This thread was deleted by a volunteer moderator. I certainly don't want a thread this big deleted so I've restored. THat being said, this thread has served it's purpose. I've closed it to new posts.
We have a new 2024 vaccine thread here. New people don't need to try to wade through 20,000 posts to figure out what is going on.
Also, isn’t “pro-science,” pro-variant Hunter Topol one of the biggest beneficiaries of NIH funding (Fauci)? What do we think he’s going to publish? Wasn’t he on Gilead’s board when they were pushing Remdesivir during early Covid patient protocols, sometimes after the viral replication cycle was complete? I don’t have answers, only questions.
One study of many bro.
"The authors limits include blah-blah the usual boilerplate, but they do not mention the biggest limit. The paper assumes that unvaccinated and vaccinated people are seeking medical care for covid and apart from covid ENTIRELY EQUALLY— which is almost surely not true.
The time course of the result is more plausibly explained by different health care seeking behavior. And we know unvaccinated people behave differently. It is simple to assume these results are driven by incidental COVID19 for the presentation of a heart attack, which occurs more often. And no evidence is presented to challenge this hypothesis."
This is a correct analysis that failure to reject other hypothesis means no one hypothesis is confirmatory. It does NOT mean that one hypothesis is incorrect.
Prasad is a goofball but having some "rational contrarians" is good for progress.
Fair enough.
But others who should know better are presenting this like it’s the de facto, end-of-story evidence making the correlation indisputable. It is most decidedly not. Let’s see time from last injection and not just infection on the x-axis. Also, how were they classifying people who had received an injection only two weeks prior?
Prasad is a goofball, but he’s cagey and smart and makes some very valid points.
"The authors limits include blah-blah the usual boilerplate, but they do not mention the biggest limit. The paper assumes that unvaccinated and vaccinated people are seeking medical care for covid and apart from covid ENTIRELY EQUALLY— which is almost surely not true.
The time course of the result is more plausibly explained by different health care seeking behavior. And we know unvaccinated people behave differently. It is simple to assume these results are driven by incidental COVID19 for the presentation of a heart attack, which occurs more often. And no evidence is presented to challenge this hypothesis."
This is a correct analysis that failure to reject other hypothesis means no one hypothesis is confirmatory. It does NOT mean that one hypothesis is incorrect.
Prasad is a goofball but having some "rational contrarians" is good for progress.
Fair enough.
But others who should know better are presenting this like it’s the de facto, end-of-story evidence making the correlation indisputable. It is most decidedly not. Let’s see time from last injection and not just infection on the x-axis. Also, how were they classifying people who had received an injection only two weeks prior?
Prasad is a goofball, but he’s cagey and smart and makes some very valid points.
No single data point is ever confirmatory. Ever the most perfectly controlled study ever has shortcomings… Consensus building is the key to scientific progress. I would argue there is medium to solid consensus that COVID infection is correlated with CV risk and slightly weaker but still strong evidence that vaccination is partially protective of this risk.
Prasad’s ego, like many COVID commenters, is his fault. Doctors are loving the attention in the COVID era and it’s lead to… questionable… takes on all sides; but hey, gotta respect the hustle.
Thanks for posting this, but you should include a link. I looked it up. I found only one concern, but it was a very big concern.
The study states... "Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 was allowable, as was concurrent use of standard therapies for COVID-19 available under US Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization or approval."
That means that participants could have taken Paxlovid or once hospitalized, Remdesivir. Both were available and approved by the FDA during the timeframe of this study. Paxlovid works and could have skewed the results of this study if some patients took it and others did not.
I searched the study and its supplemental content. I could not find a clarification on Paxlovid.
Thanks for posting this, but you should include a link. I looked it up. I found only one concern, but it was a very big concern.
The study states... "Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 was allowable, as was concurrent use of standard therapies for COVID-19 available under US Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization or approval."
That means that participants could have taken Paxlovid or once hospitalized, Remdesivir. Both were available and approved by the FDA during the timeframe of this study. Paxlovid works and could have skewed the results of this study if some patients took it and others did not.
I searched the study and its supplemental content. I could not find a clarification on Paxlovid.
The proportion vaccinated in each cohort is in the supplement as well as Heterogeneity of treatment effect analysis. There was no difference in outcome among the vaccinated or unvaccinated.
It is possible that entire placebo arm sought out other treatments and the entire IVM arm did not, but this is highly unlikely given the randomization and double-blinded nature of the study.
Overall this study confirms the other large RCTs that IVM does nothing improve major clinical outcomes of COVID .
Thanks for posting this, but you should include a link. I looked it up. I found only one concern, but it was a very big concern.
The study states... "Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 was allowable, as was concurrent use of standard therapies for COVID-19 available under US Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization or approval."
That means that participants could have taken Paxlovid or once hospitalized, Remdesivir. Both were available and approved by the FDA during the timeframe of this study. Paxlovid works and could have skewed the results of this study if some patients took it and others did not.
I searched the study and its supplemental content. I could not find a clarification on Paxlovid.
The proportion vaccinated in each cohort is in the supplement as well as Heterogeneity of treatment effect analysis. There was no difference in outcome among the vaccinated or unvaccinated.
It is possible that entire placebo arm sought out other treatments and the entire IVM arm did not, but this is highly unlikely given the randomization and double-blinded nature of the study.
Overall this study confirms the other large RCTs that IVM does nothing improve major clinical outcomes of COVID .
You didn't understand my post.
My point is that this study explicitly allowed subjects to use standard therapies (aka Paxlovid).
Therefore, if Paxlovid was used, then we no longer have a study of ivermectin. We have a study of ivermectin plus Paxlovid... and we don't even know who took Paxlovid and who didn't.
Maybe no one took Paxlovid, but that is NOT what the study implies.
If you can show any documentation that proves that participants were not also given Paxlovid, I'd like to see it, please.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
Reason provided:
removed a confusing word
The proportion vaccinated in each cohort is in the supplement as well as Heterogeneity of treatment effect analysis. There was no difference in outcome among the vaccinated or unvaccinated.
It is possible that entire placebo arm sought out other treatments and the entire IVM arm did not, but this is highly unlikely given the randomization and double-blinded nature of the study.
Overall this study confirms the other large RCTs that IVM does nothing improve major clinical outcomes of COVID .
You didn't understand my post.
My point is that this study explicitly allowed subjects to use standard therapies (aka Paxlovid).
Therefore, if Paxlovid was used, then we no longer have a study of ivermectin. We have a study of ivermectin plus Paxlovid... and we don't even know who took Paxlovid and who didn't.
Maybe no one took Paxlovid, but that is NOT what the study implies.
If you can show any documentation that proves that participants were not also given Paxlovid, I'd like to see it, please.
Ok but if the point is to determine therapeutic effect of IVM... this should still capture it? Since the interfering benefit should be randomized across both groups.
My point is that this study explicitly allowed subjects to use standard therapies (aka Paxlovid).
Therefore, if Paxlovid was used, then we no longer have a study of ivermectin. We have a study of ivermectin plus Paxlovid... and we don't even know who took Paxlovid and who didn't.
Maybe no one took Paxlovid, but that is NOT what the study implies.
If you can show any documentation that proves that participants were not also given Paxlovid, I'd like to see it, please.
Ok but if the point is to determine therapeutic effect of IVM... this should still capture it? Since the interfering benefit should be randomized across both groups.
Like there are many other possible confounders... (exercise, BMI, age, prior COVID infection, vaccination, sex, etc.) good randomization should average those out.
Marvin Hagler died suddenly and under mysterious circumstances. Marvin's son, James Hagler, reveals to us what he believes was the real cause of his father M...
Like there are many other possible confounders... (exercise, BMI, age, prior COVID infection, vaccination, sex, etc.) good randomization should average those out.
Not really. I've tried to come up with a good analogy to illustrate my point.
Let's assume that a hypotheical antibiotic will cure a specific type of infection in 5 days. It's approved for standard therapy.
Next, let's assume a clinical trial is held to test a new antibiotic.
The trial shows that both the control and the test group are cured in 5 days, but both groups are allowed to take this approved antibiotic as well.
It's possible, even likely, that the introduction of a known therapeutic (the old antibiotic) caused both the control and test groups to have the same outcome.
Bottom line: The study proves that adding Ivermectin to Paxlovid does not improve the results of Paxlovid.
The study explicitly states "concurrent use of standard therapies for COVID-19 available under US Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization or approval" [was allowed]
Like there are many other possible confounders... (exercise, BMI, age, prior COVID infection, vaccination, sex, etc.) good randomization should average those out.
Not really. I've tried to come up with a good analogy to illustrate my point.
Let's assume that a hypotheical antibiotic will cure a specific type of infection in 5 days. It's approved for standard therapy.
Next, let's assume a clinical trial is held to test a new antibiotic.
The trial shows that both the control and the test group are cured in 5 days, but both groups are allowed to take this approved antibiotic as well.
It's possible, even likely, that the introduction of a known therapeutic (the old antibiotic) caused both the control and test groups to have the same outcome.
Bottom line: The study proves that adding Ivermectin to Paxlovid does not improve the results of Paxlovid.
The study explicitly states "concurrent use of standard therapies for COVID-19 available under US Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization or approval" [was allowed]
Yes if everyone was taking it, sure.
But, even so, if IVM was clearly not better than standard of care... it wouldnt be useful anyway! Youre seeking a different question: on its own, does IVM do anything for COVID. The issue is that we have plenty of RCTs that heavily tilt toward "no" for IVM, at some point it becomes malpractice to keep running trials for something where all priors point towards no benefit, allowing other therapies in a "heavy dose" style trial is alright IMO... with heavy dosing effects should still appear.
Additionally:
It's hard to find prescription data but the Pax treatment rates are low enough that I highly, doubt it was a serious confounder.
See here. in one large study only 28% of outpatients were prescribed Pax.
COVID-19 continues to hit seniors with disproportionate severity. Experts say Paxlovid is an effective therapy that is being underprescribed for people 65 and older.
