This to me is also an indictment of the meta analysis field. If only one study completely skews your analysis and you don't know it, then it's just bad statistics on those authors' part too.
Sorry but this demonstrates a severe misunderstanding of the way medical studies are performed and used in clinical practice. The only way you know a drug is beneficial is to do the study and get the data.
[1] https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(20)34898-4/f... [2] https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/9348...
For example if a patient arrives to the hospital and s/he is so ill that must be intubated immediately and can't sign the paperwork for the study or can't take oral pill [X] then s/he go to the no-ivermectin group. Does this increase the chances of death in the no-ivermectin group?
Another example, if someone takes ivermectin and recovers, but is readmitted later, then s/he is excluded [Y]. Does this increase or decrease How does this increase the chances of death in the no-ivermectin group?
About the first question: probably yes, but you may disagree.
About the second: I have no idea, perhaps it artificially decrease the death rate in the no-ivermectin group, I have no idea.
So, it's very difficult to be sure that you are comparing the outcomes correctly without a randomized controlled trial.
About [2]:
> Hill and colleagues assessed 24 randomized trials totaling 3,328 patients that involved some type of control, whether it was standard of care or another therapy. Sample sizes ranged from 24 to 400 participants. Eight of the studies had been published, nine were preprints, six were unpublished results shared for the analysis, and one was reported on a trial registry website.
I think that now there are like ~34 trials. If you look at them, most of them are small and no statistically significant. The problem is reporting and publication bias. Studies with a good/favorable outcome are published. Studies with a bad outcome are uninteresting and discarded.
For example https://c19ivermectin.com/chowdhury.html compares Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. It is listed as a success in the https://ivmmeta.com/#fig_fpr but it's not listed a failure in the https://hcqmeta.com/#fcite_rct site.
[X] From the study:
> Patients in the ivermectin group received at least one oral dose of ivermectin at 200 μg/kg in addition to usual clinical care.
[Y] From the study:
> Patients who had at least two separate admissions placing them in both groups also were excluded.
He would use anything that worked to save lives but Ivermectin just doesn't work. On one day he personally admitted 22 people to the hospital with Covid and 14 of those had been taking Ivermectin. 10 of them ended up in ICU and some of them had passed away a few days later when the interview was held.
Part of the problem seems to be that it masks a lot of the early symptoms of covid so the patients don't get prescribed things like corticosteroids that do help until much later than normal.
14 admitted out of population size of how many IVM users please? (Consider those who get the shots also get C19, though at a much lower rate vs not having C19 before nor shots; I'd like to compare the 2 rates.)
Is 'masking' ~= slowing down disease & symptoms?
BTW, the MD who testified before US Congress to research about IVM more (Dr Pierre Kory) also testified a few months prior to use corticosteroids for C19. They reccomend both & many other things (like Zinc, VitD) as part of their protocol.
Completely agree. That's the correct question. Is the number higher or lower than the people that is not taking IVM, proportionally? The problem is that to have the correct answer you must do a randomized controlled trial (double blind to avoid other differences in the treatment and bias) (large to avoid flukes).