Comment by Ourgon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ourgon | Hacker News Reader

I have it right now, got it from my wife. The whole family has it - 10yo and 17yo daughters. Three of us are "fully vaccinated", the youngest is of course not vaccinated. Here's the current status:

- my 52yo wife, started to show symptoms last Sunday with headache, cough and fever. Still has around 38°C fever, muscle and stomach pain, headache, spaced-out feeling. She's using paracetamol against the headache, no further medication.

- my 17yo daughter, started showing symptoms on Monday. Fever is on its way out, current 37.3°C. She had a headache and a sore throat but those are gone now.

- my 10yo daughter. Woke up yesterday morning with a 39.8°C fever and a slight headache but was remarkably bright given her temperature. Today her fever is gone, she's mostly fine but we'll keep her home this week out.

- me, 56yo, got symptoms on Tuesday with a 38.8°C fever. Took 0.2mg/kg Ivermectin and sat in the bright sun for an hour to get Vitamin D up (at 3°C air temperature), no further medication. Today the fever is going down, this morning it was 38.4°C, now 37.5°C. Still coughing a little bit every now and then, taking it easy to allow my body to tackle the infection.

Conclusions are that the vaccines do not help against infection (which was known already), that children sail through this easily (which was known already) and that Ivermectin may be effective (which was known already).

If you're going to post conclusions based on a sample size of one family, I think it's fair for me to post conclusions based on the current scientific consensus:

- Vaccines DO reduce your chance of infection (never to zero, by how much depends on which vaccine and how many shots)

- Evidence for the effectiveness of ivermectin exists but isn't very strong (the most interesting take I've come across is https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t... , because among other things the guy notices that the most positive ivermectin studies come from countries where lots of people have worms).

An update:

- wife, one week from onset symptoms, still has low-grade fever, diarrhoea (seems to be subsiding), very tired, not coughing much any more. Lost sense of taste and smell.

- 17yo daughter, 6 days from onset of symptoms, normal temperature yesterday morning, no remaining symptoms - total duration of symptoms 4 days.

- 10yo daughter, 5 days from onset of symptoms, 37.2°C this morning, no noticeable symptoms but temperature still slightly above normal.

- me, 5 days from onset of symptoms, temperature down to 36.5°C yesterday and has remained there, no remaining symptoms. Total duration of symptoms 3 days.

To the down-voters to my previous post: open your eyes and minds, learn to think for yourselves. Realise that Big Pharma is not your friend, nor are the politicians who are on their pay roll. Individual doctors can be your friends, the staff at the hospital can be your friend, researchers can be your friends. The industry around them is decidedly not your friend. This used to be common knowledge, what has changed? What made you so afraid to speak up?

Both the Cochrane Review and the NIH Treatment Guidelines on COVID-19 found that there is insufficient evidence to recommend ivermectin. (Well, that there is insufficient evidence for _or_ against.)

> Conclusions are that the vaccines do not help against infection (which was known already)

Is this known? That would be zero percent efficacy, wouldn't it?

Depending on the time since vaccination, the strain involved and the vaccine used efficacy against infection varies but for the latest batch of strains named 'Omicron' it is low even directly after vaccination. Look it up, there is plenty of research, the Pfizer CEO says as much and promised a vaccine which did work to be available in around a month from now.

To those who felt the need to press the down-vote, please explain. This is, to use a modern term, our "lived experience" and as such should not be questioned as far as I gather? Is it my voluntarily application of a forbidden substance (Ivermectin) which triggered you? Is it the fact that my anecdata seems to indicate it might have a positive effect? If so I have another piece of anecdata related to going rogue on the medical frontier:

More than a decade ago I lost a lot of weight - and I'm not overweight to begin with - and had a rapid heart beat. A bunch of tests later the conclusion was that my thyroid was acting up and that the solution lay in either radiotherapy - which would knock it out for good, and make me dependent on supplemental medicine for the rest of my life - or the application of a preparation named Thiamazole [1]. Not wanting to become medicine-dependent for the rest of my life I chose the latter, if with reticence since I do not really put much trust in the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to its claims of efficacy and absence of side effects. The doctor told me there was a very rare side effect of a decrease or cessation in the production of white blood cells but that this hardly ever happened. Sure, I thought, but for this time I will be "wise" and listen to the "expert". To cut a long story short, 2 weeks later I was put in an isolation room in the hospital because my immune system had been knocked out. I stayed there for a week, was given some preparation to jump-start the production of white blood cells which on closer examination increases the chance of getting leukaemia in later life by 50% (which I only found out about later) and was sent home. I dumped the Thiamazole into the chemical thrash and bought a bottle of... fluor mouth wash. Even though the label tells you not to swallow the stuff I did so intentionally until the bottle was finished. Why? Well, fluoride was used to treat hyperthyroidism before the ascent of Thiamazole. It has the disadvantage of making you feel quite sick (to which I can vow) but not that much else. Above all else, it does not mess with your immune system.

After swigging 1 litre of fluoride mouth wash in about 3 weeks I was free from thyroid-related complaints (as shown by blood tests) and have been ever since. Sometimes it pays off to go rogue.

[1] https://wikiless.sethforprivacy.com/wiki/Thiamazole

>To those who felt the need to press the down-vote, please explain

I didn't bother to downvote but your comment left a sour taste in my mouth because you made medical assertions that 1) are extremely broad and sweeping on the basis of your extremely narrow anecdata, 2) don't agree with medical consensus or at best oversimplify the situation 3) line up neatly with a widespread political subtext that covid is overblown and we should all ignore it and get on with our lives.

Again, lived experience. What is wrong with the discourse around this subject nowadays? Since when is it not done to express doubt about the pharmaceutical industry - it used to be called Big Pharma but now suddenly they've been raised in status to be untouchable?

No "oversimplification¨, just our experience, backed by quite a lot of research which has been demonised by the industry but seems to have a core of truth to it given our (and many other's) experience.

Also, since when is consensus something to strive after in science, let alone medicine? Where does this one size fits all approach suddenly come from? Science progresses not through consensus by committee but through that was unexpected, let's study it some more.

And then your last statement, pulling in politics... why? Let alone the fact that you seem to question whether we should go on with our lives... of course we need to go on with our lives, what else should we do? Don't you realise the incongruence of that statement? Should we just move from one panic to the next, always being afraid, always looking for shelter?

Hell no, we shouldn't, nor will we. Not here at least.

>Again, lived experience

Describing your "lived experience" is fine. What's not fine is saying "I took ivermectin and felt a little better the next day, therefore it definitely works". That's not science. In fact it's the opposite of science - it's motivated reasoning. You want ivermectin to be effective, so you're eager to accept the results of an uncontrolled, unblinded trial with an n = 1. Presumably that's also why you incorrectly describe this position as "backed by quite a lot of research".

>since when is consensus something to strive after in science... Where does this one size fits all approach suddenly come from?

Since always. Replication is the heart of science and Truth is indeed one size fits all. The more people study a thing and get similar results, the more confident we are about that thing. When most scientists agree, we call that the "scientific consensus".

>Should we just move from one panic to the next, always being afraid, always looking for shelter? ...Hell no, we shouldn't, nor will we.

Your response to an accusation of political motivation is... to double down on the politics. This rather reinforces the impression that your "scientific" claims are emotionally motivated.

Going on living is politics now, I see. You clearly have a different vision on politics than I do.

Have a good life but take my advice to heart: don't blindly trust consensus, especially when dealing with the revolving door between the pharmaceutical industry, lobbyists and policy makers. This used to be common sense but it seems to be a sign of radicalism now - how things change.

So are you changing your statement from "vaccines do not help" to "vaccines help a little"?

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