Calling them gene therapies too.. wow.
I hope the more science-literate proponents of IVM can appreciate how much it harms their case for the vast majority of IVM advocates to be this loud and wrong..
I hope the more science-literate proponents of IVM can appreciate how much it harms their case for the vast majority of IVM advocates to be this loud and wrong..
If they valued and were capable of reasoning about the science, they would not be “proponents” — they'd recognize the current scientific understanding (no known mechanism or benefits, significant side-effects) and wait for a solid study before recommending anything.
The people you do see advocating it are almost always doing so for political or financial purposes and are thus unlikely to say anything critical since that'd be bad for business.
I don’t say this to advocate Ivermectin, the only RCT I know of/trust found absolutely no effect. I say this to gently point out the mismatch between your claims and the premise in the first sentence.
The other nationwide report about the hospitals in Oklahoma being crowded with ivermectin victims to the point where they could not even get gunshot victims in to see a doctor... well, at least one of the hospital systems responded with an open letter stating that this was completely fake and that they had not seen even a single patient. I find it hard to believe that one hospital system would not see a single patient while all the other hospitals in the state would be completely flooded with them.
If the TV tells you something, you do not have to believe it.
Use your brain.
1. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...
2. The FDA themselves
I have to ask, are you actually advocating for self-medicating with products from Tractor Supply? I've not once said anything about my opinion of Ivermectin, only that of self medication.
Where do you think most of the people taking ivermectin heard about it? They probably have no idea how ivermectin would actually work, but heard it from some conservative talk show host that they trust more than scientists backing the actual COVID vaccine. I'm astonished by how totally backwards all of this is.
Everybody I know personally who did not learn about it from me learned about it from Eric Weinstein on the Joe Rogan podcast.
A good friend of mine watches Fox News no less than three hours a day and took both Pfizer doses months ago.
I suspect you might be projecting, and perhaps you learned about Ivermectin from a neoliberal TV show. Most of the people who believe in the safety and efficacy of Ivermectin believe so precisely because they are not consuming television propaganda, and so they are still able to form their own opinions from real information.
I do think people also form their opinions of the COVID vaccine on real information. I personally consulted someone I know who has a PhD in Molecular Biology to gather more information on the mRNA vaccines.
It pays nothing to pretend that you are smarter than other people if you're not willing to follow your own advice.
* It's dismissing the studies which show effects due to errors, which leaves the studies not showing beneficial effects. Science is built on evidence and thus far it hasn't been shown that Ivermectin has a benefit for COVID.
* Similarly, it's untrue to the point of being a flagrant lie to claim that the vaccines are untested when they went through full clinical trials and the high positive effects and safety rates shown in those trials have been backed up by data from many millions of people
* Similarly, it's flat out wrong to claim that COVID is similar to the common cold — even if you compare it to influenza, which is far more serious, that's not true — we've seen more children die in the last couple months than we typically see in an entire flu season.
* Vaccination does help reduce the spread, and that's even shown in the Israeli data — it's not 100% but if you look at the data it's very clear that vaccinated people at a significantly lower rate. Israeli comparisons are tricky because they have substantially different vaccination rates across age categories and a vaccinated 80 year old is still more at risk than someone younger, especially when those younger people are not taking precautions, which brings me to:
* Israel is nowhere near having the highest vaccine rate — that's a tie between Portugal, Malta, and the U.A.E. currently — and at a paltry 62% they're not even in the top 25. That's only slightly better than the United States at 55%.
* The Iraeli data does not show that vaccination increases spread: this is a lie spread by people who are comparing unlike things in the knowledge that many people will reshare those claims without checking them.
The the standard of "we should not perform treatments with known side effects if there is no solid study proving the mechanism and benefits of that intervention" is unreasonably strict.
Proning (laying the patient on their stomach appears to improve oxygenation and improve outcomes) was suspected to be helpful by May of 2020. However, even by December of 2020 there were not any large randomized controlled trials proving this. Proning has risks (like "unplanned extubation" i.e. the breathing tube coming out when it shouldn't). Should we have foregone that treatment because there was no proof of either efficacy or mechanism, and there were significant risks associated with the treatment?
I personally don't think ivermectin is terribly likely to be effective, but the more general statement of "nobody who is capable of reasoning about science would be a proponent of an unproven treatment that has risks" is wrong.
Remdesivir and other antivirals were similarly reasonable to try since they had a plausible method of being effective, as did the steroid treatments which have been so useful for controlling inflammation.
Now, nobody is saying that we can't _try_ new things but note also that I was referring to “proponents” — not just people who are willing to try something but who are actively advocating it as an effective treatment. The vast, vast majority of those people are not running experiments or even medical professionals who might possibly have some relevant prior experience suggesting it was worth trying.
I'm not opposed to research but I think there's a substantial ethical line to cross when you switch from being open to the possibility of something working to running around telling everyone that it works so well they should avoid a safe, cheap, and highly effective vaccine.
I hope more common sense literate proponents of science can appreciate how much it harms their case for a vast majority of science advocates to be loud and wrong.
Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. Read your sentence back to yourself.
> But it is "scientifically literate" to call such a therapy a "vaccine"?
Yes. Of course it is. Regardless of what the copy on some obscure CDC website says, mRNA vaccines have been in development for decades.
Read that, out loud...
All you need to do is set your search parameters to filter out items from the past 24 months.
https://www.nature.com/gt/journal-information
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/gene-based-therape...
There are thousands more.
SMH... short memory span is the worst part of the human condition.
For anyone else curious:
Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.” [1]
It seems obvious to me that this was changed because the layperson’s interpretation of the old wording would make it seem like 100% immunity was the result of vaccination. That’s never been the case. The new wording is just clearer in regular English.
> You're going to tell me that it's "science illiterate" to consider mRNA therapy as gene therapy, because the genes are not actually changed, but instead only expressed to create the therapeutic effect.
It’s not only science illiterate, it’s misleading to a layperson too. It sounds as if it’s changing the patient’s DNA.
> I hope more common sense literate proponents of science can appreciate how much it harms their case for a vast majority of science advocates to be loud and wrong
I do t understand how you think your interpretations lie closer to “common sense”. They seem to me to be more like;y to mislead.
[1]https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25411126...
https://www.nature.com/gt/journal-information
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/gene-based-therape...
A certain degree of ignorance can be forgiven in this day and age, because everything is being constantly re-defined by the television, and most folks get their information from the television.
So don't attack people for not knowing things, but just be aware how many low information people are unintentionally misleading others. You can even see in the parent comment, the primary source of information for most of these people is some form of media company (Miami Herald, in this case). This is, unfortunately, the new normal.
Logging in with different accounts and downvoting this won't change the facts.
A google search for “gene therapy” brings up many links to respectable organizations and publications, most of which state that ‘gene therapy’ involves altering the patient’s DNA. No vaccines do this. To call them ‘gene therapy’ to the public (or to ‘low information people’, if you insist) is misleading at best and scaremongering at worst.
As for the link to a Miami Herald article about the CDC’s wording change, how do you suggest I search for the likely source of the parent comment’s information?
It said (with no sourcing) “The United States CDC literally changed the definition of "vaccine" this year, so that these products could still be identified as vaccines” and I wanted to get a sense for the truth of that - and if true, if the legitimacy of the change. What I found did not concern me.
If this is what you believe, do you have a source for this?