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> I don’t know if Ivermectin is effective for Covid or not. From what I have heard it seems like looking into it with an unbiased lens may be worth it.

People did look into this with an unbiased lens (did dozens of medical studies, many still ongoing) and so far there is no good evidence that it has any beneficial effect whatsoever. On the other hand now a bunch of people have overdosed from taking veterinary doses not intended for human consumption (there have been thousands of calls to poison control centers about Ivermectin in the past few months, and some have died).

From what I have seen everyone pushing Ivermectin is a grossly misinformed and non-credible amateur. Some of these snake-oil salespeople may have direct financial interest, while others just want to promote their own questionable agendas, e.g. trying to undermine/disparage some extremely effective vaccines.

This is a horrible example of something “worth looking into”.

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...

> On the other hand now a bunch of people have overdosed from taking veterinary doses not intended for human consumption

Maybe the solution to this is to allow OTC sales of human grade Ivermectin. The drug is one of the safest in the world. No reasonable reason to deny the drug if someone wants it.

> The drug is one of the safest in the world.

This is not true at all. Ivermectin has some nasty neurological effects (vertigo, seizures, blindness) at high doses.

Water can also cause death at high doses (hyponatremia). Literally everything can. The difference between medicine and poison is in the dosage, so saying ivermectin is not safe because it causes health issues at high doses isn't really saying anything.

The dose makes the poison. At the usual dosages that Ivermectin is given at, it is considered to have no toxic effects (with the exception of those that have a severe Loa Loa infection).

That study is publishing risk ratios like 0.60 for mortality [0] vs standard care, with very low confidence. If my mother caught COVID, in the absence of anything better, that study adds to my opinion that I'd quite like her to take some Ivermectin. It might help, it doesn't seem to harm. It'll make her feel better for having done something.

It certainly could turn out to be nothing. But on the other hand, why not get a doctors prescription until a couple of high quality studies have decided the issue? As you point out, the only real problem seems to be people taking it in unsafe dosages or through unreliable channels like a vet.

[0] Which is broadly consistent with the studies I've seen over at https://ivmmeta.com/ - not sure by how much, but it does seem to assist.

It could harm though. Drugs have side effects, and you are talking about giving someone who is already very ill drugs where you have no idea if they work or not, that could weaken them even more. You could use that logic to justify taking any drug you want as a treatment.

There isn't strong evidence, and you can't just eyeball studies and assume you understand them with no training.

I have cystic fibrosis, and I have tried to do things like this before by looking at studies on unverified treatments. It doesn't work. You just end up with snake oil. I have a masters in biomedical engineering, and I couldn't do it.

Interpreting studies is hard. Interpreting meta analysis accurately is super hard. Tons of studies are fake, or have bias, or have poor methodology. That website is total bullshit and is just throwing all the studies in to their statistical soup and mixing them together to come up with nonsensical results.

"There is evidence of a negative publication bias, and the probability that an ineffective treatment generated results as positive as the 65 studies is estimated to be 1 in 403 billion."

Lol, wtf?

> There isn't strong evidence, and you can't just eyeball studies and assume you understand them with no training.

I'm no medical anything but I do have extensive academic and statistical training. There is enough in these studies for someone to take Ivermectin as an "eh, why not?" gambit. There is evidence it is helpful, although the evidence isn't conclusive (or even especially strong). Some doctors are already prescribing it, quite reasonably.

If that is true then why are you sourcing a website that is making wildly ludicrous statistical claims?

I did a quick google search for articles about ivermectin overdose but all I found was there's been an uptick but it seems overexaggerated. This[0] one shows there were 21 people who called in about ivermectin, it's only one state but still doesn't seem like a big deal. There was another story about a Mississippi hospital[1] where 70% calls were about ivermectin but then it turned out they meant 70% of calls about ivermectin (not total calls) were about the animal version. This article [2] includes Minnesota which saw <100 calls and people having overdose symptoms but no one dying.

Treating covid with ivermectin does seem like a bad idea, but it also doesn't really seem that dangerous overall. I'm sure there are deaths out there from people overdosing on it but they seem like a really rare event.

[0] - https://forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/10/20/calls-about-ive...

[1] - https://msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/15400.pdf

[2] - https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...

> People did look into this with an unbiased lens

Not really.

> On the other hand now a bunch of people have overdosed from taking veterinary doses not intended for human consumption (there have been thousands of calls to poison control centers about Ivermectin in the past few months, and some have died).

You're falling for sensationalized propaganda. If you read the CDC advisory, there was only a five fold increase over the pre-pandemic baseline [1]. The pre-pandemic baseline for ivermectin poisoning is absurdly low.

> Some of these snake-oil salespeople may have direct financial interest

You mean like the financial interests of pharma companies who would prefer a treatment that wasn't off patent? If we're going to use financial incentives to infer credibility, pharma loses on this question hands down every time.

The truth is that the pharmacokinetics of ivermectin closely match Pfizer's new anti-COVID drug [2] (3CL protease inhibition).

[1] https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/han00449.asp

[2] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2021/cp/d1cp0296...

Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky describes in detail how the media lies, manipulates, twists the facts/truth to fit a particular narrative. He gives example after example after example. They also selectively ignore certain stories while simultaneously amplifying certain other stories.

This has been going on for decades, this is nothing new. What is new is the medium and the cost. TV is still expensive even today, while internet is cheap, its reach is much larger and it has permanent memory.

This is why we should support smaller independent outlets like TYT. We may or may not like their style, but they don't rely on corporate sponsors and that deserves respect. I am also happy about independent newsletter publishers (on substack, for example) - these are a drop in the ocean, but still a start.

I can't name a single large publication (left, right, center, liberal, conservative... whatever) that I trust or respect :(

TYT may be smaller than Comcast, but it's not small. They received millions in VC funding, much of it partisan and political. That's about as far from independent as possible.

An independent news source should be primarily funded by either non-patisans for good will or by viewers. I'll take Stephen Crowder over TYT any day.

But either way, Stephen Crowder has much of an agenda to gain viewers as TYT - if your viewers support you, then more viewers is more support.

If your viewers don't support you money-wise, then those interests are more indirect, such as a desire for implicit campaigning by donars, like TYT, or for corporate funding, like NBC/Fox.

There is a clear level of influence and responsibility that separates CNN from TYT, despite TYT being VC funded. That said I wouldn't trust anyone who gets their news from solely TYT (which has a progressive stance) and Stephen Crowder (who has a a right slant). Despite having more funding, I wouldn't be surprised if Crowder was competitive in revenue to TYT.

If your goal is news then getting as close to the primary source is as important as possible, and unfortunately YouTube is making this even more difficult today. If your goal is interpretation you need to listen to a wide variety of experts to form an informed opinion that you can actually defend.

Ultimately, every news outlet is beholden to someone and most have made editorial choices to more palatable to the demographic they have acquired over the years.

It all depends on the scientific evidence in the highest quality large clinical trials. Ivermectin has failed to show benefit, the Pfizer drug has.

>I don’t care if it is effective or not so much as I don’t think news and corporate interest should drive the national opinion.

Even more frightening is that a lot of people who think that don't have the same opinion on things like these that are way worse than anything NBC News does:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh4uS4f78o

They always focus and nitpick on media that's mostly following the science, and ignore the other side pushing drugs with unsound studies as some kind of magic drugs.

>From what I have heard it seems like looking into it with an unbiased lens may be worth it

And do you really think every country where covid isn't as politicized, like India, Brazil (both of who have extensive experience using ivermectin and HCQ for other users), China, UK, European countries, Canada etc. haven't looked at it with an unbiased lens?

Maybe listen to actual scientists with decades of drug development research experience instead of 'both siding' the conversation?

E.g https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ivermectin-covid-1...

What makes you think European and Canadian are less politicized over Covid?

Canada usually waits for fda approval and data before it approves most things.

They might be politicized internally, but they don't give a crap about Trump vs Biden, or red vs. blue.

UK, Brazil and India have right wing govts, do you really think they would suppress real cures and destroy their economy and popularity of their leaders and parties due to lockdowns, hospitalizations, and the dead filling up burial grounds. If HCQ or IVR actually worked, a leader would have mandated it and would have become hugely popular for saving their country from a pandemic that other countries are getting roiled by. Imagine how much more popular Boris or Modi would become, it would literally seal their next election win.

Or maybe IVR or HCQ aren't good drugs against covid and are hyped up for political reasons by some and then pushed by others who aren't capable of properly reading or understanding scientific studies.

This conspiracy only makes sense to people who cannot think broadly, skeptically and logically.

Bolsanaro in Brazil definitely tried to do that with HCQ - but it didn’t actually work, so at some point he just stopped and pretended he never did it.

Europe and Canada approved AstraZeneca's vaccine while the FDA didn't (not debating whether it was a "good" decision, just that it did). Canada also approved of vaccine dose mixing (out of necessity, but nonetheless it was clearly not following the FDA). Plus, by and large Europe and Canada's leaders did not actively harm Covid treatment and vaccine efforts (many policy missteps, but nobody was actively politicizing the virus itself).

> Ivermectin has failed to show benefit, the Pfizer drug has.

Ivermectin has failed to be seriously studied, while the patentable drug got a good study out of the gate. I wonder why.

Because the Trump admin didn't match Pfizer's level of funding? I wonder why.

Brazil as less politicized around Covid? Really?! Bolsanaro hyper-politicized it even more than Trump, even accusing the governors of using it to try to make him look bad.

Ivermectin has long fallen out of patent protection and generics can be manufactured. Anyone is free to make it and apply to the FDA for authorization to use it as Covid treatment - just bring the data. Obviously, that hasn't happened. No one has made an attempt.

But you are here to disparage a company that has developed a novel antiviral treatment and has applied for the authorization.