Hacker News Reader

Comment by _2d30 | Hacker News Reader

Ivermectin doesn’t really have significant side effects at appropriate doses. It’s quite safe. Don’t be fooled by overblown “horse dewormer stories”.

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.

View on HN

I agree that it is safe at appropriate doses. The issue is that people are self medicating and incorrectly calculating doses, since the product was intended for livestock.

The nationwide report that everybody talked about, pertaining to poison control centers receiving endless calls about this was completely fake. It turned out that rather than 70% of calls it was actually 2% of calls and over half of them were simply people asking questions about dosage.

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.

I never said a word about any of that. I said that people are self medicating and incorrectly calculating an appropriate dosage, and I am not wrong. [1]

1. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...

What evidence did you have that people were doing this, which presumably affected your opinion on this topic?

1. Facebook groups where people have admitted to taking more than they should have, causing incontinence. Not public groups, but one local to my area.

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.

As one more piece of evidence - two of my family members are internal medicine physicians who are running covid units -- just a shocking number of people are showing up to hospitals with severe Covid after having self-medicated with IVM.

> If the TV tells you something, you do not have to believe it.

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.

I learned about Ivermectin from MedCram circa May 2020.

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 consider Joe Rogan a right wing host, and I had heard he was telling people about ivermectin. I didn't know that originally people heard it from Eric Weinstein on his show, although I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes. Aren't all right wing / conservative hosts or media pretty much saying the same things in terms of COVID, anyway?

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.

Still, I don't think anybody talking about using ivermectin for treating COVID-19 ever recommended what is widely tested appropriate doses.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com