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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

This week, the FDA added their voice to social media memes making fun of Ivermectin.

This week, there was a short video briefing for Malaysian doctors about the Indian success story in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), population ~200M. In India, each state can set their own health policy. Even though the central government was against Ivermectin, UP continued to use it. On June 29, the UP government released an official kit for children, containing: Paracetamol, multivitamins and Ivermectin. The briefing claims that Doxycycline, Ivermectin and Zinc were instrumental in treatment, prevention and reducing transmission of Covid.

This video was removed from YT within 24 hrs, interpret that as you will, but this is a field report from a medical professional describing a successful, real-world health outcome in a region with more humans than many countries, https://www.bitchute.com/video/ysnsHWrcqimp/

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Meanwhile a study in the neighboring state of Bihar didn't show much benefit, if any.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34265236/

It was removed from YT because it's nothing but pure propaganda and misinformation.

It still confuses me as to what are they trying to push with this agenda.

Thanks for commenting. Since it's such a short video, would you mind quoting one sentence from the video which is incorrect, e.g. did the doctor from India describe a particular event which did not take place?

In the USA, the New York Supreme Court ruled that an elderly patient was allowed to take Ivermectin, against the wishes of the hospital where she was being treated. After winning her court case, Ivermectin was administered and she made a rapid recovery, https://www.mountainhomemag.com/2021/05/01/356270/the-drug-t....

Let's assume that her case is an outlier, can we agree that it is a remarkably positive, happy, outlier? Are such cases worthy of scientific study, to understand the therapeutic mechanisms involved, if only to inform the design of new therapeutics? Merck, holder of the Ivermectin patent that expired in 1996, is now developing a new, patented drug for early treatment of Covid.

The plural anecdote is not data. At the end of the day it comes down to statistics and reproducibility. A lot of things can happen for a lot a reasons. It’s why things like homeopathy still exist.

The site posted at the top of this thread has 800 scientific studies of various therapeutics, https://c19early.com/faq.html

> Whether it be treatments or interventions, the plethora of seemingly similar quality research supporting contradictory positions, and the use of digital echo chambers, facilitates widespread confirmation bias - evidence supporting any initial position can be easily found. Self-serving bias and cognitive dissonance further make it challenging to alter positions, especially for those taking very public and strong positions with serious implications. We felt that attempts to organize and make the research and data easier to navigate, highlighting areas of applicability, and analyzing limitations, could potentially be beneficial.

> What is the search strategy for papers? All significant original contributions related to the use of the treatments we cover, including searches of the typical sources augmented by contributions from the community. Covering all research is important because it is easy to choose a search strategy that results in a subset of papers reporting a desired conclusion. This is especially so if one takes the conclusions reported in papers at face value without examining the actual data, methods, or regions of applicability

That website is fake:

- It is impossible to contact the owners of the website

- The website has gotten direct critique of spreading misinformation in two papers

- They draw their own conclusions from the paper.

- A lot of the papers in its meta-analysis doesn’t have control groups or randomized trials. Some studies only compare ivermectin+X vs ivermectin+Y

- The total sample size of all studies are only 2000 people.

But let's ignore all these red flags and focus on this. They claim that each of the following individual medicines works, Fluvoxamine, Proxalutamide, Iota-carrageenan, Molnupiravir, Quercetin, Povidone-Iodine, Curcumin, Casirivimab, Sotrovimab, Bamlanivimab, Nitazoxanide, Budesonide, Zinc, Bromhexine, Colchicine, Vitamin D, Aspirin, Favipiravir, Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir, and Vitamin C. I find it unlikely that ALL those claims are true which in turn makes me question their scientific approach.

> A lot of the papers in its meta-analysis doesn’t have control groups or randomized trials. Some studies only compare ivermectin+X vs ivermectin+Y

If you have the time to share an illustrative example paper, that would be helpful.

> I find it unlikely that ALL those claims are true which in turn makes me question their scientific approach.

Response posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=28335175

>Ivermectin was administered and she made a rapid recovery,

Here's a counter anecdote, Phil Valentine, a popular right wing talk radio host took Ivermectin, still got hospitalized and died.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/phil-valentine-dies-covid-conse...

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