Is it true that Imervectin is better and safer than vaccines to prevent and treat cvd19?

Covidiot Trumpers simultaneously believe most or all of the following:

Its a hoax

Its a bioweapon

Its a trivial illness

We're at herd immunity

I don't need a vaccine

I do need a pill (for the hoax virus)

Pills exist

The govt won't let me have them

Lice meds work on the hoax (also bioweapon) illnesss

Malaria meds work on the hoax (also bioweapon) illnesss

Vaccines that have gone thru phase 1/2/3 trials are dangerous

Vaccines don't work or are so dangerous you shouldn't take them

mulnopiravir works but remdesivir is a pharma scam

mulnopiravir is safe

vaccines are unsafe

Unbleievable.

I believe ivermectin is used to treat parasitic disease. It is thought to have appeared to have successfully treated covid patients in Africa and Latin America, but the general consensus is that these covid patients were probably also suffering from a parasitic disease at the same time, so the improvement in their condition was due to alleviation of the parasitic disease by ivermectin rather than due to any alleviation of the covid symptoms. However, an Oxford University study had just begun that will hopefully provide more helpful findings. Hopefully it proves to be an unlikely cure. But I won’t get my hopes up.

trashcan wrote:

A meta-analysis of low quality studies is less reliable than a high quality study. Very often the biases and con founders run in the same direction.

This just isn't true. Meta-analyses has been consistently a better standard than RCTs for many reasons over the past few decades. Very often an RCT will come up with an outcome that is later overturned, where meta-analysis finds highly repeatable results. The "low quality" you speak of is from observational data, small sample groups, but this is exactly what high quality meta-analysis does (and the papers being published of the M-A are themselves reputable and high quality). Further, the type of data comes from all over the world and of different types.

The following need to be answered honestly before we shut down the conversation on ivermectin

1) Ivermectin was available many months before the vaccine was rolled out, but if it were widely distributed and had the success that preliminary findings, the EUA for the vaccine would not be allowed. Was there not a financial interest to initially remove ivermectin as an option? (for the record, I think that rule barring one potential beneficial treatment (vaccine) because another one (ivermectin) is available is unhelpful. Could it not have helped to at least bridge the gap between the suffering in the fall and the vaccine's rollout mid-winter?

2) Why is the same standard not applied to Remdesivir? Overall, the data don't show great benefit, and the safety record is not known because it is a brand new drug. Ivermectin is cheap and easy to distribute around the world.

3) Nicholas Downing of Yale published in JAMA that 1/3 of new drugs brought to market were later pulled because of concerns with safety. This happens of course because we have to balance need with how quickly we can test safety. Fagin and Lavelle found out of 161 studies on drug safety that concerns were found 14% of the time when funded by a drug company, but 60% of the time when funded independently. Nothing sinister here, but this is the reality.Should ivermectin at least be given a shot, since it has an impeccable safety record for 40 years, so it aligns with the principle of "do no harm."

4) Large-scale RCTs cost $20 million or so. It's very hard to find funding with these for a repurposed, out of patent drug, given that no one stands to profit from this. This is a huge flaw in the system. What we do have is data from across the world: countries in Africa that use ivermectin prophylactically for river blindness have done much better than places that don't, states in India that approved ivermectin had less fallout from the spring wave, Peru improved drastically when they began using ivermectin. Yeah, yeah, correlation, but does this not warrant some attention? Further, you do have (smaller) RCTs, observational data from doctors that have used it, and people with a reputation for COVID-specific protocols (FLCCC) supporting it. Large RCTs are not the only way to do medicine, especially in a pandemic. It is a collaboration between many facets.

5) a) If I still haven't convinced you, I would hope it's painfully obvious that ivermectin as a COVID treatment is at the very least a viable hypothesis with more positive evidence than negative. You have to ask yourself why it's become so controversial that Youtube explicitly prohibits it in their community guidelines. What makes a drug that we should be optimistic about and has a good safety record so dangerous to talk about that your videos will be banned if you discuss them?

b) We have to wonder if these pressures are at work at the level of how doctor's treat their patients. Of course no one wants to be branded as anti-scientific, and when that label is threatened, you can imagine some doctors won't find it worth it. Especially when some pharmacies at hospitals refuse to fill ivermectin for COVID treatment.

So in sum, the vaccines look like one tool that can fight COVID. Why is it such a threat for a cheap and safe drug that has evidence of effectiveness against COVID to exist?

1) I see no evidence that an EUA for the vaccines would have been rejected had ivermectin shown decent efficacy.

2) Remsdesivir at least had a big RCT run

3) Prescribing random pharmaceuticals to see what works is not advisable regardless of their safety records. Run a trial if you really want to do that.

4)There are several large RCTs in the works -- e.g. Oxford Uni. is going to add it to their big trials.

5) I am not convinced there is any strong evidence for ivermectin yet. I await further trials. Likely will end up just like HCQ where we had tons of tiny crappy studies, tons of meta-analyses amplifying these results, and nothing....

moanswers wrote:

Precious Roy wrote:

If Ivermectin really worked, it would be in use right now. Emergency room doctors do not give a crap about going off label if it means that they can go to family members and tell them that everything is going to be ok instead of having to do the "we did all we could, he fought until the end" speech.

Finally, some common sense.

How incredibly naive

[quote]Harambe wrote:

1) I see no evidence that an EUA for the vaccines would have been rejected had ivermectin shown decent efficacy.

Is Harambe unaware that the Commissioner of the FDA who greenlit the emergency authorization to use these experimental vaccines just got a highly paid job with the Venture Capital firm the owns Modernas.

Nothing sketchy there, right?

moanswers wrote:

[quote]Precious Roy wrote:

If Ivermectin really worked, it would be in use right now. Emergency room doctors do not give a crap about going off label if it means that they can go to family members and tell them that everything is going to be ok instead of having to do the "we did all we could, he fought until the end" speech.

Right.

It's not like the medical profession prescribed oxycontin for year as the opioid pandemic raged or anything.

What drugs were given to Trump when he got Covid?

An obese, 70 plus year old man who does little exercise and he was fine in 2 days.

Picked up ivermectin at the Tractor Supply Company before they locked it up, and it worked great for me.

I feel like you very selectively answered my questions, so I'm requoting my post above since it was removed in yours. There were a number of important questions not answered. I intend to debate this fairly, and am not your random COVID-denying Trump-loving LRC dude. I'm vaccinated, well-read, and have an advanced degree in bio with several years working in a lab, but am uneasy with what I see happening. Still, I'll address your points below, but would appreciate if you took care in responding to the above.

1) EUAs require that there be no alternative. I can link this from the FDAs site if you need me to, but it's widely known. This is why I asked if there wasn't at least a financial motive in the fall to minimize the positive effects in the media.

2) The WHO rejected Remdesivir in November, saying that it had "no meaningful effect" on COVID, based on both the data from the trial and the outcomes since. Reference my original point #3 above about results bias by trials done by pharmaceutical companies that was unaddressed in your response.

3) In emergency situations, doctors this all the time. Initially the guidance was for Tylenol, fluids, and rest. The FLCCC endorsed corticosteroid and blood thinner use against COVID and was slammed for being anti-science. Currently, both of these practices are the standard of care. In a pandemic, you don't have the luxury to treat dying patients with a placebo. Would you agree? Further, do the doctors of the FLCCC not have credibility and deserve the benefit of the doubt based on their history? Again, these aren't fringe doctors.

4) Good. But it's an atrocity that countless people have to die in the interim while we await, particularly when the vaccines weren't ready.

5) I really think you may not have an understanding of meta-analysis done by people who are well-known for doing it in their field. I'm not trying to be insulting here. We hear so much of RCTs that it's easy to be lulled into thinking that's the only way science is done. There's never been an RCT on smoking cigarettes and the risks. Does that put our medical understanding of smoking in doubt?

And of course, does, based on the available data, this all justify Youtube and other platforms censoring the use of ivermectin, fluvoxamine, and many others? Are you not bothered by that?

If it turns out that the data show ivermectin is just HCQ, I'll gladly stand down. But I'm disgusted at the persistent effort that our public puts into finding every which way to keep a potential alternative that has a proven safety record out in favor of one that is much more costly (for our nation, I know it's free to the people in the US) and one that we don't have long-term safety data. Personally, I'd still get vaxxed, but that it's becoming the only path we're letting be realized makes me worried.

India didn't wait for Fauci.

And the proposed mechanism for ivermectin is that it adheres to the spike protein

prosper in the way T wrote:

India didn't wait for Fauci.

https://joannenova.com.au/2021/05/cases-down-in-the-parts-of-india-that-approved-ivermectin-use/

And the proposed mechanism for ivermectin is that it adheres to the spike protein

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32871846/

1) It is unclear how ivermectin as a treatment for COVID could explain a drop in cases. The R_t for india was dropping well before ivermectin was recommended in some places, so you'd expect a peak in cases regardless. Tamil Nadu was literally a few days behind the other states in peaking so the negative control doesn't support this hypothesis.

2) Docking studies should be trusted about as far as you can throw them. Everything I've seen for ivermectin MOA agianst COVID suggests a host of possible effects i.e. we have no clue.

I can't respond everything you write -- too long, I'm sorry, I try to concentrate on the more salient points. E.g. Can't entertain conspiracy theories about vaccines and ivermectin. IVM is not a vaccine. EUA would still be on the table even if it worked well.

I have no problem with doctors trying things off label. FLCCC and Kory come off as snake oil salesmen, IMO. Too much crying crimes and conspiracies to get views on Youtube. That doesn't help their credibility.

There are good and bad RCTs, there are good and bad meta-analyses. Neither is a magic bullet of empiricism.

There are many meta-analyses of HCQ (all using reams of crappy, confounded, low-power, etc, etc studies) saying it DEFINTELY worked and it didn't, at all!

We've seen several miracle drugs paraded across the internet -- each one assuredly a real effect this time. On the evidence I don't see this as being any stronger than HCQ before the big trials read out.

HCQ was already a bit of a public health disaster. If your family doc wants to hype up IVM, so be it, but it seems silly for public health officials to get behind this drug without real evidence. Nobody is finding ways to shut down alternatives, we just want real data before we starting popping pills that do nothing. We were at this exact point with HCQ months ago, yes?

I simply don't care about Youtube IVM, for the record. If I google 'ivermectin COVID' I get tons and tons of hits. People can find their information. Anyone who watches a 2 hour youtube video to get medical information is someone I wouldn't want making care decisions, anyway.

The issue with meta-analyses in this case is that regardless of the skill of the researcher doing the met-analysis, you cannot jump levels of evidence by doing a meta-analysis. Also, the rigor of a meta-analysis is determined by the LEAST rigorous study included.

a) The fact that people are spending so much time trying to disprove IVM shows you that it isn't being treated fairly. Remdesivir, which has far less evidence and at this point essentially has nothing but a disproven trial from 14 months ago, has very few people spilling ink about how poor the data are or that it should be removed from standard of care.

b) From what I remember, HCQ was talked about seriously at the beginning of the pandemic, but anyone legitimate had walked back support by the summer. It was a shot in the dark when we were all running around like chickens with our heads cut off, and it didn't work out unfortunately. IVM has been talked about seriously, and increasingly, for eight months, and it's been administered for COVID even further back in time. It's not the flavor of the month.

c) You're informed and educated, so I respect that. But you go after the character of the FLCCC and Kory (which is strange given there track record...again, given their previous success with standard of care protocols for COVID, shouldn't they be taken seriously?).

d) The M-A being done are high-powered and by some of the leaders in M-A, so I'm not sure where these claims keep coming from.

e) I linked an article that showed IVM being introduced before the peak in India. And then add on Peru, Mexico, the stark contrast between outcomes in African countries that use IVM prophylactically for river blindness. Then add observation by doctors, then add RCTs (that admittedly have some flaws). The amount of evidence, the proposed mechanism that fits the data, it all fits. We come back to the idea that in a pandemic doctors are being denied the ability to fill prescriptions for something they believe in. Even if I weren't 100% sold that it's an extremely effective treatment, I would have a massive problem with this. At the very least, I'm certainly not trying to actively campaign against it, and so it confuses me why you (among many others) are.

f) I'll link the FDA's page. It doesn't stipulate that the alternative needs to be a vaccine, but merely any effective treatment. An alternative that is deemed effective would remove the EUA.

g) To be clear, I'm pro-COVID vaccines. It's incredible that we have them at our disposal. I think both you and I want to seek the truth, don't have hidden agendas, and could even be on the same side. What's upsetting is when the bar is set so high for some things, but for others we're letting things slide (and understandably, it's a pandemic). We can advocate for vaccines and also other forms of treatment that are less profitable.

And I'm not trying to get to conspiracy theory land. I don't think Big Pharma and Fauci are sitting around a room thinking they sent 100,000s of people to their unnecessary deaths by shutting down alternatives just so they could make a buck. They made decisions they convinced themselves were for the good of the country. But this is what cognitive dissonance does to us when there is a profit motive. We start to rationalize decisions, see certain things as more dangerous than others (IVM) while other things worth the risk. And this contingent does influence public policy, the message, and they've reigned over the RCTs (I cited before a study illuminating how much bias that introduces.

I'm not fighting you, not trying to win a debate, but I do hope that I can convince you that the path we're pursuing with IVM is not in the best interest of the people and it's a wakeup call for the flaws in how the system is built. We're all playing a part in the outcome and the nuance is uncomfortable, but we have to accept it if we want positive outcomes.

800 critic wrote:

Covidiot Trumpers simultaneously believe most or all of the following:

Its a hoax

Its a bioweapon

Its a trivial illness

We're at herd immunity

I don't need a vaccine

I do need a pill (for the hoax virus)

Pills exist

The govt won't let me have them

Lice meds work on the hoax (also bioweapon) illnesss

Malaria meds work on the hoax (also bioweapon) illnesss

Vaccines that have gone thru phase 1/2/3 trials are dangerous

Vaccines don't work or are so dangerous you shouldn't take them

mulnopiravir works but remdesivir is a pharma scam

mulnopiravir is safe

vaccines are unsafe

Unbleievable.

You omitted the Wuhan Lab leak "hoax." What is unbelievable is how many people Marxists will literally kill to achieve their evil political means.

Harambe wrote:

3) Prescribing random pharmaceuticals to see what works is not advisable regardless of their safety records. Run a trial if you really want to do that.

.

So in the middle of a Pandemic we need a trial before doing anything. Yes everything lord Fauci recommended had extensive trials to support. In the middle of a situation when people are dying and you have a potential cure and you have extensive real-world evidence it works you don't wait for a trial, you start offering the medication to people as an option in order to their life and let the trials follow.