Ivermectin Prophylaxis Used for Covid-19
cureus.com
cureus.com
He has made countless claims like these long before any good research had been done. So he and his organization have a lot riding on proving that ivermectin works for COVID.
I think he is just sincerely convinced by the evidence and wants to help tackle the pandemic. He made multiple recommendations some of which got adopted as standard of care (ivermectin wasn't adopted), before any good research was done, simply because that was the best that could be done in a new pandemic. He has got a pretty good track record, even discounting ivermectin
Then again, there are also studies designed to undermine the evidence for off label treatments, such as the one about HCQ that was retracted from the Lancet. So if you are gonna question people's motives then at least question both sides. resistance to ivermectin may also be unscientific in nature. Pharma companies have a lot more riding on mass vaccination than Kory has on ivermectin
https://m.goodrx.com/ivermectin
The vaccine is much, much cheaper.
One is a preventative
One is a treatment.
Why is everyone so fucking broken.
I've also heard that they offer "consulting" to governments, such as in Brazil or India. Both used Ivermectin in their "Covid Kits". Didn't really work out, though.
>He made multiple recommendations some of which got adopted as standard of care (ivermectin wasn't adopted)
Shouldn't that show you that he might just be wrong on this one? If he was right, why wouldn't it be adopted?
>Then again, there are also studies designed to undermine the evidence for off label treatments, such as the one about HCQ that was retracted from the Lancet.
Do you have more info?
Ironically, it proves the exact opposite of what antivaxxers and alternate cure hypers claim it does: the medical profession was decisive about pulling apart bad studies opposing off label treatments even though it supported their supposition HCQ didn't work and was just hype; just like they've rushed to highlight the indications of likely falsified data in the preprint of this Invermectin study which of course the authors haven't retracted...
But, not being wrong is a very powerful motivator. More powerful than money and power sometimes. I suspect he hitched his horse to the ivermectin wagon early on and has been looking for evidence to support it ever since while ignoring anything that hurts his narrative.
I have seen some of the stuff he has posted on social media in support of ivermectin and it was just woefully, obviously bunk. And I never see him respond to any of the criticism directly. It's just all a big conspiracy, oh, look over here, another thing that might support my theory...
Beyond that, I suspect nah…
It would be very odd and surprising if a pharmaceutical with a completely different mechanism and purpose would just happen to inhibit coronavirus proteases.
This was only shown in a petri dish at very high concentrations. You could say the same about a number of chemicals which we also would not survive in that concentration.
I do not understand why people want Ivermectin to work so badly.
It seems to involve a story where they really shame some people for being stupid (the people don't actually have to be stupid, just should be presentable as such with loaded questions, clever editing... what have you) and then while the people are experiencing second hand embarassment for the person, feed them what they need to think to not be ridiculed in mass media like this. This seems to work way too well and it seems they use it ALL THE TIME. Almost every "comedy news show" or opinion piece seems to be formatted like this.
In Brazil, ivermectin working means the president was right. That's why there is such a big effort in Brazil to make it work.
Yeah, look at AZT as an example.
If you have a reference you could share, that would be helpful.
> Ivermectin does inhibit the same protease that PF-07321332 does, but, as is the case for viral replication, it requires a concentration that is not achievable by oral dosing.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/pfizer-new-covid-19-proteas...
By the MSM declaring Ivermectin to be dangerous, it makes their statements about the inefficiency seem suspect.
Along with "Taking ivermectin in dosages at for the body weight of large animals puts people at high risk of overdose." (Which many people have done)
Both of those statements seem true to me.
So we should follow the CDC recommended advice of not doing anything until it’s bad enough to be hospitalized as a good alternative?
>> Taking ivermectin in dosages at for the body weight of large animals puts people at high risk of overdose.
Are you talking about that single mass media article that was later completely retracted because it was discovered to have been completely made up, or are there other instances?
I think the relevant alternative in this case might be getting vaccinated (which presumably the CDC recommends) which is sufficient to avoid hospitalisation in most cases. It's not everyone, but a lot of the people promoting ivermectin seem to be motivated by wanting to avoid the vaccine.
It says it is dangerous to spread the lie that Ivermectin is useful in the treatment of Covid, especially over the proven methods and agents of prophylaxis and treatments.
You can't distinguish between "Ivermectin is dangerous" and "People took too much Ivermectin because they thought it cures Covid". Because the latter is true and happened a lot in the US. What also happens a lot in the US is that the same people who promote Ivermectin give a shit about proven vaccines, proven treatments and masks and so on.
Critique ivermectin but don’t do it my spreading misinformation.
CNN said it's not true. https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/07/politics/fact-check-oklahoma-... USA Today Fact Check rated the claim as false: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/09/15/fac... AFP Fact Check false: https://factcheck.afp.com/http%253A%252F%252Fdoc.afp.com%252...
People often complain about mainstream media getting things wrong, but they generally overlook the fact that the editorless non-mainstream media gets far more stories wrong.
Ivermectin failed in large studies with populations that didn't have worms.
The irrationality in this regard seems to match the irrationality of the concerns over masks in the pro Trump camp.
(I'm in the middle. Triple vaccinated, never took Ivermectin but find it really ugly that every single discussion about it ends in a flag, downvote and shouting competition that makes it impossible to find out what the facts are. The best I've found so far is Scott Alexanders findings but I guess there could be a lot more to learn if people weren't so busily either shouting or flaggind down the stories.)
https://ivmmeta.com provides an updated-weekly meta analysis following new publications and retractions showing significantly positive prophylactic efficacy over control in 83% of papers.
I think it is notable that you can go down the list of all the drugs on the right where they apply similar meta analysis to the treatments and they find that many drugs seem to be effective against covid. Even aspirin seems to treat covid effectively.
the same is true for my wife. 2 small anecdata points.
if you'd like more information about our doggie treats, so as to start a prophylactic course of treatment, please let me know.
It has not really been studied as a prophylactic as in this study.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20587392209599...
[2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
This could describe almost anyone working on COVID over the past 2 years
The Hydroxychloroquine / Ivermectin sales people picked random pharmaceuticals and started recommending them without any serious theory or evidence supporting that they worked and, far more tellingly, they were clearly uninterested in testing their faith: it was all based on anecdotes and flawed studies and, unlike real scientists, when gaps or contradictory evidence were observed they tried to confabulate explanations which supported the conclusion they already had rather than question it.
[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
At first I walked away fairly confident at what I had read. Later when I came across the responses, things got more uncertain. The example which quickly comes to mind is that most if not all the prophylaxis studies were not reviewed in Scott's analysis.
[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/higlights-from-the-com...
Some interesting discussion on this, which includes the prophylactic literature:
The answer is the same: COVID outcomes are better without parasites. If you don't have worms, ivermectin will not help you.
Ascariasis: 800- 1.2 billion worldwide
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/ascariasis/index.html
Strongyloides: 100 million
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/strongyloides/epi.html
Cystercicosis: 50-100 million
[1]: https://ciff.org/news/worms-india-scale-and-success-world-le...
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
So... can we just say everyone was right, and maybe start killing worms across the world?
No, because neither claim has been proven true. Both are speculative. Correlation is not causation.
Thus, they subsidize expensive vaccines, but not cheap vermicides. But not really even enough of the vaccines. As it becomes clear that herd immunity is impossible (because of animal reservoirs, and because they provide too little vaccine anyway) I expect vaccine help to trail off.
Meanwhile, rich countries' mortality from complications of sugar overdosing absolutely dwarfs COVID-19's, but nothing can be done about that without affecting profits.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.02.21250995v...
> Conclusion Our results suggest that co-infection with parasitic co-infection appears to be associated with reduced COVID-19 severity. The results suggest that parasite-driven immunomodulatory responses may mute hyperinflammation associated with severe COVID-19.
Is a worm infection the best, or a good, way to do that? If ivermectin produces better outcomes where worms are common, the reasonable guess would be "no".
> If you don't have worms, ivermectin will not help you
This makes sense and is supported by some data.
> COVID outcomes are better without parasites
This dramatically understates interactions in the immune system. I can go into a longer essay, but:
1) Parasites suppress the immune system (they release chemicals to moderate immune response; otherwise, the immune system would destroy them)
2) There is some evidence that the immune system evolved to operate when suppressed by worms. Autoimmune diseases and allergies may be a symptom of worm-free life.
3) Most of the damage from COVID19 comes from the immune system and not the disease (that's true of most diseases, for that matter).
4) ... and so on.
We have absolutely no idea how ivermectin, worms, and COVID interact. It's too complex a system.
There are lots of different parasitic worms -- maybe of more species than we have mammals -- and lots of places they infest, to lots of different degrees. That outcomes in certain places where worms are a problem seem better with vermicidal treatment suggests the net effect of, anyway, heavy infestations seen in, anyway, those places is negative.
I see a recent report that "long COVID" looks like a result of COVID stimulating expression of ancient retroviral genes long after the primary COVID infection has been suppressed.
COVID keeps on giving.
Seems like this study may have some methodological issues.
The core of this critique is that ivermectin may not have been used consistently among the treatment group, therefore negative results may be masked, or confounding variables may be present.
It seems that ivermectin is generally known to be safe drug for use to treat other antiviral conditions. Is the critic calling that into question? I would expect more evidence for that claim.
Furthermore every science experiment can have confounding variables, so yeah. Even in that case I would expect more of a curious response as 66% reduction in hospitalization at very low p-value is very significant. What could the confounding variables be? Could they be surveyed?
The authors of the article did look into some confounding variables and did find that people more at risk of covid self selected to be in the ivermectin group.
I would like more info about all this. I don't think it's as simple as "bad study move on".
Is the falsified data just the off by one in deaths among the under 30 cohort or is there more?[1]
[0]: https://mobile.twitter.com/sean_purdy/status/147041652307654...
[1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/GidMK/status/1478975913094090752
That is not a valid critique of the study. It is a potentially valid reason to adjust your Bayesian priors applicable before reading the study, but is utterly nobprobative as to whether the science is sound.
When Pfizer does it it is a critique as well.
The question is how much of a critique.
In general…
If you are dishonest about your conflict, you hide it, don’t do anything to control for it then having a conflict is a bigger critique.
If you are transparent about your conflict, honest about what it is, and take measures to control for it or add extra steps to analysis to prevent potential bias - then a conflict is a less strong critique of the study.
Critique in scientific research isn’t a binary. It isn’t “there’s one critique and it’s valid or not and if it’s valid the study is bad”. There can be critiques of ANY study. No study is perfect. But the types and the details of the critiques matter collectively to make the study better or worse.
Collectively, this study falls to the worse end. It’s not just the conflict of interest it’s the conflict of interest + the study design. The critiques of the study design are that this study is design almost exactly the way you would if you wanted to increase the appearance of effectiveness of this treatment.
This is not a critique of the study really. The high mortality could be due to other factors, like an older population or less careful application of other COVID mitigations. If the latter, this study would actually be a good test case for prophylactic Ivermectin actually because the signal from any effect would be stronger.
Are they?
> The core of this critique is that ivermectin may not have been used consistently among the treatment group, therefore negative results may be masked, or confounding variables may be present.
Yes.
> I would like more info about all this. I don't think it's as simple as "bad study move on".
Ok:
https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1425297498042556423
Or was that not the info you meant?
Thank you for adding that, didn't have to read any further.
(Having said that, I don't think there's much evidence for Ivermectin overall, but this specific critique of the study seems weak.)
My wife’s an epidemiologist (and a damn grouchy methods person…I get yelled at about study design A LOT).
Her first check on any study like this is the denominator of different groups because that drives your results.
This study has sketchy as hell denominators. They artificially inflate the denominator of the ivermectin group while also shifting infections to the non ivemecrim group…that skews the infection statistics by increasing the denominator artificially.
The critique is basically saying “you are using the 139k people who said ‘sure’ when offered drugs as the denominator and you shouldn’t”
If 75% of those people didn’t take the dang drugs (that’s a hypothetical not a claim). Then you 44% decrease in infections evaporates.
This is terrible study design because of how they grouped people. They didn’t do follow up they didn’t ask whether people took the drugs (from what I can see) they didn’t have a placebo group of any form…they just offered people drugs and used those numbers to draw broad conclusions.
>Brazil’s attorney general is investigating the possible violations of medical ethics and human rights on the recommendation of the National Research Ethics Commission (CONEP), which forms part of the CNS. The trial’s principal investigator, Flavio Cadegiani, was identified in October along with 68 others by a parliamentary inquiry into Brazil’s management of the pandemic as having committed “crimes against humanity.”
Also, as quoted in [2], "Helminth [ie worm] infections are among the most common infectious diseases. Bradbury et al. highlight the possible negative interactions between helminth infection and COVID-19 severity in helminth-endemic regions and note that alterations in the gut microbiome associated with helminth infection appear to have systemic immunomodulatory effects. It has also been proposed that helminth co-infection may increase the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19, because the immune system cannot efficiently respond to the virus; in addition, vaccines will be less effective for these patients, but treatment and prevention of helminth infections might reduce the negative effect of COVID-19. During millennia of parasite-host coevolution helminths evolved mechanisms suppressing the host immune responses, which may mitigate vaccine efficacy and increase severity of other infectious diseases."
It seems strange that the referenced study did not consider the possible confounding factor of parasitic infection.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34105625/ [2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
For what it's worth, Itajai in southeastern region Brazil has the lowest rate of parasitic infections among the regions at 37%. (your [1])
Probably can't be equated this easily, but 37% could make up a significant chunk of the purported 66% reduction in hospitalizations.
This is misleading a little. Only the high dose was tested in cell cultures. That does not mean that low doses are not also very effective.
In the lab, they usually use very high doses to confirm that there is any effect at all. A second set of experiments (not done yet) then calibrate to discover the minimum effective dose.
Brazil health ministry published an on-line service which suggested HCQ for newborn infants and recently they published a table putting HCQ as better than vaccines.
Beaware of Brazillian studies related to ivermectin and HCQ.
[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
> 113,845 (71.3%) regular ivermectin users and 45,716 (23.3%) non-users
> In the absence of contraindications, ivermectin was offered as an optional treatment to be taken for two consecutive days every 15 days at a dose of 0.2 mg/kg/day. In cases where a participating citizen of Itajaí became ill with COVID-19, they were recommended not to use ivermectin or any other medication in early outpatient treatment
> There was a 56% reduction in hospitalization rate (44 versus 99 hospitalizations among ivermectin users and non-users, respectively; RR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.31-0.63; p < 0.0001). After adjustment for residual variables, reduction in hospitalization rate was 67% (RR, 0.33; 95% CI, 023-0.66; p < 0.0001).
> Missing data from patients were clarified with patients or relatives directly, via phone or in person, by the investigators. Since this is a citywide program, all recorded data must have matched the exact number of COVID-19 cases and deaths of the city.
> An important conservative bias was present. Major risk factors for severe COVID-19 and mortality due to COVID-19, including aging, diabetes, and hypertension, were more present among ivermectin users, which may have underestimated the benefits of ivermectin
The only questionable part of this I can find is a small unfounded semi negative comment about vaccines near the end.
> lack of effectiveness of vaccines in real-life all-cause mortality analyses to date
Vaccines correlate with 5.6x reduction in hospitalization and 12x reduction in ICU cases in Ontario as of today (Jan 22 2022) so not sure where that comes from.
However their results still seem pretty clear that ivermectin helps.
I'm curious if ivermectin and vaccines compound in effectiveness. 2x effective prevention could speed things up a lot.
In this world anything can be put to a higher bar and small mistakes are expected.. etc
Is anyone aware of any ivermectin study which meets the quality bar, has no mistakes and concludes that it doesn't work? That would shred the paper to me.
As the critic you link says
> It might be useful as the very first piece of research into a medication
I wonder if/how the 2nd study will happen.
It's worse than that. The city distributed the tablets and so they know how many participants came in and picked them up. Apparently, the study claims that around 200k people took the tablets, but only 136k picked up the tablets. Then after 2 weeks, only 95k picked up their next set of pills. Then by half way through the period studied in this paper, only 8k people picked up their medicine. None of that is noted in the study. That would appear to completely invalidate the whole study.
https://twitter.com/sean_purdy/status/1470410070819319809?t=...
I don’t care what the outcome is, treatments are treatments. I have no hope for a particular outcome. It’s just bad science. And I might argue bad faith science.
Potential biases: for instance in Brazil there is a very high level of prior Covid infections. What I’d previously infected people were more likely to opt in to treatment bc they are more afraid of reinfection, and the result came from reduction due to prior immunity? What if people that took the Medecine behaved differently than non-takers?
I'm not aware of any double-blind placebo-controlled trial that is powerful enough to determine risk reduction for death or severe disease in vaccines, much less over several months.
Remember, the people defending Ivermectin also argue that it's unethical to do further trials when it is "clearly effective" (according to under-powered studies). Consider that pharma companies deliberately avoid follow-up trials to avoid finding results that don't align with business interest. Remdesivir and Molnupiravir both looked promising in early trials, but were found to be rather ineffective (and dangerous) in later trials.
I don't have a problem with administering drugs/vaccines based on good faith and speculative benefit if that is declared appropriately. Just don't dress it up as "scientifically validated".
I agree with your last sentence a lot, we can do a lot of things and administer a lot of things, just don’t say “an attack on it is an attack on science”
The evidence for covid vaccines is that they provide robust protection for months, and then protection may begin to wain.
Evidence for ivermectin is that, ehhh it might have some effect.
Those aren't the same. Trying to dress them up as similar is wrong. These two things as re not equally scientifically validated.
Hone your own advice and be precise in your claims.
There is good evidence that two doses of the vaccine were protective for at least three months, against the variants dominating 2021.
It's 2022, there is a new escape variant about and we endorsed teenagers to get a booster shot to "protect" themselves from this new variant - based on what evidence exactly?
> Evidence for ivermectin is that, ehhh it might have some effect.
There is lots of weak evidence that it's highly effective and some weak evidence that it does nothing. This adds up no good evidence for anything.
> Those aren't the same. Trying to dress them up as similar is wrong. These two things as re not equally scientifically validated.
That's not the point. The question is, do you apply the same standard to both? Do you reject weak observational data as evidence? If so, a lot of the claims about vaccine effectiveness (here and now) are not supported by evidence.
I was. The claims I made are backed by strong randomized controlled trials.
> There is good evidence that two doses of the vaccine were protective for at least three months, against the variants dominating 2021.
And also good RCT based evidence that a third dose (or perhaps just a more recent dose) provides robust protection against delta and omicron variants. The precise level of protection is different because the variants are all a little different, but the conclusion of "boosters provide robust immunity against variants" is strongly supported.
So yes, there is good evidence that boosters provide protection. There is not good evidence that ivermectin does anything.
> It's 2022, there is a new escape variant about and we endorsed teenagers to get a booster shot to "protect" themselves from this new variant - based on what evidence exactly?
To be clear, there are two reasons you run studies
1. To validate effectiveness
2. To validate safety
There's not really a reason to believe that the boosters will be less effective in teens. In fact, there's strong reason to believe that they'll be just as effective as in everyone else. You really don't need a study for this.
What you might need a study for is validating safety, which is why we break out pregnant people, teens, young kids, and adults. Those groups can have different safety impacts (kids and teens weigh less, so doses might need to be smaller to be safe!).
Except that we already know that the exact substance we're sticking in teens is safe in teens, because its half of the exact same thing as in the initial doses. So if your concern is safety, its fine, and if your concern is efficacy, well we have strong RCT evidence of efficacy. We also generally speaking know that ivermectin is safe. But, we have no evidence to its efficacy.
So I apply precisely the same standard.
> Except that we already know that the exact substance we're sticking in teens is safe in teens, because its half of the exact same thing as in the initial doses. So if your concern is safety, its fine, and if your concern is efficacy, well we have strong RCT evidence of efficacy.
My concern would be risk/benefit. As far as I'm aware, not everyone gets a half dose for the booster, but even then there's a risk for Myocarditis with the third dose, among other things. What is the additional risk reduction for an Omikron infection in a healthy young (male) teenager that has already been vaccinated with two doses? Is it really worth the risk of side-effects? There is no good data on this.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
Even if that's the hill you've chosen to die on, Delta is still out there and at a high prevalence especially in North America and you've admitted that the vaccine is effective but wanes, so a booster makes sense in that cost benefit regardless.
These boosters are administered to teenagers, who are also at the highest risk for Myocarditis. What makes you so confident that the imputed benefit of a booster outweighs the risk? Where is the data?
If you want to administer boosters to everyone based on speculation and weak observational data, go right ahead. Just don't act as if you have "the science" backing you up.
What, precisely, do you think we know? The vaccines were tested against the first strain so it's not surprising that they lost effectiveness at preventing infection entirely against variants like Omicron with significantly greater immune evasion but even there we still see massive benefits against severe cases. The current performance of the mRNA vaccines against Omicron is still better than many people cautioned would considered a good result for the first iteration of a vaccine created for a new virus.
At the same time, we didn't see "massive benefit" against severe cases in breakthrough infections in a matched cohort study[2]. This leads me to suspect that current statistical observations do not reflect reality and may well be artifacts. Paradoxically, we're also observing increased odds of Omikron infection after (two dose) vaccination.
Furthermore, we're administering boosters even to teenagers based on good faith, not good science. Hence, there still is a need for placebo-controlled trials.
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410
[2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.26.21265508v...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-vaccine-booster-shot-c...
If you look at the matched cohort study I linked, vaccine efficacy against severe outcome isn't anywhere near 90%, but rather 30%-50%. If the vaccine then also fails to protect against infection, as it does with Omikron, it couldn't possibly have 95% efficacy against severe disease. What could explain this discrepancy, other than statistical shenanigans?
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
You forgot to read this part of your source when making your cherry-picked anti-vax argument.
While this study is rather weak and doesn't give us any really definitive results it is a useful data point that can be rolled into future meta analyses.
> Results: Of the 223,128 citizens of Itajaí considered for the study, a total of 159,561 subjects were included in the analysis: 113,845 (71.3%) regular ivermectin users and 45,716 (23.3%) non-users.
That reads to me like 160k people participated, and 113k optionally choose to take Ivermectin as prophylaxis.
Am I missing something ?
https://www.cureus.com/articles/82162-ivermectin-prophylaxis...
or the DOI link: https://dx.doi.org/10.7759%2Fcureus.21272
Posting the link this way from an NIH aggregator seems designed to give the false appearance of NIH credibility to
Here's a weird case on a different paper in the same journal: http://retractionwatch.com/2015/11/02/sex-addiction-article-...
In this case, the two first authors Lucy Kerr and Flavio Cadegiani are (partially?) funded by Vitamedic, a company that makes Ivermectin. That's not mentioned in the Cureus paper. It is mentioned in some of their papers, like this one: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357313430_Ivermecti...
They seem to be based in Brazil. Given that intestinal worms are still common in Brazil it may have been that people saw a health improvement in Covid-patients after Ivermectin got rid of the worms.
That is an absolutely egregious misunderstanding of what Pubmed is. Let us not take actions on the basis of misunderstandings by the clueless.
> Study Group: 223,128 citizens of Itajaí considered for the study, a total of 159,561 subjects were included in the analysis
> There was a 56% reduction in hospitalization rate (44 versus 99 hospitalizations among ivermectin users and non-users, respectively; RR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.31-0.63; p < 0.0001).
Are you serious? This is such a shitty sample size you might as well be rolling dice.
Why do these studies assume people can't read
Don't forget the retrospective updates made during the following year, particularly concerning later hospitalisations and mortality.
(That's a serious request, not a cynical one -- I'd like to see those updates)
Do we all have worms and don’t realize it? I say yes.
Should we take ivermectin for quality of life improvements.. is it a medicine or vitamin?
As an adult no doctor has ever prescribed a stool test, even when asked about the likelihood of parasites. One doctor mumbled something to the effect that "if you have worms it will show up in the blood tests..." but I think he was full of it, as usual:
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/references_resources/diagnosis...
I often walk or run barefoot; I don't usually use insect repellant. I eat wild berries and leaves sometimes. Bugs bite me and sting me. I am likely periodically exposed to parasites.
An annual test for parasites seems like a good idea. But, since my doctors (most whom are from Asia and should know better) do not concur, I also treat myself to anti-parasitic medications occasionally.
Does someone care to clarify the credibility of the author and his content?
Credibility of the author idk :s
What are the potential outcomes here? You're sure to find people on this site (whose credibility you also can't judge) who claim he's the antichrist and others who claim he is actual Jesus, mostly depending on what their social circle happens to believe. What do you do with that information?
That said, John Campbell is one of the few YouTube sources I've found myself continuously going back to throughout the pandemic. Like anything else, I take things he says as "Ok, now I know someone has said this", not "OK, this is a thing that I now know to be true".
"Campbell worked as a nursing educator at the University of Cumbria, and has experience as an A&E nurse. He has also taught health workers in India and Cambodia. He is the author of Campbell's Physiology Notes and Campbell's Pathophysiology Notes nursing-related biosciences text books. A 2011 book review in Emergency Nurse magazine said Campbell's Physiology Notes was "excellent, inexpensive notes on the causes, pathophysiological changes and clinical features seen in disease processes"."[1]
To be fair, a good chunk of his Wikipedia article mention his videos about Ivermectin and how they're false claims based on some articles people have posted in response to his video, which is to be expected since anything positive said about Ivermectin is bound to have people counter it.
Dr. Campbell has posted almost 2000 videos, pretty much every day since the pandemic started (although if you sort by oldest on his channel you can see 14 year old low-res, poor audio/lighting videos[2] of him going over various medical concepts, btw, pretty interesting), where he reviews and explains probably 20+ charts and graphs and statistics and quotes and studies to the best of his understanding.
He's also human and may very well have been led down a wrong rabbit hole by his interpretation of some studies (or perhaps not, Ivermectin seems to have become one of the things that everyone decided they'll believe in its efficacy based pretty much exclusively on political party alignment).
You should always take in information with a critical eye, including Dr. Campbell. I've watched probably a hundred of his videos and I don't always agree with his conclusions 100% either, but I can't say that about anyone ever, so I don't expect that of him either. What I have seen is, especially on his more general update videos, the most comprehensive compilation of data (as digestible to a layperson as possible) for complicated medical concepts.
This is something I find very funny. As someone from outside the USA, it amazes me how something like this got politicized over there. Does Ivermectin have any effect against COVID19? That should be a dialog left to scientists following the scientific method. All that craziness of "ZOMG horse dewormer" from the left (ignoring that there ARE IVM pills for humans) and "ZOMG Muh Freedom" from the right (ignoring how how virus and vaccines work) is just mudding the scientific research around the thing.
I wonder if Twitter and Facebook will suppress the study.
I have a more moderate take. I think it is likely that ivermectin will show some therapeutic benefit against death and hospitalization, but well below the efficacy of vaccination.
If so, I think there will be interesting reactions when the NIH Activ-6 trial reads out as the American public tries to digest this. Even low double digit efficacy will mean that slow implementation and pushback will have cost 10's to 100's of thousands of American lives.
In the hypothetical where it is demonstrated to be effective, I don't think it is ethical to suppress the use of one effective treatment to incentivize uptake of another (vaccination). That is to say, we shouldn't deny treatment with an effective treatment or post exposure prophylatic because it might embolden other people to forgo an earlier intervention (vaccination).
Your supply objection is a valid concern, but not absolute. I agree populations with parasites should get first priority if their relative benefit is greater. That said, there is additional manufacturing capacity and the ability to easily expand it. If you say excess supply cannot be used, this is the same as your argument above.
Might it have anything to do with the recovery rate of patients treated by frontline doctors who prescribe it (amongst other medicines), their patients are staying off ventilators and not, you know, dying? That's a huge observation and should be incorporated into the body of clinical medicine, without politics involved.
https://filiperafaeli.substack.com/p/ivermectina-preventiva-...
Hidroxicloroquina para profilaxia da COVID-19 atinge o mais alto nível de evidência científica
COVID-19: um dia glorioso para a ciência brasileira. Dr Cadegiani encontra a cura pra pacientes graves. 92% de redução nas mortes