Brazil's tragic ivermectin frenzy is a warning to the US, experts say
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Since it's all anecdotal, why didn't they contrast the experience from Brazil with ivermectin in Goa (India)?
Ivermectin does not cause liver failure. There is no evidence of this.
The Tweet about the one patient does not say the patient is getting a liver transplant, and they are not sure why there was liver issues.
It can cause liver injury in a really small amount of cases, which should self correct. (I assume people do not think temporary liver injury <=> liver failure)
It's a very safe drug. That's why is so important. But media lies and vilification of a 3rd world drug I guess are more important.
> Among the “kit” drugs were the malaria pill hydroxychloroquine and the antiparasitic tablet ivermectin.
These kits had many drugs in them, fuck society is lame. Ivermectin is on Twitter so that's all we headline. It would be interesting to actually know more about these kits. But curiosity is not a HN thing.
That said, the numbers of death and continued infections don't lie. Brazil was ivermectin happy, but it didn't stop the infections and subsequent deaths.
What is stopping infections and deaths? The vaccine. That's pretty clear.
So why aren't you 100% behind the vaccine? Are you too wrapped up with your stance with Ivermectin that you can no longer change your view?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
Israel is about the highest examined and it is not high enough to know how a control group of vaccinated verse unvaccinated individuals would fare in a place where any other individual was vaccinated or bellow 12.
95% was in a retail lock down environment. In the current environment I am having hundreds of interactions a week with the unvaccinated and if I were unvaccinated would have far fewer, obviously a test run in this environment should achieve less than 95% and may appear that vaccination causes COVID because the economy is running on acceptable risks.
No, the virus spreads as a function of what actions you take and society slows based on what actions you take. If no one is dieing or going to hospital you choose economy and cases go up but if you are highly vaccinated then the consequences are not enough to not open up further and you run with higher numbers of known cases.
A correlation study is irrelevant to how effective vaccination is, just as any other intervention might appear ineffective if it allows systems to remove stricter restrictions with higher societal impact or makes people feel safe enough to participate in additional activities.
Some unvaccinated people in my town feel safe enough to do things because more people are safe and are doing them than in a town with no vaccination and more conservative average behavior, that doesn't mean the vaccine didn't work.
Looking at your link, it looks like the comparisons they make are purely based on COVID case counts and vaccination percentages. There are other factors that need to be considered: counties with higher vaccination rates in the USA are also likely to have a higher rate of testing, due to the politics of COVID (people who are more afraid of COVID are both more likely to be vaccinated and more likely to get a test when sick). At the country scale, it seems like something similar may be going on: they compare Portugal and Israel with the poorer countries of South Africa and Vietnam and state their case rates are similar. But different countries are using different policies which may affect the infection rate there. For instance, Vietnam has used lockdowns and border closures in recent months to slow the spread of the virus,[1] while Portugal with its high vaccination rates has recently removed almost all COVID restrictions.[2]
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/25/covid-protection-for-the-ful...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Vietnam#M...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/portugal-lift-most-rema...
Using a country that had not given out boosters, like the USA or UK until recently, you’d get a better idea of the efficacy of the vaccine against Delta infections.
Moreover even in Israel the daily cases among double vaccinated are less than those among the unvaccinated. Look at the chart here https://www.ft.com/content/a1b2fd70-71b5-4e91-be0b-553b0e1e2... The line for “Two dose” cases per 100k among over 60 year olds is below unvaccinated since august 15 and continually remains less.
90%? No, that’s too high, but for instance data from public health England is saying the vaccines have around 15-45% efficacy (or 40-80% if doses 8+ weeks apart) against covid-19 infection after 25+ weeks, not 0%. https://mobile.twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1437890711139995...
Vaccinated people still get and spread infections - They simply dont get much symptoms from it.
This kind of comment is exactly why people don't understand what the "vaccines" actually do.
But you don't even have to believe that when it comes to the relevance of the pandemic. Looking at the number of people who are vaccinated (or bellow vaccination age) and go to hospital or die in my country it would be a severe but acceptable flu season. Does every severe flu season need a pandemic response?
(1- Within the round of first infections. You can actually believe that it is insufficient on contagion but ends viable mutation and will end the pandemic by using delta as a booster.)
Even if you believe it is possible to vaccinate the entire human population world wide and that vaccinations prevent infections, covid spreads through animal reservoirs. Are you suggesting we can vaccinate all animals?
If I'm willing to take any sort of vaccine for it when it becomes viable again in humans, then I'm safer once it is purely in animals than I was before it was present in humans.
https://www.covid19.admin.ch/en/vaccination/breakthrough
Switzerland runs with a much higher infection rate and faster economy than Germany because it has many more beds per million. These beds are being occupied by more 20 somethings without than 80 somethings with vaccination.
I'm annoyed by the slowness of things in Switzerland, I'm impacted by the even more absurd slowness of things in Germany. And all of this is from people who voted down pesticide regulations and water regulations so they don't care what ends up in my body.
The west behaving this way on public health while viewing libertarian ideals as justified whenever they are economically good and accidentally hurt people is the kind of insult to morals that I think correlates to western decline.
Hospitalizations for 0-9: 199
Hospitalizations for 10-19: 85
Hospitalizations for 80+: 2142
60-69: 47
70-79: 73
80+: 107
Looking at the older working age groups we have more than 50% vaccinated in most and something like 100X less chance the vaccinated go to hospital. So if you hate restrictions then get vaccinated so we don't have to come up with creative ways to protect a hospital bed from you.
*Those numbers are not since the pandemic began but since the vaccination began. The oldest age group and people with health issues were vaccinated first so comparisons should be biased against the vaccinated, but it is too effective to see that bias.
Anyway as you insist on calling people stupid and just want to force your opinion on others I’m through discussing you.
> hospitals are filling up with the vulnerable population
From the Swiss numbers is to really assume the worst in people.
What is that based on? The Marseille IV mutation of COVID19 came from an animal reservoir and had no issue to cross species and it was one of the deadliest variants.
With a better immune response, infected people are also less contagious. So technically, yes, vaccines stop the infections.
Complete bullshit. It has been demonstrated in several publications that the viral load among vaccinated people is just as high as unvaccinated people, and viral load in key areas like the nose is what spreads infections.
Great, now multiply the usage expectations by 1000 and include that people in that pool will have each possible additional liver related factor. (Now "should" being 99% isn't even good enough.)
When we analyze how safe a vaccine is, a few dozen people who might have very specific health problems having potentially fatal reactions is a problem if we can't preidentify that group. When we allow a contagion to spread to endemic and therefore eventually encompass the entire population a treatment needs a closely proportional safety level to a vaccine and will eventually need to be far safer than any long acting vaccines.
If 10% of the population are going to take any treatment much more active than placebo, it has to be safer than most OTC medications for it not to kill a hundred times more people than giving everyone the least safe vaccine.
What's the angle, though. Cui bono?
Edit: Thanks for the downvote. If you come up with conspiracy theories, you have to explain this, not me. It's step 1 of a conspiracy:
Who benefits? How?
I don't buy it.
I didn't know about this tweet. Looking for it, I found an article that interviewed him [1].
The twitter doctor is the president of a respiratory disease association in Sao Paulo. He claims the young lady had a "drug-induced hepatitis" after taking 18mg of IVM daily for a week. "She is very close to need a transplant".
The doctor remarks the drug safety, "Ivermectin is a safe drug, it has been used over many years. The toxicity cases are rare.". Then disapproves the off-label prescription of IVM as treatment for covid given the lack of scientific evidence it works -- "so far".
He, then, explains the regular treatment schedule with IVM: one pill a day, once. Exceptionally, can be taken up to 3 days. And, again, criticizes people for taking it often.
He ends saying: "In summary: there is no early state treatment for covid that is scientifically proven to work so far. In mild cases, most people progress well (...) without taking any drugs".
The article also reproduces a statement from the drug manufacturer Merk, former patent holder of IVM. The statements says that pre-clinical and clinical studies showed no evidence the drug might work for covid.
Afterwards they show some figures from a survey done by the Brazilian Medical Association. From the interviewed doctors, 65,3% believes CQ is ineffective to treat covid, and 58,6% believes IVM is ineffective.
Thenm they report some common side effects of HCQ + IVM: increased QT interval, diarrhea, headaches, compromise of liver functions, etc.
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There are documented cases of deaths from people taking the covid-kit. See [2].
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This seems to have become a recurrent theme in HN, and, for once, Brazil is ahead of the curve. I might aggregate information from the press and medical associations and make a proper answer next time this show up.
If the covid treatment trend in America follows the same path it had in Brazil, get ready for: ozone therapy (in the anus), and HQC inhalation.
[1] https://ictq.com.br/farmacia-clinica/2580-pneumologista-aler... [2] https://super.abril.com.br/saude/pacientes-vao-para-fila-de-...
The ivermectin was taken on high daily doses. Many people would take it even without symptoms and a diagnosis. If you take any drug that much, be prepared for liver issues. That liver transplant thing is increasingly happening with a large number of people, not one or two.
The Brazilian Senate is currently investigating how these "kit" drugs were delivered. In some cases, they gave it to patients without family consent, and forged their death certificates, so "liver failure" or "Covid-19" would not appear in the statistics. It is also currently investigated who would benefit from this (large Ivermectin producers multiplicated their production after these incentives, and the president is known for elaborating corruption schemas around Covid-related agendas).
However this article about Ivermectin is not well reasoned:
> As infection rates soared, some people were taking excessively high doses of the medicine every day, hoping to stave off COVID-19, but in a few rare cases that move prompted liver failure.
>Other patients were unknowingly given the "kit" drugs by doctors in private hospitals instead of more standard treatments — and some of them died.
These quotes from the article don’t support … anything. People had Covid, they took a treatment, but some died? Really? Could they at least pretend to use some statistics or even an antidotal control group?
Btw., I live in Brazil, and I went with one of my daughters to see a GP a few days ago because she had symptoms of respiratory illness and was worried it might be Covid (she had had recent contact with peers who afterward tested positive). The physician told her to get a test, and if it were positive (it wasn't) she should take Vitamin C, N-acytilcholine, Ivermectin, and Hydroxychloroquine. I'm not saying that I think this makes sense, just reporting what a Brazilian physician said 5 days ago.
I also want to add that I'm fairly convinced that Ivermectin is probably useless for Covid, but I raise livestock and am a big fan of Ivermectin as a medication of first resort for my animals, and in some cases for ourselves as well... long before Covid I've taken Ivermectin for diverse parasitic infections with good results and no adverse effects.
Does ivermectin not function extremely well as a protease inhibitor? It probably doesn’t work anything for Covid, but it scientifically can prevent some viral binding despite that not being it’s primary function.
So making an educated guess wrong is one thing, having people abuse pills is another, and killing people unintentionally through criminal actions is another still.
Be rationale and reasonable. Because going overboard on accusations isn’t helping anyone nor adding to any scientific discussion.
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-100956/v4
Much of the buzz was generated by the above preprint study, now retracted for some serious concerns that large portions were plagiarized and cherry-picked, and in some instances fabricated completely.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/9365...
One of the problems with ivermectin is that it is widely available and cheap. This is great if you are trying to treat river blindness or prevent your horse from contracting worms, but terrible when a deeply flawed (yet widely cited) purports it to be a miracle cure.
Upon what dosage do you base that on? And particularly is it safe for covid patients, or does it increase mortality?
Many doctors are in the US pushing Ivermectin and HCQ as "safe and effective" even though the #1 call to many poison control centers in the US concern Ivermectin poisoning.
> Because going overboard on accusations isn’t helping anyone nor adding to any scientific discussion.
Giving false hope (or false cures) is by far worse -- and that appears to be the case as to what happened in Brazil. Politicians were pushing Ivermectin as a way to reopen the economy. It's snake oil at it's worst form, and reduces trust between patients and doctors.
The recommended human dosage. The one that hasn’t been a problem, ever, not in the millions and millions of people on it. Unlike the extremely common liver damage people get from Tylenol every year.
> or does it increase mortality?
I have never seen anyone claim that. Do you have a link that makes that claim? If you bring up a possibility without evidence. I guess that will make for spirited comments soon.
> Many doctors are in the US pushing Ivermectin and HCQ as "safe and effective" even though the #1 call to many poison control centers in the US concern Ivermectin poisoning.
Number one call would not mean number one poisoning. It has unbelievably high media attention, and discussion is being censored. People seem to be calling to ask because “officials” why wouldn’t they? If you have a citation that shows mass poisonings please post it. I could only find two confirmed poisonings in the USA. Whole tubes of horse paste like idiots.
> It's snake oil at it's worst form, and reduces trust between patients and doctors.
Good thing this has been the only example of that! I agree though, if there were questionable truths, policy decisions on 1/2 baked theories, changing and shifting narratives, that would be harmful for trust. That to me would be epic failures of policy work and would probably cause a backlash in a lot of areas.
>I have never seen anyone claim that.
It's part of being "safe and effective." -- which I believe is your stance here. It's also your burden of proof.
> The recommended human dosage.
Which is what exactly? I mean, if you want to be an expert, than be an expert. Nothing is stopping you.
Vaccination is perhaps the best solution in the short term, but to me it seems that preventive public health measures might be more effective over the long term.
We know that the severe cases mostly happen to people who are already medically vulnerable (overweight, diabetic, cardiovascular disease etc). Governments could have used the last two years to execute on policies to reduce these chronic diseases: better food, better air quality, better water quality, a less stressful lifestyle.
High blood pressure, high blood sugar, air pollution and obesity (not to mention smoking) are responsible for far more deaths than Covid-19 [1]. In addition, being exposed to any of those conditions is a risk factor for Covid-19. Logically, if we reduce the risk factors we can reduce both Covid-19 deaths and non-Covid-19 deaths!
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution#air-pollution-is-re...
And that’s the reason why covid is still “not airborne”, despite the fact that, semantics aside, it’s anything but. The whole issue has become over politicized and academia has let itself take center stage of public policy.
So now we have this fixation on pharmaceutical intervention, as it could have been some miracle panacea. The more time passes, the less reasonable it is sounding and the more the same academia turned public policy maker is doubling down on them.
Governments have been working on these problems for decades already. Food/obesity is only getting worse in rich countries, air quality and water quality have seen marked improvements over the last half-century from lead reduction, decommissioning coal plants, emissions regulations for cars etc.
However expecting government to dramatically reduce the number of overweight people suffering from diabetes in just 2 years without extreme authoritarian measures (e.g. concentration camp where they monitor your food intake) is pretty much just fantasy. Many different methods have been tried all over the world like education, food labeling, soda taxes, etc. and people continue to be fat when they can access and freely buy modern foods.
The nice thing about a vaccine is that it’s far easier and cheaper to use and deploy than any of these other improvements. A vaccine costs $1 to $100 per person, while transitioning the entire economy to solar, wind, and nuclear power within a few years to improve air quality would cost what, $10,000s per person? If even possible at all.