Yep, the wackos are out: here’s a comment I got (but didn’t post) on my piece “Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying go unvaccinated for Covid, take and promote Ivermectin instead“. It’s from one Stephanie, who won’t be posting here again:
I have ivermectin and didn’t get it at an animal feed shop. It’s for human beings, prescribed by a human internist that treats Covid patients (a real living MD). He also prescribes it to ease vaccine side-effects. It helped mine, I had my period for months after the Moderna shot, along with neuropathy in my right arm which prevented me from working for 2 weeks. I did not follow up with a second dose and will not until at least third generation vaccines are available.You are a dangerous person and I challenge your view, your vaccine indoctrination. There are safe, healthy options for All and instead of promoting health, an MD’s ability to practice and prescribe, you support a billionaire class who wants you hooked into a booster program. You’re the laughable one, the one that should be shamed but you’re so insecure, you point at Bret and Heather
No control in her assertion of “it helped mine”, of course, and if she listened to Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying she wouldn’t have gotten the shot in the first place. If ivermectin is a “safe and healthy option,” why did she get a jab?
I stand by what I said: there is no convincing evidence that Ivermectin is either a palliative, a cure, or a preventive for Covid 19, much less a reliever of symptoms from the vaccination. There are mixed results from some studies of the drug, but those are almost all retrospective analyses, have pathetically small sample sizes, and many lack real controls.
We will have more definitive data in a couple of months. But regardless of that, we know that the shots are powerfully effective in preventing Covid, and, if you get it anyway, you get a milder case. Faced with the assurance of that result contrasted with our ignorance about Ivermectin, which simply cannot have as powerful a result as the vaccines, you’d simply be dumb to forego up the shots (which Weinstein and Heying have been urging; neither is vaccinated) and take a medicine designed for roundworms and head lice.
It’s not me who’s the dangerous person.
Sympathies, Jerry.
Some of Bret and Heather’s followers have become rather cultish, something they share with PZ Myers’ ‘Horde’. Also, like Myers’ ‘Horde’, they are eager to support pseudoscience over actual science, because their dogma results in them creating their own reality or “their truth.”
Still more than a thousand people in this country ever day dying of Covid. The very least these stupid people could do would be shut up. I got the third shot the other day and the reaction seemed to be worse than previous shots. It was like a mild case of covid and lasted nearly two days. I should know since I had it back before vaccines were out.
I got my Pfizer booster a few weeks ago, and just like with the other two shots, no reaction, other than a sore deltoid. I’ve read that most people react to the booster similarly as they reacted to the first jabs. That was my experience…sounds like yours was more adverse. Sorry to hear that.
Oh Yes. It was between 24 and 48 hours of real fun.
Some people…! Meanwhile, in the real world there’s some actual good news on the treatment front:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59163899
There is other good news on the pill front. Per the Washington Post and other media: “An experimental coronavirus pill reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by 89 percent in high-risk people infected with the virus, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced Friday.” This has the potential to be the best news in the fight against Covid since the availability of the vaccines.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/05/pfizer-covid-pill/
Yes, I am watching this carefully, and hopefully. I wonder how the Ivermectin crowd will view it, though, if this development continues to pass its tests.
The bad news with the pill is that it will probably encourage more vaccine refusal, unless Fox starts attacking its us as another liberal plot. Hopefully, it will help with break thru cases, since 10 to 15% if these folks experience “long covid” auto immune effects.
My country has top COVID prevalence and mortality, and bottom vaccination coverage, because of widespread distrust in science and authorities, and trust in conspiracy theories. Some propose unvaccinated people to have to pay for their treatment, regardless of their insurance status. In the same line of thought, these pills could be charged at their market price for patients who are unvaccinated without a legitimate reason.
She writes “… you support a billionaire class …”
But her Ivermectin is made by Merck, which is not really a small business.
Oh yeah, but since ivermectin doesn’t work on covid that makes it much better.
The same anti-vaxxers also demanded that everybody should take hydroxychloroquine, which is also made by pharmaceutical companies….
Their logic is not particularly consistent.
At this point, in the Oligarchy that is America, unless you’re living in a cave in the forest, living off the land, “you support a billionaire class…” Whether you want to, or not.
Ivermectin is made by anyone who wants to make it. That is why it costs 4 cents per dose.
The new Merck and Pfizer pills are expected to cost around $700 per course.
I would not be totally shocked if the new class of drugs turn out to be a patentable variant of Ivermectin. Nor would is be surprising if the new drugs were actually unrelated. There is not enough public data to make that conclusion.
It is however, normal practice to modify an existing effective treatment that has an expiring patent in order to continue monopolizing sales.
“…who won’t be posting here again.” She is presenting some interesting information that is not wacko. You post a lot about the current trends involving censorship and attacks on freedom of speech. Which I totally agree with. However, it appears on the topic of ivermectin and it’s treatment for Covid-19 you favor censorship. That’s dangerous.
Sorry, it is wacko and I will not promote dangerous or ineffective treatments on my site. I have looked at all the data on Ivermectin and it is not convincing, nor does the FDA say it’s useful.
Censorhip my tuchas!. You do know that the First Amendment doesn’t cover false advertising, right? In fact, I did post her comment; you don’t seem to realize it. And I characterized it as what it is: bunk.
And, by the way, I don’t allow EVERY comment made on my site. It’s a personal website. Ergo, no censorship, just as newspapers aren’t censorious when they won’t post crazy letters to the editor.
Even Merck, which would profit from selling more Ivermectin, says there is not enough evidence that it works against Covid-19. Merch’s statement:
https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-use-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/
There is almost certainly going to be another peak after Thanksgiving as there was last year.
The ivermectin promoting antivaxxers will have blood on their hands.
We’re setting up for a second not-so “Festive Season”.
“She is presenting some interesting information …”
Absolutely – I think Spock would go further to remark “fascinating”. Invaluable for the thought-process in making important decisions.
Holy… I was with the comment until
[ car sound : ERRRRR ! ]
“You are a dangerous person …”
The hell?!? As in, PCC(E) exhales CO2? Or merely because he makes the writey-word things with letters or numerals? Dunno.
“… and I challenge your view, your vaccine indoctrination.”
Woah – a bold … something. “Challenge”? More like “contradiction”.
At least the spelling is impeccable!
Great specimen!
This person and many others who think Ivermectin is The Way To Go are being swayed by the good feelings that they experience when they go against the establishment. They are now (in their minds) a rogue thinker, and a person who has discovered a secret passage that leads away from the herd who are blindly following the “so-called experts“. Witness the entirely un-warranted lofty benefit claims of their wonder drug, despite the repeated explanations that it is not that at all. Meanwhile the “experts” who are trying to get everyone vaccinated are led by a cabal of profit-motivated shysters who are pushing something dangerous, and the shysters know it. They weren’t evil before, mind you, but now suddenly they are!
Meanwhile, the many minions in the cabal who are not personally profiting from the greatest criminal enterprise of all time are also somehow in on it, with absolutely no one breaking ranks.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, they’re simply contrarians and ignorant to boot. Many anti-vax Tik-Tokers are now calling themselves “Purebloods”. I wonder if it has the duel meaning of a plagiarized Harry Potter reference. America is exceptional when it comes to creating cults, and social media has become the perfect catalyst.
Summarizing Stephanie:
“But Professor, my anecdote, appeal to authority, false cause fallacy, and reliance on correlation are surely dispositive. Sample size, controls, and the like are trifles compared to my lived experience…plus, you’re a meanie.”
I admit to getting a good laugh imagining the smug look she must have had on her face when posting her comment.
You forgot the availability heuristic.
I find the whole right-wing embrace of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine surreal. Railing on about paranoid corporate billionaire conspiracies feeding the population useless vaccines, and then buying different OTC ‘western medicine’ drugs from basically the same manufacturers. At least with the previous generation’s lefty woo types, they misspent their money on actually different groups. That isn’t great, but it at least has some internal logical consistency that is lacking from the right-wing anti-vaxxers that Trump seems to have produced.
From Twatter:
“The studies of ivermectin that were the best evidence for its effectiveness were all either outright fraudulent, or non-randomized. When you exclude those studies, there is no statistically significant evidence it has any meaningful benefit for Covid patients.”
https://twitter.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1456267551306960916
The maple-bacon doughnuts in your previous post are likely a better remedy than ivermectin.
Yeah, they boost the immune response by supplying nutrients and improving the general well-being with their taste.
I know neuropathy can be real, but I welcome the day when a simple test can tell whether someone really has it or is just imagining it because of something they heard. Strikes me that someone who is so easily convinced of the efficacy of Ivermectin in treating COVID can also convince herself that the vaccination effected her nerves. Perhaps it changed her DNA too! (joking, of course)
I assume most women between menarche and menopause continue to have their periods after being vaccinated. After all, it’s not hormone therapy.
Or is our gal Steph claiming she bled continuously for months? Are there any data demonstrating this to be a side effect of COVID-19 vaccines?
I think the latter is what she meant. Fairly common in women at the threshold of menopause, long before the acronym COVID even existed. Must see a doctor, if necessary several doctors, instead of fighting a keyboard war over vaccines.
The first thing I wondered is if she’s perimenopausal. Something like this happened with cortisone injections to me. That made sense because it is a hormone and I’m sensitive to messing with anything like this. It happens to some women. I always warn them. But it isn’t dangerous just annoying.
“…a dangerous person…”
I’m actually jealous. Would make a great t-shirt. 🙂
ivmmeta.com
So what’s wrong with the data here?
Cherry-picked. Where are the studies that found no improvement?
It ain’t done right.
According to a summary in Wikipedia: “Ivmmeta.com, c19ivermectin.com, c19hcq.com, hcqmeta.com, trialsitenews.com, etc: These sites are not reliable. The authors are pseudonymous. The findings have not been subject to peer review. We must rely on expert opinion, which describes these sites as unreliable. … ” It goes on.
I think it is worth considering the likelihood interpretation :
if there was _nothing_ else, ivermectin or bacon donuts might in fact be the best approach to use for infection by SARS-CoV-2 or covid-19.
But there’s other things. They work by well-known pathways. There are lots of data to _show_ the results are consistent with what is expected for good medicine in this category. There is bupkis for ivermectin. Instead, there is ample evidence that ivermectin works for lice and such which ivermectin is for. It is not at all the same. To say nothing of masks, sanitizer, or simply hunkering down.
What is being claimed here is that the ivermectin or bacon donuts are to be part of a more reasonable strategy than the vaccines etc. That is the worst thing, in my view. It is not clear if this is also about a fantasy medicine that does not exist being the enemy of the good.
… do these ivermectinists understand that it is for a different medical condition? Maybe they are confused.
BTW everyone should read about ivermectin – it is a great biochemical story, with a Nobel Prize to boot!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin
I posted this before – NIH website on dietary supplements and such :
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/COVID19-HealthProfessional/
I followed The Darkhorse Podcast with the Weinstein’s right up till the episode when Brett opened the Ivermectin package. Enough was enough
… if you Prof(E) are dangerous then by association, we all are here at WEIT! I’d like to think a “serious threat” to misinformation, ignorance. I can see to some this is a formidable wall to climb over but by in large, this is a ‘self correcting’ site for any dumb, wayward thinking IMHO.
What she failed to realize it would have provided a good opportunity to test her ideas, standing beliefs if she had engaged this site with a little humility and a little less authority.
I was reading a debunking of Ivermectin effectiveness in the Indian states that are promoting it’s use. I found the following passage-
“However, Uttar Pradesh isn’t “COVID-19 free”, as some outlets claimed. Although the state reported only 147 active COVID-19 cases as of 7 October 2021, only 37 of its 75 districts have been declared free of COVID-19.”
That is sort of a faint condemnation. 147 cases in a population of 200 million plus, makes it at least seem as if they are doing something right. Covid deaths yesterday there were zero. This in a state where snakebite takes over 5k lives each year.
Of course, Their efforts to freely distribute Ivermectin might not be the cause. It could be incomplete testing, or unreported cases. It could be deliberate misreporting.
With 20% of adults vaccinated, a super effective vaccine program is probably not the reason.
As I was writing this, my wife came in and told me about a medical appointment she has coming up in December. She has recovered from Covid, was fully vaccinated, and got the booster. Yet she will be required to take a Covid test three days out from the appointment, then self isolate between the test and the appointment. This not for a liver transplant or an autoimmune disorder. It is an annual check with her ENT over her occasional snoring.
That sort of silliness is what causes people to start to distrust the authorities.
Someone threw this at a friend of mine on FB – another of the many meta-analyses. Posting it here since it will surely be bandied about further. That it’s in an Elsevier journal would seem to give it some imprimatur of credibility, but OTOH on looking into that journal I see that it’s only been around since 2014 and has an impact factor or 1.7 or something like that. Doubtless publishing this will be good for their impact factor, but drilling into why it gets cited in the future will likely tell a different story.
At least, at the end they seem to take care not to promote it as an alternative to vaccination.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2052297521000883?fbclid=IwAR1tO_udMtoqdNPTIrhDKx9niQa6hS7H-lk4bPnilmPPq-oODwoAk3l6ckY
Extrapolation from anecdote…