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Comment by ddalex | Hacker News Reader

Also see https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Cabal/

I also filter, using RES, all posters and commenters with over 100k karma, and it's like taking a trip back in time when the internet wasn't tuned to inane content and advertisers

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Nice to see the usual suspects on The Cabal. People who believe ivermectin is some kind of miracle covid drug (even the manufacturers say its ineffective) and those who deny COVID even exists. Quality people.

https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02081-w

Ehrm we already know niche communities attract lunatics - or, better said, make lunatics more visible; the noise to signal ratio of the content is way worse because idiots are louder. But if you filter through the noise you can get some interesting insights.

> Quality people.

A bit trigger happy with the ad hominem there considering you probably think of yourself as the rational side.

> ivermectin

From the first link:

> The use of ivermectin, among others repurposed drugs for prophylaxis or treatment for COVID-19, should be done based on trustable evidence, without conflicts of interest, with proven safety and efficacy in patient-consented, ethically approved, randomised clinical trials.

But there are over 30 RCTs with positive results.

Second link is about one particular study. Again there are over 30 RCTs.

Maybe you should not go into details¹. Because if you presented that evidence to specialists disagreeing with you, they would have their say. And this thread is unlikely to lure them specifically. Here, you are just making statements that cannot be tackled directly. But for the "there exist people who do not clearly appear as non-«quality people» and nonetheless disagree on some points".

(Just to give an example: I have heard about a plausible argument about that «manufacturers say it[']s ineffective», and I do not think the matter should not be discussed in this context, but arguments exist. Good or bad: that is for the analysis table, not the "I just had two minutes available". If matters were clear-cut, the whole problem would not exist.)

¹Edit: for clarity: with «go[ing] into details» I meant that I invite the poster against introducing statements like «people who believe [whatever is controversial]», and especially because this thread is not here have us stuck in those controversies, and because they would not be solved with two sentences, surely, since there are apparent non-lunatics defending those positions.

It's actually pretty simple to read the evidence and come to the conclusion its not suitable to be used in the treatment of COVID. Unfortunately the issue is plagued by misinformation and those who profit from peddling it.

Which evidence do you find simple - those two links you posted? (Non rhetorical question - in case of doubt.)

People who will read that evidence without full contextual intellectual preparation will not be able to be certain of their evaluation; they are not competent to review it ("review" as in the expression "peer review").

On the other hand, yesterday I started exploring the material of a medical doctor who publishes interesting conferences - found as I was looking for other material, and to my surprise, from what he practices on himself I am sure he would disagree with your previous post. Who to trust?

On the other hand, if I see censorship, few exceptions aside it will be very clear that the censorship will help approaching truth. And for this, one name I will give: Lex Fridman, who denounced the matter a few weeks ago, while interviewing for this podcast one of the notable censored voices.

Sorry, critical mistyping as I looked for the best formulation:

«it will be very clear that the censorship will [/not/] help approaching truth».

NIH says ivermectin is effective.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248252/

That appears to be a meta review done by Newcastle Uni (amongsth others), rather than any endorsement of Ivermectin by the NIH? PubMed is a resource for scientific publications hosted by the NIH, and is a repository of work. It is not the publishing arm of the NIH. Unless I am missing something?!

Regarding Ivermectin: Tell that to India, whose states that adopted it into their treatment regimen had a >95% reduction in death and infection in less than five weeks in a population <5% vaccinated, while the states that didn't continued to sky rocket.

https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-iv...

Thanks for the tip. I gave up on Reddit because its just full of astroturf these days. There's no disagreement allowed on most topics. There's a ridiculous amount of threads where 80 percent of the comments are deleted.

Yes! It's entirely too easy to karma farm by either posting me-too or deeply controversial comments because if people disagree you might get downvoted slightly past zero for a given comment, but if you hit a winner you'll get hundreds or even thousands of upvotes. Detecting and blocking every one of those high noise low signal people would really help. At least until they adapt.

How do you filter out by karma?

Comment or post karma? I have 200k comment karma just because I have a 9 year old account and post semi-frequently.

That filter idea sounds very good. Gonna try. Thank you.

edit: come to think of it. Can RES hide points?

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