Ivermectin Shows Us the Consequences of Politicized Science
thebulwark.com
thebulwark.com
"A few days ago, the [original ivermectin] study was retracted amid accusations of fraud and plagiarism. A masters student who had been assigned to read the paper as part of his degree noticed that the entire introduction appeared to be copied from earlier scientific papers, and further analysis revealed that the study's datasheet posted online by the authors contained obvious irregularities.
[...]
"No-one spent the 5 minutes required to download the data file that the authors had uploaded online and notice that it reported numerous deaths happening before the study had even begun. No one copy-and-pasted phrases from the introduction into Google, which is all it takes to notice just how much of it is identical to already-published papers."
https://www.sciencealert.com/ivermectin-study-controversy-is...
qft
I too am pro-vaccine, pro-ivermectin, pro-masks and pro-lockdowns.
Am also pro-socialdistancing, pro-vitamins, and risk mgmt around patients based on their age and risk factors
HCQ, Ivermectin, Fapavir, or IV antivirals like Remdesivir - support all of their use for stopping the scourge, as prescribed by doctors.
The merchants of bullshit are the same cast of characters, on the same side of the political spectrum: team B of the pentagon/soviet fame, Vietnam, civil rights, tobacco, trickle down economics, Iraq war, climate change, fishery collapse, gay rights, war on drugs, nationalized health care, covid skepticism, covid vaccine paranoia, hydroxychloroquine, injected disinfectant, and now invermectin.
At this point is pretty clear: in that epistemological partisan context there are only carnies and rubes.
Fact Check 101. US Presidents involved in Vietnam
Kennedy (D)
Johnson (D)
Nixon (R)
While they may have been sociopaths, I have no idea about that, they were definitely not a member of the same political party, or highly similar.
It’s kind of surprising for someone who doesn't go with the “Vietnam started with Johnson” line not to go back to Eisenhower.
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Seymour Weiss, etc. some of those names should be familiar for their continued subsequent enthusiastic support of obviously brain dead massively deadly clusterfucks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B
Just for good measure, let’s add watergate and iran contra too.
Didn’t Ollie North end up running the NRA for a hot minute? Classic carnie move.
Where is the GOP health care plan that Trump was promising was almost ready for years and years? Classic carnie move.
The Establishment is pushing vaccines for everyone, or, almost everyone starting from 18 and older, unless you have an allergy to vaccine ingredients.
Flyover Country, and some other countries, are pushing treatments using a cocktail of drugs, suggesting vaccines only for high-risk population.
Why can't we have some honesty about this?
I'd much rather having some open discussions about the pros and cons of each, standard of care around treatments, and which vaccines are best for which populations given the known side effects, than this continual stream of missinformation.
And if you think the entire system is broken and needs pulling down, now is quite possibly the worst time in the history of humanity to do so.
Medical science is still a science. The science says there are treatments, prevention, and
> I don't expect to be consulted about the material they make the seat-belt in my car out of. It's politicised because calling it anti-science would bruise some egos. This is not a political disagreement, this is an arbitrary anti-science conspiracy put forward by anti-vaxxers.
Discounting treatments out of hand, or worse, partisanship, is just as bad as anti-vaxx
> The only reason it's "political" is because all the people who are questioning science just happened to vote for the same president.
The scientific method is all about questions. Science is a process, not an ideological orthodoxy.
I support both distancing, vaccinations and treatment protocols that include antivirals such as HCQ, Ivermectin, and Remdesivir. Why? Because the latest science on clinical outcomes from drug cocktails show better outcomes through use of antivirals, immunomodulators, anticoagulants, vitamins, and many other drugs. It is an evolving field.
If you want to weigh in on the ongoing medical debate (this is not settled science), please at least read 10 or so relevant studies first. Far too much chatter by people who don't have not put in the requisite work.
Authors: John Havlik, Pranam Dey, and Howard P. Forman
Bios: John Havlik and Pranam Dey are medical students at Yale University. Dr. Howard P. Forman (@thehowie) is a professor of public health policy, management, economics and radiology at Yale.
They also clearly are Americans who seem to think this is an American issue. Ivermectin use for COVID-19 is worldwide and isn't aconsequence of "rejecting American Institutions" but was a desperate attempt by caregivers to keep their patients alive. They think they are seeing a pattern - that it works. But humans are easily fooled and see patterns everywhere, so we need better data. In the meantime, those doctors will continue to use ivermectin, and an upcoming Oxford study will get us some better data.
Might I also add that the evidence in support of Remdesivir is much much weaker than the evidence in support of Ivermectin, that the WHO recommends against Remdesivir, and yet in America it's widely used and nobody is bitching about it. Hypocrisy.
In fact their argument is that it's too early to know so going in front of congress and the media is irresponsible.
Hydroxychloroquine, too, showed promise in the early studies. When it became clear it wasn't efficacious, the media and politicians had already grabbed hold informing millions of americans that it was a cure when it in fact was not.
The EUA for remedesivir and EUA revocation of hydroxychloroquine are here. They seem to be self explanatory about why the FDA took the action they did.
https://www.fda.gov/media/137564/download https://www.fda.gov/media/138945/download
I think you are mischaracterizing what the research has actually shown.
Similar to HIV/AIDS, the most current clinical research on the field shows to treat it with a cocktail of drugs
E.g.
Antivirals
Immunomodulators
anti-senescent cells
Anticoagulants
ACE2 inhibitors
And a long list of other ones that singularly have some efficacy, but as a large cocktail together dramatically improve patient outcomes.
Oh no. Look at the early data on HCQ on https://c19early.com/. Results were showing around 66-70% reduction in death with a high confidence interval.
Then look at both the revocation of the EUA from the FDA on HCQ, and look at the NIH study.
FDA: https://www.fda.gov/media/138945/download NIH: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/hydroxychloroq...
One of those drugs happens to be one mentioned in TFA.
We should not remove whole classes of drugs such as antivirals from the treatment regimen just because some political figure mentioned A, B or C.
Leave the treatment plan for which antiviral with different effects (of which there are many) to the ID Doc and Internists.
Studies which use HCQ are fine -- because they're providing evidence.
What we do have evidence for are vaccinations.
Are you disputing that fact?
So, as far he goes, the most he does is sees scans of PTs, or diagnose the damage, through radiological means. Radiologists diagnose, they don't treat Covid.
Internal Medicine (less severe) & Infectious Disease (more severe) specialties treat Covid patients, supported by pulmonologists, hematologists, and the other clinical specialties as problems arise (vascular, cardiologists, etc).
> Dr. Howard P. Forman (@thehowie) is a professor of public health policy, management, economics and radiology at Yale.
I think you failed to see the "professor of public health policy" in his title. I would expect a professor of public health policy to understand how to read results of studies and then translate them to public health policies.
No, I did not. Public Health Policy and an MBA are non-clinical.
Clinical Doctors that are actively treating Covid19 patients, that are actively using what will be Standard of Care using antivirals, anti-inflammatories, anticoagulants, steroids, ACE2 inhibitors, and other drugs, using well-known medical therapies for sick patients are the doctors that I want to hear from around treatment A, or treatment B. These are the doctors with the experience and the know-ho for these severe diseases.
Again, as a radiologist, or hospital mgmt, the fine doctor is not a clinical doctor actively performing these treatments with these drugs and immunotherapies. Radiologists diagnose.
This is the domain of an Infectious Diseases specialty in severe cases, and an Internist in less severe cases, with the active support of the associated other specialties (cardio/pulmonologists/vascular/etc for all the involved body parts for which there are specific specialties acutely impacted by covid).
What does that have to do with reading and understanding studies? If you're treating patients, sure. But there are doctors that do research -- particularly those in pharma -- and in public policy.
I'm not sure why you want to continue to beat this dead dog of an argument.
This is not a dead argument. It is an example of specialists in a particular field that are the height of expertise having the best say about the pros and cons of specific medical interventions.
A younger version of myself, when I wanted to learn how to cook, realized that I needed the proper tools with which to prepare ingredients. Being uninformed and ignorant, I was bombarded with reviews of knives written by marketing folks. I did not trust their judgment because they were intent on selling me something, regardless of whether or not it was best for me with the cooking style I would adopt. Instead, I went and talked with two friends having extensive training in the culinary arts and we discussed the pros and cons of various cutlery. One of my friends had a great deal of experience with many makes and models, and could provide a wisdom about product selections. Likewise, this conversation.
The fine doctor/professor, and his 2 juniors have not actually recounted much of the medical literature on COVID 19 treatments except ones that prove their point. In doing so, they have done us a disservice by pushing a discussion in one direction, without adequately informing us of other perspectives that are more expert than they. Why are they doing this? I don't know. But, I do know of COVID treatment protocols and what they contain. There is a specific category of drugs within those protocols called antivirals. It contains a number of different antivirals, which is not really important which one (they have specific pros and cons, different mechanisms of action and some are oral, and some are IV), but the overall dismissal of what will shortly be Standard of Care for Covid19 treatment includes antivirals.
> The fine doctor/professor, and his 2 juniors have not actually recounted much of the medical literature on COVID 19 treatments except ones that prove their point.
Or maybe they have and refuse to believe everything written on paper should be taken as fact?
The lead author has a twitter account, I'm sure you can reach out to him to figure out if he is in fact qualified to make a claim. Let me know what you find out.
There are dozens of studies on the effectiveness if ivermectin.
c19ivermectin.com