Where Did Ivermectin Come From and Why Are Americans Taking It To Try and Treat COVID-19? (wfaa.com) 676
Ivermectin is making the rounds again online after Joe Rogan casually mentioned he took the drug after testing positive for COVID-19. Some researchers claim it helps treat symptoms of the virus; others, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have yet to make that determination. "While there are approved uses for ivermectin in people and animals, it is not approved for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19," the FDA says in a FAQ.
So where did this drug come from and why have people been using it to try and treat COVID-19? WFAA, an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, helps answer those questions: In the 1970s, Japanese biochemist Satoshi Omura discovered the avermectin family of compounds, which are a series of drugs used to treat parasites and insect pests. Ivermectin is one of these drugs. Ivermectin has a mixture of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. It was modified and first introduced as medicine in 1981. It soon became registered around the world to treat parasitic worms in cattle, sheep, and other animals. It can be taken as a pill or applied to the skin depending on why it's needed.
By 1988, ivermectin was approved as a medical treatment in humans. This "wonder drug," as many called it, was prescribed to treat illnesses, which include head lice, scabies, river blindness (onchocerciasis), strongyloidiasis, trichuriasis, ascariasis, and lymphatic filariasis. Since its discovery, ivermectin has been used by more than 700 million people in the world specifically to treat river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, according to a National Institutes of Health study.
A medical study led by Dr. Ahmed Elgazzar in Egypt was published in November 2020. It said that hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who received this antiparasitic drug improved more quickly and had a better chance of staying alive. It was retracted in July. Multiple medical agencies -- including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- have been unable to find any evidence this drug helps with COVID-19. The CDC put out a press release in August, making clear that ivermectin is not authorized or approved by the FDA for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19. In that same CDC press release, health experts also warned about the dangers that can come from taking ivermectin incorrectly.
So where did this drug come from and why have people been using it to try and treat COVID-19? WFAA, an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, helps answer those questions: In the 1970s, Japanese biochemist Satoshi Omura discovered the avermectin family of compounds, which are a series of drugs used to treat parasites and insect pests. Ivermectin is one of these drugs. Ivermectin has a mixture of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. It was modified and first introduced as medicine in 1981. It soon became registered around the world to treat parasitic worms in cattle, sheep, and other animals. It can be taken as a pill or applied to the skin depending on why it's needed.
By 1988, ivermectin was approved as a medical treatment in humans. This "wonder drug," as many called it, was prescribed to treat illnesses, which include head lice, scabies, river blindness (onchocerciasis), strongyloidiasis, trichuriasis, ascariasis, and lymphatic filariasis. Since its discovery, ivermectin has been used by more than 700 million people in the world specifically to treat river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, according to a National Institutes of Health study.
A medical study led by Dr. Ahmed Elgazzar in Egypt was published in November 2020. It said that hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who received this antiparasitic drug improved more quickly and had a better chance of staying alive. It was retracted in July. Multiple medical agencies -- including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- have been unable to find any evidence this drug helps with COVID-19. The CDC put out a press release in August, making clear that ivermectin is not authorized or approved by the FDA for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19. In that same CDC press release, health experts also warned about the dangers that can come from taking ivermectin incorrectly.
Critical thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Confirmation Bias. Bandwagon Fallacy. Hasty Generalization.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Funny)
The evil governments keep hiding the inexpensive drugs that cure us of everything, all so that they can get their vaccine microchips implanted in us! So my neighbor's middle school son, who's really smart, has a science fair project that shows how baking soda will cure cancer! Why are they covering this up??
Re: (Score:3)
The same lame reason they covered up the curative effect of popping Mentos and guzzling Diet Coke.
It's not just for science fair volcanoes.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Funny)
The evil governments keep hiding the inexpensive drugs that cure us of everything, all so that they can get their vaccine microchips implanted in us!
5.3 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered around the world... that would explain why there's such a huge chip shortage right now.
Re: (Score:2)
also read about the galileo gambit
Re: (Score:3)
That and the Conservatives have been trained (by the media, and churches that have seem to forget the teachings of Jesus) to believe that all LiBeRaLs are out to get them. So any source that comes from a non-conservative group must be lying to them.
This is actually very bad for everyone, as often the Liberals may have found out something important to say, while the conservatives just dismiss it all together, also if the Liberals are in error, the conservatives don't have a good argument to correct them, the
Re: (Score:3)
For one, the big organizations have the ability to deal with the likes of the FDA. The alternatives were shutdown, because they didn't supply the proper paperwork, including too small sample side, improper recording side effects, not proving sufficiently random sample size... I have worked for small organizations and big ones.
The Big ones, have the manpower and the money and resources to provide all the documentation needed for approval, as well because this isn't their first show and have business proces
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine living in a country that claimed to be free, yet required government approval to take medicine you believed could help you?
You don't require government approval to take any medicine. Doctors and pharmacies, on the other hand, generally require government approval to prescribe or sell certain medicines. Government has been able to regulate commercial activity for a long time now.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Informative)
You don't require government approval to take any medicine.
It's a distinction without a difference. Generally you have to possess the medication in order to take it, and you most definitely DO have to have government approval of one form or another to be in possession of many kinds of medicines.
Re: (Score:3)
You don't require government approval to take any medicine.
You require government-approved approval to take any medicine which is a controlled substance. While the approval is granted by a doctor, he's been given the right to do that by the state. That is literally government approval by proxy.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Walk down the street and get stopped with pain management medication
You mean heroin and fentanyl? Yeah, narcotics are a very special case and a change of subject. War on drugs is bad, I agree, but with 50,000 Americans dying every year from opioids, while a few families get obscenely rich from it, I reckon some regulation is justified.
Nobody will arrest you for possessing Ivermectin. But if you are selling it to gullible chumps as a cure for Covid, I hope you get serious time in a PMITA prison.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ivermectin is a very well known and well developed anti-viral
False. Ivermectin is an antiinfective agent with activity against several parasitic nematodes [nih.gov] and scabies and is the treatment of choice for onchocerciasis (river blindness).
To describe it as 'sheep dip' next to a so-called vaccine
It's used to treat sheep, among other quadrapeds. And that so-called vaccine, well, it's funny how 99.9% of everyone dying from covid is unvaccinated whereas only in edge cases are people dying after being vaccinated. And most of those had underlying medical conditions.
not even tested in months that doesn't 'vaccinate' anyone against anything
Your stupidity conitnues to become more pronounced since quite obviously you either don't know how vaccines work or have deliberately chosen to ignore the facts of how vaccines work. I'll let you tell us which it is.
here's a reason why we never had a vaccine for the common cold) i
So tell us, which of the 200+ cold viruses would you like a vaccine for? Because you have made the same fallacious arugment that other anti-vaxxers have made claiming cancer kills more people than covid, without specifying which cancer. Cancer is a spectrum which incldues, to name just a few, breast cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer (of which there are several), cervical, and the list goes on [cancer.gov]. When you tell us which cold virus you want a vaccine for, let us know. Because unlike the cold virus, covid is a single virus which can be targeted. Which is why the vaccine was developed.
Take your little injection and let the intelligent people actually look after their health.
Ah yes, don't take a known, proven medical treatment, one which has shown to either prevent catching a deadly virus or so mitigate the effects as to be almost unmentionable. Instead, be like these folks did [imgur.com]. Or these people [cbsnews.com]. Or him [imgur.com]. Or these folks [wfla.com]. Or this genius [imgur.com]. Show those libs you mean business by continuing to die. We can all use the laugh.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Interesting)
here's a reason why we never had a vaccine for the common cold) i
So tell us, which of the 200+ cold viruses would you like a vaccine for?
Just as a point of interest, both Pfizer and Moderna are both looking to deploy the mRNA technology against colds, flues and (amazingly) HIV. The HIV vaccine is actually starting clinical trials [clinicaltrials.gov] very soon; whereas the influenza clinical trials [clinicaltrials.gov] are already underway.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Informative)
SARS-CoV-2 is most definitely more harmful than most strains of influenza in terms of outcome. There are some worse strains of flu but they haven't had an outbreak in a while. Moreover the current variants of the virus are much more transmissible, on par with measles.
The current vaccines suck because they are built around only the originally documented strain. Once a broad spectrum vaccine becomes available it will be able to tackle a wider range of mutations. In the future the old vaccines won't even be available because the new ones will cover more bases.
But we work with what we have now because well, it's what we have. Unfortunately the original vaccines do not produce good antibody response against the delta variant -- they do, however provide faster T cell response and thus faster recovery. The data currently available shows that delta gets you sick about the same amount between vaccinated and unvaccinated for the first few days, but the immune response is FAR more robust in vaccinated individuals from that point forward.
It's not a "netflix model" any more than vaccines have ever been. It's just an early version that got tested and released because we needed it NOW, the same way when we went to war in WW2 our fighter aircraft were not the best, but we massed produced them while we finished the designs of better ones.
mRNA tech is going to be big in the future because we can do things beyond vaccines with it -- it lets us control our cellular machinery without having to do any genetic tinkering. We can do things like getting our cells to produce telomerase to repair our DNA without actually changing the DNA and risking cancer, thus greatly expanding lifespans (at least in the tissue we can get the mRNA to). Heart and artery disease could become a thing of the past.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:4)
If you are already vaccinated you can not die from this.
That's not how it works at all.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are already vaccinated you can not die from this.
That is a lie, or you are not qualified to participate in this conversation. Either way, typical anonymous coward, and exemplary example of why AC posting should be disallowed. That was the one thing BizX ever got right, and then they undid it.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Informative)
If you are already vaccinated you can not die from this. Can you explain to me why you care so much if other people get vaccinated?
Easy. Your assumption is wrong. I can still die from it. Although admittedly it's much more unlikely. I also care about other people, like those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. And indeed even about those that don't want to get vaccinated, for one fallacious reason or another.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because unvaccinated people are a breeding ground for new variants, which may be able to break through the vaccinations with higher probability. If that happens, we start all over.
Other valid reasons: I'm not a selfish un-empathetic prick and I don't want to see people die of a preventable disease due to getting terrible information from unknown sources, spreading that terrible information for unknown purposes. I don't want to see thousands of people die due to bad decision making. Or, if you want things more selfish: I'd like this fuckery to end as fast as possible, and the politicization of vaccines combined with the extreme right-wing latch-on to "cures" that have no data to back them up as anything more than snake oil is only going to prolong this mess.
Get it yet?
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Informative)
Not everyone is a narcissist like you assume they are, it is a simple fact that most people care about others.
Also, while vaccinated people are unlikely to die from exposure, they may die from a future form that could be prevented if everyone got vaccinated.
Finally, they could die from an unrelated problem they couldn't get treated because hospitals are overwhelmed by morons that are not vaccinated.
Your pathetic, sociopathic troll is tiring.
Re: (Score:3)
The other thing to consider is this: If I'm in an accident, I would really like to have an ICU spot open if I need it, and not have all the ICU beds taken by antivaxxers who could almost all have prevented such an outcome.
Re: (Score:3)
The fuck is wrong with your brain? The people who made them call them vaccines. The people who recommend them call them vaccines. The people who asked for them call them vaccines. The entire world calls them vaccines. If you find one or two dictionaries out of dozens that lets you split hairs enough to not call it a vaccine, it doesn't make you right - you just remain a moron who thinks a semantic technicality he wins from informational selectivity makes an argument against taking them stronger.
Like, it's d
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think I've seen that many lies in 4 sentences in a long time.
Ivermectin is not a "very well known and well developed anti-viral" at all. It's an anti-parasitic.
Ivermectin is used quite commonly as a anti-parasitic for livestock. One of the application methods is as a topical rinse, usually applied in a bath for animals such as sheep.
That "so-called vaccine" is protecting people from serious disease right now. Yale says that unvaccinated people are at more risk than vaccinated people, that the Del [yalemedicine.org]
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're trying to argue that no country with an equivalent to the CSA is free then we're clearly in No True Scotsman territory.
Re:Don't trust the fake news... (Score:5, Informative)
It's worth noting that the study linked to here is a meta-analysis of other studies, including the Elgazzar study which was retracted due to all the evidence that the study was fraudulent. That's the retracted study mentioned in the summary. Most of the other studies in the meta-analysis were not peer reviewed and were low quality. Also, the authors of the study are members of the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development group (BIRD), but did not declare that in the study as they should have under normal standards of medical ethics. One of the authors of the paper is Tess Lawrie, who is a leader of BIRD and also runs the "Evidence Based Medicine Consultancy Ltd." They're a private organization that contracts out to produce papers like the one that you linked to and they appear to specialize in "evidence synthesis" and meta-analyses like that study. So, that leaves me really curious about who contracted them to produce this paper and why.
I'm reminded of posters at Dulles airport in Washington D.C. advertising some local think tank. They were basically promising, in their very public ad, to produce whatever results the client was looking for if hired. It was pretty sickening that we live in a world where they can just be so brazen about it.
Re:Don't trust the fake news... (Score:5, Informative)
This is basically "Vaccines cause autism" part 2, only the consequences are significantly more death.
The doctor for proposed that the MMR vaccine caused autism was hired by a lawyer to find such a link so he could make money filing lawsuits on behalf of angry parents with autistic children. Said doctor also promoted separate vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella - which of course costs significantly more than the combined vaccine - which he just happened to have a financial stake in as well.
Interestingly this also happened in Britain... maybe the British need to crack down on self-serving crank science.
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:3)
First, that's just the one regional medical association and they're not part of the government. Neither the Tokyo government nor the Japanese government have made any such recommendation. As for the recommendation, he was recommending that the government consider allowing doctors to write ivermectin prescriptions for patients with informed consent. Basically, letting them give it to patients who want it. You're clearly reaching with "recommending #ivermectin to all doctors, for all Covid patients.".
What I f
Re: (Score:3)
> Sweden and India are not affected by this enormous Covid circus
What? Sweden's mortality rate due to COVID is ten times higher than neighboring countries that locked down. India got is so bad they were literally burning corpses in the streets to dispose of them.
> On the scientific side, this is confirmed by some well known European scientists
Just reading that it's clear this man has no fucking clue how the mRNA vaccines work.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/v... [forbes.com]
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
They hang
Re:Don't trust the fake news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, and Ben Carson was a neurosurgeon. Yet he still thinks that the Egyptian pyramids were grain silos despite the fact that they have writing all over them saying exactly what they're for and the fact that they're like 99% solid rather than hollow like you would want a storage area to be. He also vehemently insisted in public, while running for President, that he _was_ an attempted murderer, despite the guy he supposedly tried to murder insisting that the event never happened. By most accounts, he was an accomplished neurosurgeon, although some criticized him for performing excessively risky procedures. That did not stop him from espousing some very nutty ideas.
Then there's Fred Hoyle. He was clearly a gifted physicist at one point, describing the process of how heavier elements came to be made in stars. He coined the term "Big Bang" (although that was actually an attack on the theory and he advocated for "Steady State"). He also insisted that Archaeopteryz was fake and was a big proponent of panspermia theory. There's nothing wrong with panspermia as theory per se. It's when you start insisting that red rain falling in India is actually space organisms falling to Earth that there's a problem.
Basically, nothing about being a brilliant scientist prevents you from also believing strange things. Consider "A Beautiful Mind". It's a dramatization, of course, but it's another good illustration of how that can happen.
That's not to say that Dr. Perronne is necessarily a quack. He could, quite simply, be wrong. It's even possible that he could be right. If he is though, he does not appear to have arrived there through the normal means. Consider that some people take a gamble on their favorite theories and sometimes spend decades and millions of dollars pursuing those theories. For some, it pays off, for others they were just wrong. Ivermectin clearly works in a petri dish, but plenty of things work fine in a petri dish but not in live animals, or they do work in live animals, but not in actual humans. There's a drug called Neumega. It got its name for "New Megacaryocytes". They came up with the name before the human trials. It turns out it does have benefits in humans, but does not promote the creation of new megacaryocytes like it does in mice. That's just how research goes.
So, what you have to consider, when you quote your scant experts and professional organizations that support your idea, is why they're so alone and the vast majority of medical experts aren't backing them up? Is it because there's a vast conspiracy as some of them will tell you, or is it because all of the other experts are actually fools or is it just possible that your experts are just wrong or, if not, have not proven their case yet?
Consider Hydroxychloroquine. We don't hear as much about it anymore. Now Ivermectin is the topic of discussion. It's been a while now since some circles started touting Hydroxychloroquine. By now you would expect more conclusive results about its efficacy to have stacked up. Yet those results don't seem to have stacked up. What it seems like is that the hydroxychloroquine enthusiasts have moved on to Ivermectin.
Re:Don't trust the fake news... (Score:5, Informative)
So what you're telling us is you're scientifically and medically illiterate.
Problem #1: the NCBI search engine is NOT "The NIH". It's a search engine. All it does is index publications, which are of varying levels of reliability.
Problem #2: the article in question is a meta-analysis of questionable methodology, most notably that it included a study which has been retracted for falsifying data and other major ethical and factual lapses [nature.com] as well as including other studies that had not (and probably never will) pass a proper peer review.
Problem #3: the article in question includes large amounts of influence from Pierre "Quackfraud" Kory, also well known for data fraud.
The paper’s withdrawal is not the first scandal to dog studies of ivermectin and COVID-19. Hill thinks many of the other ivermectin trial papers that he has scanned are likely to be flawed or statistically biased. Many rely on small sample sizes or were not randomized or well controlled, he says. And in 2020, an observational study of the drug was withdrawn after scientists raised concerns about it and a few other papers using data by the company Surgisphere that investigated a range of repurposed drugs against COVID-19. “We’ve seen a pattern of people releasing information that’s not reliable,” says Hill. “It’s hard enough to do work on COVID and treatment without people distorting databases.”
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you not understand the concept of "prescriptions"?
You don't need "government approval" to take ivermectin. Tractor supply and Rural King have it on their shelves. Have fun. In fact, a red-blooded freedom-loving patriot like you should definitely take ivermectin to own the libs. Teach us all a lesson with your awesome skills in medical research.
But for most medicine, a prescription is required. Mostly because getting your medical and pharmaceutical advice from a miniature meathead podcaster who looks like he's about to pop from overdose of steroids is probably a good way to end up clogging up an emergency room with your dumb ass. Medical professionals have enough on their hands right now and don't need any more grief.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ivermectin from those places will kill you. They are suitable doses for a 800-1800 pound animal.
Aspirin is fine. 120 aspirin will hurt and possibly kill you.
A glass of water is fine Drinking more than 20 gallons of water will make you sick and could kill you unless they know to restore your salt balance.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, that's not enough. The amount of ivermectin you need to even have a possible effect on COVID is around 100 times the maximum allowed human dose. So you'd probably need a few boxes of horse dewormer to actually get a therapeutic dose against COVID.
So basically, you can feel like dying from COVID, or basically die taking the drug. That's why no doctor will prescribe it - the dose required is so high it's
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that's not enough. The amount of ivermectin you need to even have a possible effect on COVID is around 100 times the maximum allowed human dose. So you'd probably need a few boxes of horse dewormer to actually get a therapeutic dose against COVID.
So it's like bleach. There are lots of things that kill the Covid virus. What they all have in common is that they kill humans before they kill the virus.
One serious recommendation (now mostly forgotten) was to drink lots of hot coffee. Because that heats up your body and heat kills the virus. Except the virus dies at 60 degrees Celsius, and humans die at 42 degrees.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:4, Informative)
They are suitable doses for a 800-1800 pound animal.
It certainly can, but in the same way that eating the entire bottle of painkillers will as well. The ivermectin paste sold at Rural King is packaged in a tube that includes a dosing indicator that roughly measures amounts for livestock between 100 and 1000 LB, or at last the one I bought for some goats did.
I don't know what Rogan took but all of the people I've seen piling on assume he ate that livestock paste. There are versions of Ivermectin intended for human use and doctors prescribe them all the time, mostly in places outside the US where parasites are common. Anyone who has listened to Rogan much would be aware he is a proponent of taking supplements and medications and has the resources needed to get about anything he wants from a doctor. I doubt he ate horse paste, he probably found an actual medical doctor (for humans) to prescribe him the human version invermectin and provide a dosing schedule.
Re: (Score:3)
Imagine living in a country that claimed to be free, yet required government approval to take medicine you believed could help you?
Imagine if your belief is wrong and it actually harms you instead.
TLDR: Some People believe total crap and dedicate their lives to convince others to believe it, too.
(Looking at all the distilled water drinkers, sodium-bicarbonate-blood-deacidifyers, etc)
It's a slippery slope.
Re: (Score:3)
Let's not forget the radium water enthusiasts. That's a bit further in the past, but it is worth noting that some of these people were totally devoted to the health benefits of drinking radioactive water. Then there's the sun worshippers and other types who, on the extreme end, often seem to end up believing that nothing natural can hurt you. Then they do things like staring at the sun to prove that it's just a myth that it hurts your eyes (all the ones who have actually done this for any length of time per
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
. Imagine living in a country that claimed to be free, yet required government approval to take medicine you believed could help you? Beta blockers anyone?
A lot of people really believe that next hit of heroin or meth is really going to help them. Belief and reality are not necessarily related.
Reality has a well known liberal bias.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea- we always start out like that.
Then when people die because they were not well informed, the public clamors for protection.
Lots and lots of people died due to fake drugs which were literally
* Addictive drugs
* Radioactive
* Booze with a bit of cocaine
* Booze with a bit of opium
So a majority of the people had their representatives pass laws to make it illegal to sell drugs that hadn't been tested for safety and to insure they did what they promised.
It's not facism (it's clear you do not have a clue what that word means so you should go look it up so you are less ignorant) - it is democracy-- the tyranny of the majority.
The fact is a large part of the population isn't that smart and needs protection or they'll be taken advantage of.
So they have smarter and much better informed and educated people protect them.
and bad actors constantly attempt to correct or bypass that protection.
Re:Critical thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
People getting too many microclot shots may find themselves needing a new heart - I already have one friend in this category. Brother in law's next door neighbor collapsed after his 1st shot and died too young, the day before his next shot was due. Then a week later his classmate lost his foot, amputated for DVT after shot.
I know three people who have died from the virus out of a couple of dozen. I know zero people who have died from the vaccine out of a few hundred.
Remember that the virus itself can cause all of the symptoms you're talking about, but causes them many orders of magnitude more often. Ask yourself which is more likely — that they got some one-in-a-billion side effect of the vaccine or that they got COVID before the vaccine kicked in?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Plus reported side effects are so low that the parent posters report isn't credible. Knowing one person might have happen. But it's literally something like 1 in a million. If you know multiple people who have side effects, you should consider also buying a lottery ticket.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/c... [cdc.gov]
sample size is 11401
Note: "The proportions of participants who reported at least one serious adverse event were 1% in the vaccine group and 1% in the placebo group. The most common serious adverse even
Re: Critical thinking. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I am chronologically unhealthy and... (Score:5, Funny)
You eat it? (Score:2)
I thought the horse paste was applied rectally.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably not a good idea to stand behind the horse when you're applying it, though.
Re: You eat it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Durvet Apple Flavored Ivermectin 1.87% Horse Wormer Paste, 387772 is rated 4.8 out of 5
By horses or COVID patients? That is kind of important.
Re: (Score:2)
... and it will cure your parasitic mange.
At least that's what our goat Barney assures me. "maa aaa aaa aaa!" (popular goat expletive) [spaces added to stop /. from complaining about ascii art]
Re: (Score:3)
"I make all kinds of bad health decisions and I will firmly continue to make them"
FTFY
Re: (Score:3)
I believe it comes in Vanilla now -- as does Thorazine. :-)
An Australia study started this. (Score:2)
Re:An Australia study started this. (Score:5, Insightful)
What many people miss about this study is that it was done "in vitro," in a lab setting in a cell culture. That's a lot different than "in vivo," in the human body. And this study even points out that fact.
Well, a lot of things will kill viruses in vitro. Bleach works really well, for example. But you don't want people drinking bleach to kill COVID.
Oh, wait....
Re:An Australia study started this. (Score:5, Informative)
The key concept is a candidate drug's "therapeutic window". That's the range of potentially useful doses that lies between the minimum dose that produces a therapeutic effect and the dose that produces toxic effect. Most things that kill virus in vitro end up having no therapeutic window; like bleach you reach a toxic dose before you see any useful effect.
Re: (Score:3)
What many people miss about this study is that it was done "in vitro," in a lab setting in a cell culture. That's a lot different than "in vivo," in the human body. And this study even points out that fact.
That was not really the biggest problem. The biggest problem was the micromolar concentration of ivermectin. If you worked in chemistry then this basically is the death knell for a drug, unless it's something from oncology.
"Micromolar" means that for small molecule drugs you're looking at gram quantities. Very few drugs are that well-tolerated. Normal therapeutic dosages for ivermectin are around 15 milligram. So there's about 100x gap.
Re:An Australia study started this. (Score:5, Informative)
So in February of 2021 Edward Mills of McMaster University is conducting studies on ivermectin. It's been a while. What was his results? Hey there was a statement in August 16, 2021.
https://trialsitenews.com/mcma... [trialsitenews.com]
"Recently, McMaster University's Professor Ed Mills, principal investigator of the Together trial, highlighted interim analysis results evidencing no impact of ivermectin and some other repurposed study drugs while pointing to some promise for Fluvoxamine."
Edward Mills of McMaster University seems convinced about that so maybe that shouldn't be sited as an argument for this treatment.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure. But if you put together the fact that a drug has uses in humans and the fact that it kills a virus in vitro you fall far, far short of showing it's a useful drug for that virus. This is particularly true for antiparasitics, which work by disrupting a eukaryotic parasite's cell functions. This can *also* have the effect of stopping virus spreading in cultured human cells because the virus depends on the host's (eukaryotic) cells for reproduction. In vivo this means attempting to poison the patient
Re: (Score:3)
All the approved uses are to treat an infection by parasites. Organisms that are very different from viruses, if you can even call them organism, because they have no metabolism.
It's like if people suddenly took 500 tylenol doses to treat their viral infection. Yes, tylenol has been long approved, and it can even help with some flu symptoms, but it's doing nothing for treating viral infections. And if you take it in such doses all
Re: (Score:3)
For example you could kill viruses with ionizing radiation. Thus ionizing radiation has anti-viral properties. Works well enough in a petri dish. But if you want to get the required dosage of radiation to penetrate human cells throughout the body where the viruses might be situated, the collateral damage caused by the radiation treatment would be what most likely kills the patient.
A similar situation with stuff like ozone, w
Re:An Australia study started this. (Score:4, Insightful)
It was backed up by:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2... [clinicaltrials.gov]
Not sure why everyone keeps fixating on the Egypt study.
Perhaps I'm not searching hard enough, but that seems to be a preprint and I'm unable find it published and peer reviewed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of matters that it was blatant fraud, doesn't it? Means you need to watch out for people trying to fool you, including in more subtle ways.
Why would people want to fool you into believing something works, that doesn't? For identity politics purposes.
Don't get drafted into a culture war by people who don't even believe what they're selling you.
(There are also people doing identity politics drafting on the "other" side, by being hyper-pharisees, pus
Taps into something weird in the American Psyche (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it fascinating that people will pay hundreds of dollars for something that is of questionable benefit (at best) rather than take a vaccine that is proven to prevent illness and or death (and new numbers proving this are published every day) and is free.
It just seems that Ivermectin is a way to "own the libs" rather than follow "woke science" and anything that is promoted by somebody who channels the message that there are maverick doctors out there that are smarter than Big Pharma and Government combined is going to attract people. When the message is right, people just won't challenge it - one of the big lies about Ivermectin is that nobody will study it yet there are more than a dozen studies showing that it has no observable value in combating Covid.
Don't forget hydroxychloroquine (an anti-fungal used in fishtanks) was touted the same way.
Re:Taps into something weird in the American Psych (Score:5, Funny)
Can you imagine being afraid enough of coronavirus that you would be willing to self-prescribe horse medicine, but not enough to get a vaccine?
Re:Taps into something weird in the American Psych (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing I find absolutely *hilarious* about the "vaccines = big business, ivermectin is practically free" crowd is that they are the same crowd who trumpet the benefits of America's health system over, say, the UK, *because the US system is run by private business for profit*. And will say regularly that if people die because they can't afford their meds, so be it. An endless series of walking contradictions.
Re:Taps into something weird in the American Psych (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why TFA tries to make it sound like it's primarily used in horses and cattle.
Because referring to it as horse paste is the current talking point among people who discourage its use, which is somewhat earned because there are fringes of people taking the version intended for deworming horses, posting pictures of the box Rural King sells, etc etc.
But I doubt Rogan took that paste. He probably called one of the many doctors he knows and got a script for the human version of ivermectin and took that. But because every single aspect of this pandemic has to be an endless back and forth shouting match between Team A and Team B, there are uncountably many references to him taking horse dewormer. These people would never walk up to some guy living in the bush of an APOC country who takes it because he doesn't want to get river blindness and shout at him that he is isn't a horse so he shouldn't take horse medicine.
Re: Taps into something weird in the American Psyc (Score:2)
Re:Taps into something weird in the American Psych (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget hydroxychloroquine (an anti-fungal used in fishtanks) was touted the same way.
No, hydroxychloroquine isn't a fish tank cleaner. It’s an extremely cheap and common anti-malarial drug. If you ever travel to India you’ll find that you have to take it before you leave the US.
Some woman killed her husband with a similar chemical used in fish tanks, but you’d likely be let down to learn which side of the political aisle she’s on.
Re:Taps into something weird in the American Psych (Score:4, Informative)
There is no long-term study checking the safety of ivermectin. It could sit around in your body for 40 years then suddenly make you sterile.
Re: Taps into something weird in the American Psyc (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Taps into something weird in the American Psyc (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Unless someone is following up with the same population again this year and publishing a follow-up, the study isn't any longer now than it was when it was last published.
In any case, the study was about effectiveness of ivermectin against a parasite, not against COVID-19, and it also wasn't specifically looking for any adverse long-term health effects... So it provides no useful information to someone trying to compare the effectiveness and long-term safety of ivermectin vs the COVID-19 vaccines.
Re:Taps into something weird in the American Psych (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, we do.
Long term, for a vaccine, is measured in weeks. The people who spend their lives understanding vaccines all tell anyone who will listen that of all the things they've seen go wrong with vaccines, all happened within days, six weeks at the very outside.
And as it happens, a study just got published which tracked long term outcomes of almost a million vaccinated people against a control group. https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.10... [nejm.org]
We know the effects and can put numbers on how often they happen and can compare them to the risks of a COVID infection. It's a lopsided comparison.
Re:Taps into something weird in the American Psych (Score:5, Informative)
The linked paper doesn't say how many different effects they looked at to come up with their list of 25 most strongly correlated risk effects. But since they used a confidence interval of 95%, just by random chance alone you would expect 1 in every 20 effects looked at to differ "significantly" between the study and control groups. If they looked for differences in ~500 possible effects, then having 25 of them show up as differences with a 95% c.i. is exactly what you'd expect by pure random chance alone. This is supported by 13 of the 25 effects being negative correlations (the vaccinated group was less likely to suffer those effects than the control group). Which is almost exactly the 50% split you would expect from random variation.
When they do a broad study like this, it isn't to determine what effects vaccination has. It's to determine what effects are candidates for further study. Other researchers read this paper, see that myocarditis had a strong positive correlation with vaccination. And do their own study to try to figure out if that was due to random chance, or if there was a real causal relationship there.
Yes obviously ... (Score:5, Funny)
Taking equine formulated Ivermectin will help us reach herd immunity.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, by having the non-vaccinated eliminate themselves by incorrectly dosing on questionable treatments, we do reach herd immunity a little more quickly.
Re: (Score:3)
We've already reached herd stupidity.
Why the hell not ? (Score:2)
Might be the first global use-case for blockchain.
There's a good video on the subject (Score:5, Informative)
TL;DW;, studies in petri dishes showed it slowed down the replication of some viruses. But the studies aren't all that useful because the dosages needed to make it work would make you at least as sick as COVID. They concluded that it's possible a different formulation might be useful, but that a lot more studies would be needed and that the current drug isn't of any use against viruses.
As for why it's taking off in certain circles of the press, there's a concerted effort to keep this pandemic going for at least another 18 months or so. [cnn.com] Encouraging people to think they can skip their vaccine helps with that.
Re: (Score:3)
TL;DW;, studies in petri dishes showed it slowed down the replication of some viruses. But the studies aren't all that useful because the dosages needed to make it work would make you at least as sick as COVID.
In petri dishes, a blowtorch has been shown to slow down the replication of some viruses, but the side-effects for in in-vivo ...
Ivermectin Efficacy (Score:4, Funny)
If Ivermectin is for treating animals like horses and cows, then does that mean it will be effective against the Moo variant [axios.com] of Covid-19?
Mexico City (Score:3, Informative)
Ivermectin is a bit more promising that what most think.
First, NIH stance is no data for or against. This was upgraded from do not use in Feb.
There's strong support from preclinical and observational data (ICON, Mexico City hospitalizations study). Outpatient RCTs 7/7 trend for ivermectin. (Chaccour, Raad, Lopez-Medina, Vallejos, Schwartz, Ravkiriti, Reis).
Ingesting animal formulations is stupid. But off label use if doc and patient agree seems all ok, especially knowing ivm has better safety profile than tylenol.
Re:Mexico City (Score:4, Informative)
India and Slovakia who have adopted Ivermectin and have seen an almost elimination of COVID cases.
50,000 cases a day in India is "almost elimination"? Slovakia is running at a rate similar to its neighbors, which you are also calling an "almost elimination".
Perhaps using the wrong tense of big words isn't sufficient to cover the bullshit you're trying to spread.
Astonishingly (Score:5, Insightful)
This "wonder drug," as many called it, was prescribed to treat illnesses, which include head lice, scabies, river blindness (onchocerciasis), strongyloidiasis, trichuriasis, ascariasis, and lymphatic filariasis.
None of those are viruses or caused by viruses but, rather, worms/parasites.
Re: (Score:3)
This "wonder drug," as many called it, was prescribed to treat illnesses, which include head lice, scabies, river blindness (onchocerciasis), strongyloidiasis, trichuriasis, ascariasis, and lymphatic filariasis.
None of those are viruses or caused by viruses but, rather, worms/parasites.
It (Invermectin) has also been shown, albeit almost exclusively in vitro, to have antiviral properties.
This review [nih.gov] covers ~50 years of studies on it, and details several plausible mechanisms by which it exhibits those antiviral properties.
There are several important caveats:
-The in-vivo (animal) studies generally show little to no effect;
-Any (in vivo) effect generally only occurs if Invermectin is used within the first few (well, specifically 14) hours after infection;
-The dosages u
Re: (Score:3)
-The dosages used do not generally match those that would be given medically.
I sincerely hope so, because the in vitro study required a dose that would be larger than even that commonly given to horses. May as well just drink bleach.
South America (Score:5, Interesting)
Ivermectin has been pushed hard in South America for over a year now. It has been heavily prescribed, and some low scale studies have been done. Some with results that leaned towards the promising side. This is ever since an experiment in Australia showed that very high doses (dangerously high doses) killed COVID (and probably everything else as well).
Major agencies around the world and scientists have not endorsed it, and other studies have come out saying it has no effect. The Egypt study as well has brought a cloud over many results because it was retracted due to negligent or purposeful fraud in the study.
The conclusion is that there's no evidence of it working.
But I find it funny that the Ivermectin craze has moved up north and now the US has taken it up as the latest miracle cure.
Doctors in South America still prescribe it. Along with other useless medication like Remdesivir. I've seen families sell off all they have to get some expensive Remdesivir from the family of some poor deceased person, only to then watch their own family member die.
It's sad. Vaccines are free.
But the argument says that if you take the vaccine you're enriching the corrupt pharma giants.
Nevermind that by buying these unproven medications you certainly are spending a LOT more money and getting worse results..
But then again, my crazy neighbors theories hold more value than some lame dude with a Medical Degree. What do those guys know right?
Re:South America (Score:5, Informative)
ps. In defense of South America: the search for alternatives also has to do with the scarcity of the vaccine which still today has not been able to reach more than 30% of the population.
So naturally people need to think of what to do NOW that their family is dying. Hopefully more vaccines will become available soon before the Delta starts spreading.
Re:South America (Score:5, Informative)
So fucking what? A lot of people get Covid and don't take Ivermectin and then don't die. Your anecdotal response is crap.
what? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Ivermectin has a mixture of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen"
Seriously? Jesus fucking christ journalists are goddamn stupid
Re: (Score:3)
Wait a minute... *I'm* a mixture of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Ivermectin is people!
People are idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
So what do some people do? They believe the memes about 5G towers; and microchips; and Bill Gates / George Soros; and Big Pharma; and experimental DNA treatments; and miniscule vaccination risks etc. Every dumb meme bounces around amplified and embellished by trolls and idiots. And because the target of all this is paranoid imbeciles they soak it all in and convince themselves that somehow the entire medical establishment is wrong, that the meme is right and they should deny themselves the vaccine and maybe even ingest bleach, or horse wormer or some shit.
And then a bunch of them die and it serves them right. But what is inexcusable is the way social media has facilitated all this. Platforms like Facebook & Twitter have utterly failed to enforce their own policies but they didn't and probably hundreds of thousands of people around are dead as a result. Shame on them. Shame on anyone who works there.
Fluvoxamine is likely a better alternative (Score:3)
Re: It works (Score:2)
Joking aside, I see no reason not to pull on every thread. We are in a pandemic and every possible tool should be investigated. Properly, with careful methods, but investigated all the same.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems to be getting good reviews at Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Ivermec... [amazon.com]
But personally I went with the more conventional vaccine. To each his own.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:It works (Score:4, Informative)
That meta-analysis relies on a now withdrawn and fraudulent study. It's meaningless. Without the data from that study, the meta-analysis shows no benefit to ivermectin.
Re:It works (Score:4, Informative)
That "medical journal post" is a meta-analysis, and it includes the retracted study referenced in TFA. Kind of makes the whole thing suspect. You should try actually reading what you link to instead of just posting whatever snippet confirms what you already believed.
Re:It works (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that ivermectin isn't possibly useful. It's that deciding to treat yourself based on some "low quality evidence" that warrants further study isn't a good idea, deciding to treat yourself with livestock drugs made with livestock quality control in livestock doses is a bad idea, and just taking a handful of those livestock pills for a few days and calling it done is monumentally stupid.
Doing all of that instead of getting an incredibly effective, *free* vaccine is... what comes after "monumentally stupid?"
Re: (Score:3)
It's an anti parasite drug you dipshit.
Re: (Score:3)
Never forget to add some chlorine to the gene pool.