Ivermectin: False science created a Covid 'miracle' drug | Hacker News Reader

Ivermectin: False science created a Covid 'miracle' drug

bbc.com

17 pointsacdha16 comments

It's not a "Miracle Drug" it's a "Wonder Drug" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC30437 (title: Ivermectin, ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan: the human use perspective)

Some Quotes:

>(Ivermectin) has had an immeasurably beneficial impact in improving the lives and welfare of billions of people throughout the world.

>There are few drugs that can seriously lay claim to the title of ‘Wonder drug’, penicillin and aspirin being two that have perhaps had greatest beneficial impact on the health and wellbeing of Mankind. But ivermectin can also be considered alongside those worthy contenders, based on its versatility, safety and the beneficial impact that it has had, and continues to have, worldwide—especially on hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people.

Contrary to popular belief, Ivermectin is not just a "horse dewormer" but has antiviral properties:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7564151/ (general antiviral)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6277121/ (dengue)

I get an error in your first link.

Also, I hate when it's call a "horse dewormer", because it's also a good human dewormer. I try to write an angry comment in each article that calls it a "horse dewormer".

Note that many antivirals has been tried, but for now the only one with good results is molnupiravir and it's a very recent result https://www.merck.com/news/merck-and-ridgebacks-investigatio... (HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28719928 )

hmm - this is the link https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043740/

They guy who invented it, or discovered it, won a nobel prize! I don't think they will be giving a nobel prize to the guy that created the shitty vaccine...

Ivermectin was first recommended by leading US clinicians, and has been successfully used in India, Mexico City, Czechia, Slovakia etc. A journalist's opinion on this highly politicized subject is of no value.

Maybe part of the studies that they reviewed have been purposely falsified (there are suspicions about the studies on the efficacy of the vaccines as well), however, it is also known that the studies finding no benefit of Ivermectin use were using very low doses of it - way below those recommended. I consider that sabotage as well.

25 cents worth of Ivermectin sold for $100 or more - it is a $$ based scam

There is people using the confusion to make a profit, but my guess is that most of this is just a mix of honest desperation and honest lack of understanding of the scientific method.

Medical doctors are trained to cure people but only a small part of them are trained to make good research papers. So a lot of papers about Ivermectin have a control group that is just an unrelated bunch of guys. The problem is the lack of understanding of why it's necessary to have a control group, and the error in old studies about other drugs that showed why it's necessary to use RCT to get reliable results.

Other have different errors and red flags, like discussed in the article. They says it's a sign of potencial fraud, I think it's more sloppiness. In any case, they are nor reliable results.

The high prices are meant to discourage its use. That's why people mistakenly resort to using veterinary formulations - they are cheaper and available but not appropriate for humans.

Ivermectin for horses is the same ivermectin used on cats/dogs and can be eaten by a person in the same weight for weight dose as for a horse. So a dose for a 1000 pound horse is ten times the dose for a human. As indicated by research it is totally ineffective for treating Covid-19. Some people were hurt by eating a horse dose that was ~~10 time too much. Others injected themselves with a horse dose in water. I do not know how many died from these treatments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin

>As indicated by research

This reminds me of a few articles I've seen talking about the "gaslighting of science."

There's a fair amount of research indicating the opposite so it's a little more complicated to know what's "indicated by the research".

There were a few papers in favor of the drug, but they were outed because there were serious flaws - cut and pasted data from other valid papers on Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. All of these pro papers were from suspected fake professional web sites and they were not peer reviewed.

Numbers from Peru tell a different story.

https://osf.io/9egh4/

Here is the updated death count https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

After this paper, they had a second wave that looks very similar to the first one. And IIRC the second wave disappeared without Ivermectin. So the question is: Did the first wave disappeared because they used Ivermectin or it disappeared because it's the common behavior like it happened in other countries?

The problems with this type of studies is that near the top of the wave people get desperate and try anything, and then the wave slowly disappears and it's not clear if it was the new drug or just the normal behavior. To be sure, the only solution is to make double blind randomized controlled trials.

Yes, they tell that this paper authors are either idiots or liars. The use of ivermectin did not stop on 1st December. People kept using IVM and kept dying.

I agree that people perhaps ignored the government advice and continue to use ivermectin, I forgot to add that option in my comment.

At least here in Argentina it's used unofficially by many people. For example, there was a big announcement last month by some medical doctors from one of the provinces, but it was only a press release, not even a preprint, and it was not a RCT so I'm not very optimistic about the validity of the results.

Yes, this is the main concern with ivermectin - lack of knowledge. There are many studies with really questionable quality. I am almost daily checking if UK Principle study is done. They have hired already 6700 patients into the 3 arm study, so I hope it will be soon.

Maybe it helps when taken very early. It helped with Remdesivir according to Gilead.

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