The whole Ivermectin debacle was ridiculous.<p>I never had Covid. Or if I did, it was so mild I never noticed. So, I really have no dog in this fight. But the way the media handled this coverage was really, really off-putting.<p>First, if it doesn't work, just say that. "It doesn't work". "Ivermectin is not an effective treatment for Covid". That's all that was really necessary, right?<p>But no, there was this whole ridiculous crusade of "It's a horsey drug for horses! If you take it, that means you're a horse!". Which, after two seconds of consideration, was patently absurd. It's an extremely commonly prescribed drug for people. And there's plenty of drugs that are used for both people and animals. Ketamine. Antibiotics. We give antibiotics to horses too. So does that mean if you take antibiotics you're some whackjob taking horse drugs?<p>So now you have the media constantly repeating something which anyone with two brain cells can discern is a blatant lie, and they somehow wonder why people don't trust them?
Ivermectin works because the first trials were done in developing economies where the average person had a high chance of parasitic infections. The steroids used as a standard front-line treatment for severe COVID decreases the immune response to parasites, allowing them to multiply unchecked. This killed patients indirectly, but <i>dead is dead</i>, and they "checked in" with COVID, not parasite complaints.<p>Ivermectin is a wildly effective anti-parasitic, so unsurprisingly it reduces mortality rates in countries where the endemic parasite infection rate is something like 50 percent.<p>This study appears to have been done in Canada, where parasite infection rates in the general population are probably 1% or less. Hence... no demonstrable benefit to using Ivermectin!<p>Nonetheless, Ivermectin is safe drug to take in normal doses, and <i>will</i> help people that are hospitalised with COVID and are given steroids.<p>It's not a prophylactic and high doses are not a treatment for COVID itself.<p>The misunderstandings around this drug stem from misunderstandings of basic statistics and the scientific method. This is why you shouldn't get your medical advice from Joe Rogan.
I don't get it. I don't understand anything about medicine but as far as I know the Japanese used ivermectin to treat COVID so it's not just some developing countries that use it. I'm from Finland and our national news company even reported about some Finnish pharma companies that developed a nasal spay that could treat COVID. That nasal spray included ivermectin and they said it's such a shame ivermectin has such a bad press because supposedly some yanks overdosed on horse dewormer after listening to Joe Rogan too much, but they still insisted that it's an effective drug to treat COVID. I don't know what to believe anymore. To me it seems that not even the trustworthy media can't decide whether it's effective or not.<p>The most bizarre part of this whole ordeal is how there was such a huge backlash to ivermectin usage as if it was some kind of a dangerous drug when that's clearly not the case. Even my layman's knowledge is enough to understand that much. If it's placebo at worst then why did the media try to demonize it so hard?
Isn't Ivermectin most effective at the onset of symptoms [0] ? From the article "They looked at data from all patients; then analyzed data from patients who received ivermectin or a placebo 24 hours before they were hospitalized" This sounds like Ivermectin was given when symptoms where so severe, hospitalization was required. This could well be too late for Ivermectin to be effective.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)32506-6/fulltext" rel="nofollow">https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)32506-6/ful...</a>
In my corner in the world the miracle drug was Amantadine(Gocovri) - used in the past to treat influenza, but not recommended anymore.<p>Also no effect, as show by an appropriate study, but that didn't stop a friend of a friend from trying to obtain it instead of going to a doctor. He failed and eventually succumbed to the illness.
The "largest trial to date" does not mean that it's case closed.<p>While the case for Ivermectin has been weakened recently, there still seems a significant body of evidence to suggest that it does work.<p>Many (not discredited) trials show efficacy and there is a significant observational correlation between population mass consumption of Ivermectin and better results with Covid. There are also many doctors that swear by it's efficacy from their experience.<p>Trials aren't perfect. The drug companies have been manipulating trial data for decades to prove efficacy when there wasn't, it probably can be done the other way as well. And the incentive is there with such a politicized drug.
Link without the paywall: <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/ivermectin-didnt-reduce-covid-19-hospitalizations-in-largest-trial-to-date-11647601200?st=v2bvudfsllip5py" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/ivermectin-didnt-reduce-covid-1...</a>
I've never understood why ivermectin is such a hot button issue that gets people worked up.<p>If someone else has a doctor that prescribes it to them, and a pharmacy that fills the prescription, that should not be a problem, right?<p>It's not like they are telling people they have to take ivermectin against their will.<p>What am I missing?
While the ivermectin story is largely explained by the confounding factor of parasite presence in developing countries, it indirectly helped covid patients by curing them of other problems and thus reducing the potence of covid. Not so much in the developed countries since the parasite problem was small.<p>Concerning though, was the society's attitude to the Ivermectin, an safe drug prescribed by WHO in Africa en masse, established for decades, versus an experimental vaccine-like treatment with unknown side effects and never tested at scale that was to be deployed population wide.<p>At the time of no studies, no information and heavy panic, one of these was condemned, likened to a horse paste for conspiracy theorists, the other revered like a God's potion.<p>This attitude is perfectly rational for pharma companies, for which a vaccine is a better business model, with healthy 95% of the population being customers, than a drug with sick 5% being the customers. Especially for an is off-patent drug Ivermectin which is just a pain in the ass for pharma producers, with no monopoly markup on it.<p>The behavior is not rational for the general populace though. Once country's biggest villains, pharma companies injecting patients unknowingly with opiods, turning them into lifetime subscribers, to world's biggest saviors like a flip of a switch.<p>It was interesting to observe how the pandemic was progressing with a rational attitude as somebody who went through it and developed an immunity right at the beginning. It helped me understand how the minds can be overriden at scale using tactics of fear. Helps explain other dangerous ideologies that were pushed to the populations using fear.<p>Vaccines and Ivermectin are old news though. Who would have though that Vladimir Putin would become the world's most successful doctor and cure the world of the pandemic overnight.
From the article "They looked at data from all patients; then analyzed data from patients who received ivermectin or a placebo 24 hours before they were hospitalized"<p>24 hours!? How is that reasonable at all?
Because of paywall, I'm not sure what study the wsj was referring to but there was a study in JAMA in which Norman Fenton from Queens College commented on which I found interesting:
<a href="https://www.normanfenton.com/post/study-claiming-ivermectin-fails-actually-shows-a-much-lower-death-rate-in-those-who-received-it" rel="nofollow">https://www.normanfenton.com/post/study-claiming-ivermectin-...</a>
This is going to be an unpopular statement of fact but...<p>It's worth pointing out, the study - intentionally? - offers no insights on deaths rates or length of hospital stay, etc.<p>The scope as is is: Test positive. Receive a treatment. To hospital or not to hospital? But why stop there?<p>In fact, as is, you can flip it over and say placebos are just as effective as Ivermectin, as there's no mention of a no treatment at all control. Or did I miss that?<p>In any case, helpful. But apparently flawed.
… the point was never to promote the belief that ivermectin was effective so much as to create the idea that there was a controversy about it in a world view where controversy for the sake of controversy is valorized.
interesting, but largest ever?
not according to this:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz4adJXLHgA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz4adJXLHgA</a><p>which got <i>very</i> different results
Meanwhile, back in reality, ivermectin is associated with 70%-ish reductions in hospitalization and death.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz4adJXLHgA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz4adJXLHgA</a>
c19early.com [1] lists numerous studies for Ivermectin and other drugs in the use of treating COVID-19 for both early treatment, and throughout all stages.<p>Ivermectin currently sits at an average efficacy of 65% after 81 studies.<p>So in reality, this study that WSJ cites should be added to the pool of efficacy, and not used to completely debunk Ivermectin.<p>[1] <a href="https://c19early.com/" rel="nofollow">https://c19early.com/</a>
We did not eliminate pandemics. Instead, as a Society we barely made it through this one. Despite the massive human and economic cost of this latest pandemic, governments are making the same mistakes again:<p>- Lack of preparation.<p>- Not enough resources allocated to research.<p>- Too much reliance on Pharma and particularly
Vaccine producing companies.<p>The best research is still done mostly via foundations or private funding. Some of the most interesting work is still ongoing.<p>At the UK Recovery Study: <a href="https://www.recoverytrial.net/" rel="nofollow">https://www.recoverytrial.net/</a><p>They are investigating several treatments including Ivermectin. Results so far here:<p><a href="https://www.recoverytrial.net/results" rel="nofollow">https://www.recoverytrial.net/results</a><p>Also the PRINCIPLE Study is investigating Ivermectin with no
published results yet. They were able to publish some results for other treatments already.<p>Principle Results:<p><a href="https://www.principletrial.org/results" rel="nofollow">https://www.principletrial.org/results</a><p>The EU also has EU-Response initiative with
Study results here:<p><a href="https://eu-response.eu/results/" rel="nofollow">https://eu-response.eu/results/</a>
Given that the activity of ivermectin was orthogonal to covid (virus vs parasite), they were looking for a side effect that would help. Pretty much every drug that was legally approved was tried when covid appeared to get something that might help. They could be immediately prescribed if something was found.<p>It’s a good comment re reducing the parasite load to improve health, but as others pointed out that’s not common in the countries initially hit by covid. Once politics and hearsay took over, logical discussion ended. For any viral infection, the recourse is vaccination, antivirals and reducing the symptoms. The rise of mAB meant that the effect of vaccination could be immediately applied, which was a new improvement for treatment. Vaccines and antivirals take time to develop, mAB require survivors and they’re all “foreign substances and/or proteins”. The woo and political folks don’t want that.<p>The world is very lucky covid was much closer to the flu than Ebola. Unless the “oh, sh*t” response would have broken through and kept people rational. And keep in mind that “a really strong immune system” often leads to a cytokine storm that burns out the lungs.