely by the end of the year[1], at which point the above line of reasoning will no longer be applicable. Antivaxxers will smoothly transition to another line of argument.
I do think this "theory" is one reason you see a significant overlap between pro-ivermectin and antivax, for example in the comments of Bret Weinstein videos.
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/18/covid-vaccines-what-full-fda...
What do these people (the promoters) get out of it? Attention? A more dedicated following?
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The nephrologist prescribed ivermectin for mom. She had mild fever for 3 days and recovered. Dad had no obvious symptoms and recovered(he was not prescribed ivermectin, hence did not take it). The govt doctors don't prescribe it just vitamin c, zinc and dolo. This is india btw.
If you don't have a proven, understood mechanism (which ivermectin doesn't for a virus like Covid) then you have to rely on trials, and those just don't stand up.
Quoting Derek Lowe on this:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/07/iv...
> If you haven’t had to mess with drug discovery for a living, it’s understandable that you hear that Some Person Somewhere was very sick, took New Therapy X, and suddenly got better, and then assume that there it is, the cure has been found. But that’s not how it works. Real results stand up when you run larger, better-controlled trials, but most early results don’t turn out to be all that real.
Cue the Green Jellybean XKCD: https://xkcd.com/882/
Please, there are a ton of antiviral drugs without an understood mechanism. We don't even know how Acetaminophen (Tylenol) works!
> What happens to confidence in public health and USG if ivermectin turns out to be safe and effective for COVID, and the genetic vaccines turn out to have signficant safety issues? This looks like a very plausible scenario from where I sit.
https://twitter.com/RWMaloneMD/status/1403836354098872322
It's disturbing how much the suppression of Covid "wrong-think" over the last year has resulted in useful results and information only very slowly coming out (and generally, in the process, giving a feeling of vindication to the conspiracy theorists).
I have always been, and continue to be, against the idea that "this is such a novel emergency we just need to ignore all the processes that we know and trust". If anything, in those times, when we don't know what is going on, those principles are exactly the type of things we should stick to. I strongly believe it would have done us better over the past year.
There is a pretty well trodden path for new medicine to prove their effectiveness, which all Covid measures have gone through. If ivermectin, hydroxichloroquine or any other alternative drug goes through due course they would have no difficult being accepted.
The reason discussions have been censored is precisely because people have been rallying around a drug like a football club before they’ve had their effectiveness scientifically proven, and demanding to skip the traditional due diligence.
And for some context: this paper was submitted to a mainstream journal in March and rejected for lack of evidence. This publisher who picked it up is not exactly a reputable one (and will benefit immensely from citations of this study).
Further, if there are viable alternative treatments we shouldn’t be using a vaccine still in phase 2/3 trials that haven’t even been tested on animals... the entire emergency use authorization is only allowed if there aren’t safe alternatives.
Ivermectin is generally safe to take, and a known drug with known risks. If it was shown to be effective the vaccine rollouts should be stopped. So, there’s a lot of political and financial reasons to not publicize it.
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There's both actual conspiracies in this world, and well poisoning to damage the conversations. When you look at the amount of money these companies stand to make from producing billions of vaccinations, you should not be surprised.
Veklury (remdesivir) was approved by the FDA for the treatment of Covid-19 in hospitalized individuals on October 22, 2020. This was a full approval, not an emergency use application: https://www.fda.gov/media/137574/download
We've continued using the vaccines under the existing EUAs even after a treatment was approved.
The FDA has granted additional EUAs for other treatments, even after that date: four more, not counting a sedative agent, per https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-... .
In fact, the FDA has even granted an EUA for a vaccine after approving Veklury: the Janssen/J&J vaccine received its first EUA on February 27, 2021. https://www.fda.gov/media/146303/download
Even if ivermectin was a perfect treatment for Covid, and even if an approved treatment would pull all the vaccines off the market -- despite that not happening after the FDA approved Veklury -- by the time ivermectin made its way through the approval pipeline to be labelled for this indication, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would very likely have received approval as well. So there's no "billions of vaccinations" at risk should another treatment be found to be effective and approved.
Per the FDA: ""Under section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), when the Secretary of HHS declares that an emergency use authorization is appropriate, FDA may authorize unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical products to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions caused by CBRN threat agents when certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.""
And that falls apart under some scrutiny... it says "adequate, approved, and available alternatives." "adequate" being efficacious which is debatable without testing. "approved" which that drug is absolutely not approved for covid use. "available" being enough supply which is debatable if it turns out to be effective and widely used. I see no reason why the EUA for the vaccines would be threatened by this drug also being used in an EUA fashion. if they are going for actual approval for that drug it would take as long as the vaccine to get.
> When you look at the amount of money these companies stand to make from producing billions of vaccinations, you should not be surprised.
I think that when you look at everything through the conspiratorial lens... all you see are conspiracies.
It isn't like the vaccines are pure profit. The pharma companies have to develop them, they have to produce them, they have to distribute them, and if they charge too much they get into massive political trouble. It seems like it is basically a giant marketing effort for pharma companies where everybody in the world is benefiting.
1: For example, from Feb 1st, 20 to today, Pfizer is up 10% and the Vanguard total stock index VTI is up 35%
Of course, you're not supposed to use it on humans but they say that about fish mox too. But as time went on it was pretty clear to me that it was working to prevent covid from becoming severe in the countries that were using it for that because they had nothing much else to use. I saw many reports of it working.
I also read about vitamin D, melatonin, famotidine, and aspirin helping to reduce severity of infections. So, when my wife and I got our 1st and 2nd jab of the Pfizer vaccine we took all of those and had no reaction to it at all. Our daughter took it before her first jab and had no reaction but didn't for her 2nd and she did get sick. As soon as she told us she wasn't feeling good we dosed her with those and just an hour or so later she was feeling good again.
I haven't been infected and now I've reached full immunity so none of that proves anything at all but it's still been worth knowing.
In fact, CDC recommends taking fever reducing medicine only once you develop fever after a vaccine and not before vaccination for just this reason.
Here is the FDA's stance: https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...
Here is the European equivalent of the AMA advising against it's use: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-advises-against-use-iv...
Here is an RCT in JAMA finding it ineffective: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2777389
And here is Merck, that sells Ivermectin, but whose vaccine didn’t make it through clinical trials, discouraging the use of Ivermectin for COVID-19: https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-use...
If Ivermectin worked on COVID-19, the manufacturer of Ivermectin that has made no money on vaccines for COVID-19 would probably be pushing it wouldn't they?
There have been some studies that found it effective in vitro, but as noted in other comments, at several times the safe dosage in vivo.
When the FDA’s advisory came out, there were articles (eg [1]) referring to ivermectin-the-molecule as a “horse de-wormer” and drawing no distinction between animal and human use (and it has been proven safe and effective in humans, just not for COVID). The level of discourse around this feels like I am reading 90s drug war content.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/people-poisoning-themselves-...
Key quote: "Although ivermectin is generally well tolerated at doses authorised for other indications, side effects could increase with the much higher doses that would be needed to obtain concentrations of ivermectin in the lungs that are effective against the virus. Toxicity when ivermectin is used at higher than approved doses therefore cannot be excluded."
IE, the dose needed for covid could quite possibly be harmful.
I just pulled the following from Bret Weinstein's show notes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSWjl-JOIqs
British Ivermectin Recommendation Development group: https://bird-group.org
The BIRD Recommendation on the Use of Ivermectin for Covid-19: Executive Summary: https://bird-group.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/bird-execu...
Carvallo et al 2020. Study of the efficacy and safety of topical ivermectin+ iota-carrageenan in the prophylaxis against COVID-19 in health personnel. J. Biomed. Res. Clin. Investig., 2. https://medicalpressopenaccess.com/upload/1605709669_1007.pd...
Cobos-Campos et al 2021.Potential use of ivermectin for the treatment and prophylaxis of SARS-CoV-2 infection: Efficacy of ivermectin for SARS-CoV-2. Clin Res Trials, 7: 1-5. https://www.readkong.com/page/potential-use-of-ivermectin-fo...
Database of all ivermectin COVID-19 studies. 93 studies, 55 peer reviewed, 56 with results comparing treatment and control groups: https://c19ivermectin.com
Karale et al 2021. A Meta-analysis of Mortality, Need for ICU admission, Use of Mechanical Ventilation and Adverse Effects with Ivermectin Use in COVID-19 Patients. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2021/05/04/202...
Kory et al 2021. Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19. American Journal of Therapeutics, 28(3): e299: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/
Nardelli et al 2021. Crying wolf in time of Corona: the strange case of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Is the fear of failure withholding potential life-saving treatment from clinical use?. Signa Vitae, 1: 2. https://oss.signavitae.com/mre-signavitae/article/20210508-3...
Yagisawa et al 2021. Global trends in clinical studies of ivermectin in COVID-19. The Japanese Journal of Antibiotics, 74: 1. https://www.psychoactif.org/forum/uploads/documents/161/74-1...
..rather than this, which doesn't:
https://medicalpressopenaccess.com/up
https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/
and
https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/...
Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has been identified.
Edit: There's a mountain of data here:
https://ivmmeta.com/
Edit: Clip from that last link:
•While many treatments have some level of efficacy, they do not replace vaccines and other measures to avoid infection. Only 27% of ivermectin studies show zero events in the treatment arm. •Elimination of COVID-19 is a race against viral evolution. No treatment, vaccine, or intervention is 100% available and effective for all current and future variants. All practical, effective, and safe means should be used. Not doing so increases the risk of COVID-19 becoming endemic; and increases mortality, morbidity, and collateral damage.
Surprise, Merck is now working on anti-viral drug whose profits would be eaten into by an off-patent drug (ivermectin)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-25/merck-mrk...
No, because it's out of patent. There's little profit to be made. Merck is instead pushing a new drug that they will have a monopoly on.
"Merck Announces Supply Agreement with U.S. Government for Molnupiravir, an Investigational Oral Antiviral Candidate for Treatment of Mild to Moderate COVID-19"
https://www.merck.com/news/merck-announces-supply-agreement-...
Big pharma 101.
As for Ivermectin effectiveness, it looks promising. There was an evidence based clinical review posted on Nature earlier this week:
"As per data available on 16 May 2021, 100% of 36 early treatment and prophylaxis studies report positive effects (96% of all 55 studies). Of these, 26 studies show statistically significant improvements in isolation. Random effects meta-analysis with pooled effects using the most serious outcome reported 79% and 85% improvement for early treatment and prophylaxis respectively (RR 0.21 [0.11–0.37] and 0.15 [0.09–0.25]). The results were similar after exclusion based sensitivity analysis: 81% and 87% (RR 0.19 [0.14–0.26] and 0.13 [0.07–0.25]), and after restriction to 29 peer-reviewed studies: 82% and 88% (RR 0.18 [0.11–0.31] and 0.12 [0.05–0.30]). Statistically significant improvements were seen for mortality, ventilation, hospitalization, cases, and viral clearance. 100% of the 17 Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) for early treatment and prophylaxis report positive effects, with an estimated improvement of 73% and 83% respectively (RR 0.27 [0.18–0.41] and 0.17 [0.05–0.61]), and 93% of all 28 RCTs."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-021-00430-5
What's the difference between dexamethasone and hydroxycholoroquine/ivermectin/next-consipracy-theory?
It's been proven to work. There's no conspiracy, just pharmacology is hard, and people's random hunches typically don't work out.
For treating what? This study looked at trying to reduce mild COVID-19 symptoms. In fact, the current strongest evidence is for prophylaxis, as well as treating more severe cases. Also the study didn’t show that it was ineffective, it showed that it couldn’t disprove the null hypothesis. Please get your facts straight, before throwing a link to a overly specific RCT to prove your point.
If Ivermectin worked on COVID-19, the manufacturer of Ivermectin that has made no money on vaccines for COVID-19 would probably be pushing it wouldn't they?
You are misinformed. Merck has a particular formulation of Ivermectin that they sell but the vast majority of it is made off patent by other manufacturers for very little profit. If they had an exclusive patent on a drug that they could make any flimsy case for effectiveness against Covid I'm sure they would be pushing it, the way Gilead has with remdesivir.
Fun fact: Vincent Racaniello's wife worked on Ivermectin at Merck, and on a recent livestream (the 6/16 one) he suggested it would be reasonable to take it, especially because it's known to be safe.
[1]: https://youtu.be/4hGVeZGfEnU?t=5414
[2]: https://youtu.be/N0-H28vzOps?t=1452
[3]: https://youtu.be/teJ1wXyEf1Q?t=1905
[4]: https://youtu.be/kz1Ja5zH1n8?t=1720
Same tl;dr. It's possible it works, but the evidence for it is not strong.
You may get myocarditis from the vaccines, but that doesn't stop anyone from calling them "safe."
"Don’t post content on YouTube if it includes any of the following:
Treatment misinformation:
Content that recommends use of Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19
Claims that Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine are effective treatments for COVID-19"
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en
They are legal and widely used drugs in most countries.
They might not be miracle drugs to treat COVID-19, but I don't see the point in this ban.
Now, the other questions are whether Youtube should be considered "in the US", and whether Youtube should be an enforcement arm of the FDA. That's the worrying part.
Edit: and as other said, that the drug is legal is irrelevant and disingenuous. We're talking a new treatment system.
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Wow, that’s insane. Time to report some talks on somatic hypermutation…
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Based on what we already know about vaccine and PFF2/N95 mask efficacy and safety, it becomes hard to defend approaches such as ivermectin, instead of promoting practices and technologies that showed undeniable success in the real world, instead of doubtful medicines supported by obscure statistics and ideological discourse.
What are the practices and technologies that showed undeniable success in the real world.
What is the "real world"?
Does anyone have to take your scientific credentials seriously when you make a "scientific" argument using the term "the real world"?
Is there some "alternate unreal world" where these trials were carried out?
Usually the highest level of evidence is attributed to randomized controlled trial studies. As the name says, they are performed in a high level of control, to evaluate in a more “insulated” way, the effects of a drug/intervention in a given outcome (reduce death, cure a disease, etc). Unfortunately, we can’t always relate these academic studies with the “real world”, due to an almost infinite number of confounding variables, or in the worst case scenario, if a scientist is manipulating the experiment environment (e.g. selecting a patient population with more likelihood for the desired effect).
This is one of the reasons why you will see with increasing frequency the terms “Real World Evidence (RWE) study” in reputable journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, or The Lancet.
These studies occur taking data from epidemiological surveillance, or patient medical records, and usually do a “reality check” on data found in these trials.
A lot of these RWE studies are famous to find problems that trials missed. Here is a classic example https://thalidomide.ca/en/what-is-thalidomide/
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https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.21.21257595v...
It concluded Ivermectin "did not reduce all-cause mortality, length of stay or viral clearance in RCTs in COVID-19 patients with mostly mild disease. IVM did not have effect on AEs or SAEs. IVM is not a viable option to treat COVID-19 patients."
But wait... Before you upvote or downvote me, I want to say this proves something entirely different than what we may think. It proves that there's lots of studies -- some say one thing, some say another. I can produce a study which seems to convincingly prove one side of an issue -- and somebody else can produce a different study which seems to show the opposite.
Read this peer-reviewed and accepted meta-analysis instead [0]. Conclusion: low- to moderate-certainty evidence of a positive effect depending on the endpoint. Higher certainty would come from higher-powered studies.
[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journa...
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=+Ivermectin+meta-analysis&a...
"Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally."
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Dead Comment
There is a huge liability to those companies if it would end with deaths or health issues ("Facebook only looked for profits and didn't care that people were killed by misinformation")
You should not get medical advice from social media, and Facebook is also not the right place to discuss medical research.
Ironically few days ago people here commented that HN was linking to a rant on Facebook about performance in Python affected by shared libraries.
FB was considered not suitable for that kind of discussion and link was changed to bug database, yet some people don't have problem about discussing medical treatment there.