CNN is no good. Journalists describing Joe Rogan taking horse dewormer when he had a prescription for Ivermectin is indefensible.
Joe Rogan is spreading misinformation and potentially VERY dangerously at that.
[0]https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...
You can give aspirin to horses as well as humans, but that doesn't make it a "horse anti-inflammatory".
The only reason to say something like that, is if you want to discredit someone.
Now, I don't know who called the shots at CNN, wether it was some leftist middle manager, or someone higher up, but someone decided they needed to make Joe Rogan appear like a crazy lunatic taking horse medicines.
Again, the FDA itself recommends against usage of Ivermectin:
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...:
"Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19"
You and Mr. Rogan (and ilk) seem to be confounding the usage of Ivermectin in researched and approved treatment regimens with the opposite and claiming discrimination when pointed out. Self-treatment carries unforeseen dangers. Whether or o not Mr. Rogan is right is irrelevant - he's not a subject matter expert.
It simply does not work both ways. You and I have limited reach in forums like these, but Rogan has listenership in the millions, which makes his unscrupulous statements very risky.
Just because the FDA doesn't recommend it, it doesn't mean it's not beneficial, it merely means they don't know yet, given clinical trials are still ongoing.
It's interesting how they didn't mention the antiviral effects. Study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/
I understand it's still early days and we don't know a lot, but this smear campaign against ivermectin and postponing molnupiravir makes me think someone higher up is more interested in selling vaccines than in finding other solutions to covid.
AstraZeneca is now the largest company in the UK.
Unfortunately the rest of what you wrote is not worth replying to, nor discussing, until you can clarify this conspiratorial-sounding statement.
That's just one example, my point is that there is plenty of money in vaccines and our taxes are paying for them with no oversight on whether people actually need them or not. Sure, if you're vulnerable or if you don't want to get the flu, get the vaccine. For everyone else, that's just a waste of money. I also consider covid mortality to be pretty low, I'd rather spend these resources to fight cardiovascular diseases or build self-driving cars to lower mortality there.
Vaccines are also dropping in efficiency pretty quickly as the virus mutates (as we've seen in Israel); if we'll need a new vaccine every 6 months, it's going go to be a beautiful business.
Also, we don't call them conspiracy theories anymore, after the "covid is not from wuhan" debacle - they're now called spoiler alert.
a) There are no clinical trials ongoing as it being a covid treatment. Some studies, sure, but no trials. Major manufacturers looked into this and studied it, and then pretty quickly scraped the idea of using ivermectin-as-we-know-it-right-now before any trials because data (even anecdotal one) to suggest it could be used as a covid treatment drug as is or with only slight modifications in therapy plan simply wasn't there. And those manufacturers surely considered it well, because they all knew they could be sitting on a money printing machine if it was a suitable treatment drug, one that they already had in production.
b) The FDA not only not recommends it, they strongly recommend against it[0]. And so do major manufacturers[1].
>It's interesting how they didn't mention the antiviral effects. Study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7539925/
This study was a bit "problematic" to begin with (the methodology is a bit icky here and there, IIRC the authors of the "Brazilian" paper have been shown to have conflicts-of-interest they did not disclose themselves, and the title of the paper alone is a huge wtf).
Their paper further didn't really replicate all too well (but it does replicate to a degree).
The most glaring problem is that the study was in vitro, and it's apparently not feasible to get high enough concentrations into parts of the body where you need them to be effective[1] using convention delivery system, including eating it. Aside from the tiny problem that even if you could, the doses required would be so high, it might be life threatening in itself, if you dosed the entire body as opposed to finding a way for localized delivery.
Even if ivermectin is eventually proven to be a treatment (but all signs point to this not happening), then the treatment procedure would be necessarily vastly different from just buying some horse dewormer and eating it in doses you guessed yourself.
>I understand it's still early days and we don't know a lot, but this smear campaign against ivermectin and postponing molnupiravir makes me think someone higher up is more interested in selling vaccines than in finding other solutions to covid.
You know that some of the biggest big-pharma players are the main manufacturers of ivermectin. Am I supposed to believe they just let their competitors trample all over them?
Even if it was about selling vaccines? The vaccines we do know a lot about, we know about the effectiveness a lot, about the risks include side effects and contra indications a lot, we know a lot of the general delivery mechanisms (be it mRNA, be it vector viruses), we know a lot about the specific particular vaccines, there have been and are countless scientists studying all that, governments looking into that, media looking into it. Compare that to the horse-dewormer, where we don't know a damn lot[3].
Regardless, it boggles my mind why people would put so much trust in a few, contentious and often preliminary studies, while at the same time ignoring the massive body of not-so-preliminary science, studies and trials surrounding the vaccines. So the few scientists who believe they found nice, useful properties of ivermectin are the "good guys" and every other scientist who found nice, useful properties in the vaccines is somehow a corporate chills, or part of a conspiracy to make Bill Gates the ruler of a soon-to-be-heavily-depopulated world. Should I mention that most of the scientists who published "nice" studies of ivermectin do not in fact advocate it's immediate use, let alone self-medication with it, but merely suggest further study is warranted, while at the same time most of the do in fact advocate getting vaccinated... those good guys must be "corporate shills" too. Which brings me to:
>AstraZeneca is now the largest company in the UK.
[citation needed], and you have to specify by what metric. Market cap? Revenue? Profits? Number of people employed? Number of politicians bribed?
They might be actually the "largest" company in the UK by "market cap" now, but I always found "market cap" to be one of the shittiest metric, not much better than guessing.
And even if they are, so what? Them profiting from the vaccines does not make the vaccines a scam - even if you like me find such profiteering of a pandemic rather tasteless and ethically questionable - nor does it suggest they somehow tried to abuse their newly-found power to suppress ivermectin, nor does it suggest that even if they tried they were successful.
[0] https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul... Btw, I admire the gender-neutral massive balls somebody at the FDA had to put a fucking picture of a doctor with a horse on that site.
[1] e.g. https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-use...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7404744/ It's technically discussing another (actually more reputable) paper's, not the "Brazilian" paper, but it applies to both. Note that they say that maybe localized high doses of inhaled ivermectin might turn out to be a treatment.
[3] Except that the things we do already know suggest it's a very ineffecitve covid treatment if it has a quantifiable effect at all, with potential side effects so much worse than any of the vaccines, which we know are rather effective at least short term. As I said, we might come up with treatment uses and plans that make effective use of ivermectin in the future (as unlikely as it looks right now), but that doesn't make taking ivermectin as a treatment or prophylactic a good idea right now. It's an insane idea, frankly.
And honest, even if it somehow turns out to be an effective treatment in the end, I'd rather not contract covid so severe I need treatment in the first place, and the vaccines greatly help with that.
I also don't think vaccines are a scam, but I do think they're mostly useless. Covid is not much more than the flu for the majority of people. I'm vaccinated because I wanted to travel with less hassle, but I didn't need it; I just needed the damn paper. At the same time I would have recommended my elderly parents to take vaccines (not that there was a need, as they became mandatory for their job, as they are doctors and treating covid patients amongst others).
Considering how much money there is in vaccines, how it's bound to turn into a yearly subscription model paid by taxpayer and the low mortality of covid, I don't think it's hard to see the scare tactics, years of lockdown as a way to milk more money.
While this is not entirely wrong, the majority of people will not get severe covid, still if you happen to get severe covid it's a lot worse than the flu including the chances of lasting permanent damage due to the disease but also due to the medication and treatment (e.g. steroid may blind you, ecmo may fuck up the mobility of your legs permanently). And it's more likely you get severe covid than severe flu.
That is exactly what they did by saying he was taking "horse dewormer"
> Self-treatment carries unforeseen dangers
He was prescribed this off-label by a doctor.
I have not been able to understand the hostility towards this treatment or unwillingness to even consider that it might help.
He did.
"He was prescribed this off-label by a doctor."
For a treatment regimen that's not recommended by the AMA nor approved by the FDA for this type of disease.
Which is why it's risky to apply one potential quack doctor prescribing a one-off vs. a rigorously studied treatment regimen.
"I have not been able to understand the hostility towards this treatment or unwillingness to even consider that it might help."
Absolutely no hostility here, at least. However, unproven and unapproved treatments are dangerous, especially when they're always anecdotal.
Ivermectin might be the miracle drug - no one knows, and that's the point. Without due diligence, Rogen and his supporters are spreading FUD.
That's like saying Rogan was drinking engine coolant because he was drinking water.
The US currently requires refugees from certain regions to take ivermectin prophylactically. If Fox News ran a headline saying "Biden Administration Forcing Horse Dewormer on Immigrants", I think we'd all object.
That's basically what CNN is doing here.
(To avoid confusion on my own personal views: There is no data showing ivermectin is effective in treating COVID. We should all get vaccinated. But disagreeing with my views doesn't justify lying.)
1. It would be good to get a source on that. 2. What do prescribed regimens have to do with unprescribed ones?
2. Rogan was prescribed ivermectin by a doctor