I think you're down playing the ample data on Ivermectin. You didn't address the recent meta-data analysis showing the efficacy of Ivermectin for both treatment and prophylaxis. As Weinstein, Kory and countless highly reputable doctors and researchers have stated, the call for a big-budget, large scale study seems unnecessary in light of all the data coming in from around the globe, and impractical given the limited time we have with respect to virus spread. The squashing of Ivermectin as a covid prevention is, to me, notably egregious especially as more and more news of variant breakthrough infections comes in. As Weinstein points out in the Rogan interview, the inventor of mRNA tech admitted that if a national Ivermectin protocol were put in place the virus could be eradicated. That may sound hyperbolic (and unfeasible) but should at the very least, promote an open and honest discussion about the efficacy of Ivermectin and other repurposed drugs, rather than the myopic hawking of brand new, relatively untested vaccine technology as the sole solution.
The relationship between the major pharmaceutical and corporate interests and the military and economic powers should make the bigger picture quite clear.
They don’t want to allow Ivermectin or discussion of any therapeutics because then the whole justification for their longer term overhauls of the system falls apart….
Whitney Webb’s latest expose should wake anyone up who hasn’t already caught on.
I'm loathe to go down that rabbit hole of imagining that this is a money/power grab situation because that would be truly evil to me. But the behaviors are there and are stacking up. If the end game is truly virus mitigation and treatment, why wouldn't all avenues be explored? Especially ones that have been proven to be safe over decades and billions of doses? Why wouldn't they want to combat vaccine hesitancy with alternatives, thereby leading to less virus transmission than with vaccines alone? Like I said, I have my suspicions. But I hope they're wrong.
I appreciated your comments above, and this one as well. It does me no pleasure to encourage you to accept the bad news of the corruption you suspect. To me the evidence is conclusive that our gov't intentionally suppressed ivermectin and similar drugs for the purpose of directing billions to pharma via enforcing vaccines as the sole remedy. Secondary benefit to their strategy is demonstrating state power by sowing fear. The episode is also a searing indictment of the MSM, demonstrating yet again the corrosion caused by TDS. Truth and objectivity are foreign concepts now. Matt here is a Shining Star in that dark universe.
As the 2020 elections unfolded and the evidence of a stolen election mounted, it hurt. I was raised to love this country, and in my 3 score so far I found it mostly deserving of praise, lumps and all. The most essential point of pride was the will of the people expressed via a gov't elected by the people. And now that is torn from us, by the same people who manipulated COVID for money, power, and ideology. It hurts to have your faith broken by bad actors. 2020 sure hurt for me. But you must be true to yourself and accept your own conclusions.
The good news is there will be a tomorrow, almost everyone you meet is a good person, and the idea and promise of America still beats in millions of hearts. Long term, I believe we'll be fine. :)
As long as this nation is filled with mostly people who think the 2016 election was turned by the Russians or the 2020 election was stolen, then, long term, I'm positive things will continue down the shit hole we've been on for decades.
Michael, Unless unless circumstantial and hard evidence, to you, are useless biproducts of critical analysis, then the logical conclusion of 2016 was that the Russia most likely had very little influence. (MT is largely on Substack because he was willing to say that, and that Orange Man was not a Putin conspirator.)
Conversely, 2020 generated a mountain of circumstantial evidence that may not have provided a smoking gun (yet) but is substantially significant enough to warrant grave concern about the legitimacy of the process, if not the outcome. Read the Time article about the "shadow" campaign and tell us that was an altruistic effort. https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
I realize that MT's readers tend to be the kind who call bullshit, regardless of what party shovels it. However, even when running the objective middle of the road, there are times when one finds that they are still on the wrong side of it.
Red or blue, there is plenty of foolishness to go around. Yet the shithole being dug currently is on a scale so grand and agresive that to not call it out and pin it squarely on the left is enough to get the best career umpires banished.
If you think this nation's obvious decline in all matters is due to the "left", which has 0.0% power in this country, then by all means indulge in that fantasy.
This nation is a full blown oligarchy, controlled by one party posing as two, whose primary concern is the maintenance of an empire that is failing on all fronts even as the nation itself is disintegrating, and uses cultural issues to keep both bone spur righties and snowflake libs at each others' throats, as meanwhile the rape continues full speed ahead.
Trump won in 2016 because the elites of both parties were totally removed from the concerns of the people and con man Trump saw that and played the card perfectly. Biden won in 2020 because Trump, true to his inheritance boy nature, couldn't see the pandemic in any terms other than how it might affect his own fortunes, and lacked the emotional maturity to simply say he was wrong in his initial depiction of the pandemic as not a real threat and simply admitted his error, an act that would have required both a level of maturity and concern for others he's never had, and never will.
Trump's great failing is not his narcissism; his is no worse than any other politician you might care to name, but his complete inability to recognize that fact and hide it, as even dumb ass Bush could do, and is surely Obama's greatest strength, which he did let slip with his shameful Flint Michigan performance, where he downplayed lead poisoning and feigned an unquenchable thirst, which one wetting of the upper lip vanquished.
I think everything was suppressed to green light the vaccine acceleration. Remember how Fauci said no way can we get a vaccine by end of 2020? Amazingly, all hurdles were removed, all potential alternatives talked down. Had there been "promising" medicine, the vaccines might have been delayed, more thoroughly tested. I think everyone went all in on the vaccines (incl. Trump) and the vaccine proponents HAD TO BE SQUASHED. Latest research I've seen shows those under 30 are more likely to be hospitalized due to a vaccine reaction than covid. But what do I know. I just read the data. I don't have MD or DO or PhD in my title.
It is interesting that the 'vaccines are the answer' mantra seems to have begun around early April of last year. Although I don't have the references at hand I remember reading that Fauci said something like 'what we need is a vaccine' sometime around that timeframe. And in France Macron took a call from either Gates himself or someone at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in early April, following which Macron publicly announced that the answer to the crisis is a vaccine. Up until that point he was a bit more ambiguous on the right medical approach to the crisis.
Although I don't remember when I saw the clip, I do specifically remember Gates himself being interviewed last year about Covid and saying (here I may be paraphrasing but not by much) 'the only thing that is going to fix this problem is a vaccine'.
I think we think alike here. I was resisting this hypothesis, too. With HCQ there was so much going on (need for combination versus monotherapy, etc) and the anti-Trump thing was huge. But with the clearer Ivermectin story, we have Occam's razor coming down to pharma.
One way I have thought about it is this: it's not necessarily super-active, but rather it's a network effect. The other day I saw a Twitter thread from someone that they started to shout down the lab leak hypothesis (this was a few weeks back actually) again, but then scientific friends reached out and said to them "hey, this actually might be real". So they stopped shouting it down and got on board. So it's not necessarily pharma actively pushing, but rather the pharma people who went to college with the media voices less actively chilling stories with "advice" and cooling ivermectin.
One thing that baffles me is how pharma could not want this drug to be widely used in the developing world, where no one will pay for their vaccines and now they are being threatened with loss of patent protection and massive IP problems.
Last year, an executive for Goldman Sachs reminded the attendees at a conference for the pharmaceutical industry that there's no profit in curing people. This is on record, although had it not been disclosed by independent media we'd never have heard about it.
Politicians are almost all sociopaths. There's way more "evil" than you may believe. The word "evil" has such religious connotations that I am reluctant to use it, but the common meaning of the word describes the situation and TPTB. 911, whether you want to believe it or not, had the direct involvement of our government and that was evil. There have been many false flags and there will more. Beware.
I wonder if the upcoming military “exercise” Sea Breeze led by the US, the UK and 30 other countries in The Black Sea near Ukraine might be the CFR’s latest military wet dream to get in Russia’s face by literally threatening to invade Crimea?:
While we are discussing Covid, Kamala’s non-border visit etc., Biden and Co. are up to no good thousands of miles from our shores wasting more billions on provocative military exercises when the money could be used instead to better the lives of the American people.
Things are definitely in an end-game situation. These acts of encirclement and massive exercises are not signs of strength, they are signs of weakness and desperation. All their regime change and economic warfare tactics have failed. This is all they have left, but the reality is that Russia unveiled their new generations of weapons. The US and NATO are generations behind, there is no tactical or strategic way in which they could win.
But these guys really believe in the whole idea of just managing perception, trying to trip people up and getting them to psych themselves out.
It just shows how completely incompetent and rotted out with decadence the Western oligarchy has become.
On the other hand, the sooner we recognize the West has completely lost and is completely bankrupt, we can actually start talking about dealing with the realities and actually engaging other nations and cultures in a manner informed by an actual understanding of the history and culture of nations outside the West, and our common interests in mutual economic development, especially in the domain of science and infrastructure.
I agree, Jennifer. The anecdotes provided by Matt are also somewhat misleading in that ivermectin is probably not a miracle cure for patients near death. I recently watched an excellent discussion by Dr. Darrell DeMello (based in Mumbai) with Dr. Mobeen Syed (based in the U.S. or Canada, I believe) -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdKgxv5e2kk. Dr. DeMello claims outstanding success with his treatment plan which includes anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory drugs along with ivermectin (antiviral) when first presented with symptoms, rather than waiting for a test to confirm. He says that patients die from the immune response rather than from the virus directly. So it's important to prevent the problems the virus causes, and before irreparable damage is done.
His comments jibe with what I've heard from Weinstein and Kory -- the clinicians who have a lot of experience treating COVID patients directly and observing the results should be taken more seriously in relation to the scientists looking for definitive proof. Something is lost when we demand perfectly pure studies that try to remove all potentially complicating factors. Something is gained when we admit to the complexity of the interactions as observed on a first hand basis.
I agree with you Jennifer. I have been following this situation with growing alarm. There are many people discussing it and some going so far as to suggest that a crime against humanity has taken place. One of the less obvious conclusions that I have drawn is the fact that algorithms don't work. I am pretty sure that an honest investigation by unbiased staff at Facebook would not have prohibited discussion of Ivermectin. So it may be evidence that management solutions proposed by big tech don't work. You will notice that there is trolling going on here on Matt's substack. Someone is motivated to follow this and get us to argue about silly stuff and finally get exhausted from fighting trolls. I don't know what Matt can do about this. My question is who pays these people? I am pretty sure that corporations are paying trolls. Foreign governments may or may not be doing it but I am willing to bet that most trolls that absolutely ruin online discussion are paid well by our very own US corporations. Maybe Matt can look at what is going on right now on his new site and discover something?
Trolls, shills, whatever... they're here to make sure Matt doesn't deviate to much from 'the narrative'. It's okay to be an investigative journalist and all but deviating too far from the accepted version can have dire effects on your income and your standing in the 'progressive' community.
I think he's choosing not to take a position in the scientific and medical aspects of the conversation. And I'll come to his defense for that. Do you remember his story about the overreach of journalists fact-checking into adjudicating scientific controversies?
And reading through the comments here I don't have the impression that Matt not positively boosting ivermectin is doing it any harm at all. On the contrary, he's letting us come to our own conclusions and those are overwhelmingly skewing one way. So the cause is being served even while Matt sticks to a journalistic principle, about which he just recently made a song-and-dance. I don't see a big problem.
A meta-analysis is simply a summary of a bunch of smaller studies. It absolutely doesn't rise to the level of evidence on which to base medical decisionmaking. Sorry, but you have been misinformed.
What exactly am I misinformed about? I never said a meta analysis was on par with large scale studies. I said given the volume of global data (smaller studies arguably being a better indicator as their aggregate signals aren't easily corrupted by a singular misstep) and the limited time we have for virus mitigation, a large scale study would be unnecessary and impractical.
I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean by " smaller studies arguably being a better indicator as their aggregate signals aren't easily corrupted by a singular misstep," but if I did, then you are incorrect.
Large, multi-center prospective clinical trials are the gold standard because they establish an apples to apples comparison as best as possible in the real world.
A meta-analysis - which is basically a big book report in which someone gives you their opinion about someone else's work - is the exact opposite. You compare apples from one study to pears from another study to oranges from a 3rd. This is intuitively less useful in every single way than a multi center clinical trial.
So am I to understand that you are advocating for waiting for your gold standard testing rather than trying a treatment with multiple efficacy studies and decades worth of safety data? And the promising prophylaxis statistics should be brushed aside and squashed for the vaccines that are proving to be questionable in the face of variants (not to mention the adverse reactions and safety issues cropping up). My issue is with the denial of discussion about possible alternative treatments. Clinging to your "gold standard" makes me relieved you're not my doctor.
Jennifer, it's not clear to me what you understand, if anything at all. You misuse terms and exhibit a generally poor understanding of the topic at hand.
It certainly is curious to me that you have such strong opinions on this topic. Do you have strong opinions on foreign currency exchange markets? How about nuclear physics?
None of those? So why experimental therapeutics for severe COVID-19?
You should know that interactions like this are why I chose a job in medicine where your opinions about me are very unlikely to matter should you be in need of my services, which generally are reserved for people who would die without them.
Should you require them every in the future by some stroke of chance, know that I would care for you with the same dedication and vigilance that I would give my family. Whether or not you would be thankful for them is utterly irrelevant.
Please let me know exactly which terms I have misused and what makes you think I am uninformed about the topic at hand. Because I assure you, I am not.
Also, you haven’t answered my question. Are you advocating for squashing a drug with efficacy and safety data in the middle of a pandemic because it hasn’t reached your gold standard of study?
Horatio, great reply from your lofty perch. Bravo, I say. But next time yell a little louder to us little people- we'll all feel better about it knowing our places.
"Large, multi-center prospective clinical trials are the gold standard because they establish an apples to apples comparison as best as possible in the real world. "
Hmmmm. Too bad this gold standard doesn't apply to the vaccines. Because if it did then it would have been approved by the FDA.
If one multi center clinical trial was the standard, the FDA wouldn't require two successful clinical trials for drug approval. They are applying exactly the logic Jennifer asserts - that one trial may suffer from some unknown bias.
You said a large scale study was unnecessary because of “data coming in from across the globe”, which is completely untrue. A bunch of small studies showing efficacy is not the same as a large multi-center clinical trial. We already lived this story before with hydroxychloroquine. It’s not true we don’t need that data, and it’s not true that omitting a bunch of tiny studies as evidence from an article is “downplaying the ample data”. To be honest, it seems like you have a pretty poor grasp on statistics and how data around medical studies work.
I said a large scale study was unnecessary and impractical in the context of a mass-casualty inducing pandemic, in light of the data coming in from across the world. As to your reference to "a bunch of tiny studies", I'll just refer you to the detailed posts found throughout this comments section. You may want to read up.
The only way to know for sure is by a large scale study as meta data analysis does not account for variables nor differing methodologies of the studies analyzed.
You sir are misinformed - if I may kindly say so -
You clearly have not been trained in medical epidemiology or statistics.
Please do not say things or spread things online that are simply untrue.
RCT almost always have some kind of bias - ie when the drugs are begun in the illness time course - the dosing of the drugs may be too high in one and too low in another RCT, the patient population may be totally different.
Very sophisticated statistics have been developed that are able to put multiple RCT together into a large study called a meta-analysis. The biases of the individual studies is then minimized and researchers can glean signals that are not present in a single one.
Meta-analysis of RCT have been the gold standard of drug efficacy and safety for as long as I have been a physician - just look at the pages of any Annals of Internal Medicine or NEJM. The same can be said about studies evaluating diagnostic testing.
That all of a sudden all kinds of shade is being thrown on meta-analysis is very telling in my opinion. People like you are not approaching this in good faith. The readers of your comment need to know this. You have not a clue what you are talking about.
Also, a meta analysis is not just a "summary of a bunch of smaller studies". That's an absolute minimization. It's a detailed analysis of said studies in order to come to a broader conclusion.
"Detailed analysis" is very generous. At best you're aggregating patient cohorts with optimistically comparable demographics. They are retrospective, they have issues with finding appropriate control cohorts, and they suffer from the fundamental sin of multiple statistical testing as well (re-analysis results in multiple testing by definition, increasing the likelihood of Type II error
Reading through his comments, I’m genuinely baffled. He dismisses ivermectin as a “silly” drug and the testing of it a waste of time, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, during a pandemic when masses are dying and we don’t have the luxury of meeting the highest goals of study. And rather than provide a solid, robust debate from his alleged position in the medical profession, he links to one study claiming that ivermectin is of no benefit in severe cases. That’s it. That’s the evidence he gives for his opinion that the discussion and study of a safe drug that has shown across the world to be highly effective in early to moderate treatment as well as a prophylactic against a devastating new virus is a “waste of time”.
I’m not baffled anymore. At first I thought he was an intern playing grownup. Upon sober reflection it’s obvious he is a paid pharma shill. Just a touch of scientific training as these shills typically have, just enough to sound slightly credible.
Shown in very small studies with certain cohorts. Why is it to difficult to acknowledge the ĺimitations of the available evidence? You ask for a robust debate yet we have no robust evidence.
This guy will not watch that or educate him on the subject because he is being purposefully obtuse and trying to keep out anything that will pop his bias bubble.
WL, I've read your many posts and assuming you are who you say you are (an MD and PhD), I have a few questions for you: Is Ivermectin proven safe ? If not, why not? If yes, do you believe adults should have the right to request this drug as a prophylactic or treatment? If not? why?
I'm not a doctor nor a veterinarian, but the anthelmintic, ivermectin, has a proven safety record and requires a very substantial overdose to begin to cause adverse side effects. All one has to do to know this is to read the package inserts which describe clinical trials. I've used it for decades on horses and dogs.
What do you mean "proven safe?" Lots of things are safe when they are taken at certain doses for the treatment of certain diseases, and not safe when taken at other doses in different context. Ivermectin is a great way to de-worm your cattle AND your mother, too! No arguments here.
I think adults have the right to request whatever drugs they want for whatever reasons they want. Happens all the time! Physicians are also allowed to say no. Sorry, you do not have a constitutional right to prescription drugs.
Patients are also allowed to find other physicians who will write them silly drugs for silly reasons. totally fine by me. Not my patient, not my problem. People choose to drink and smoke and shoot heroin every day too - I'm not stressed about that either.
What surprises me about the response of some physicians to ivermectin is the total absence of curiosity, much less excitement, around the effectiveness of ivermectin as a treatment for Covid.
I would hope that my response as a physician to hearing someone like Kory describe his results with the drug and seeing what it seems to have done in India would be something along the lines of 'Holy Cow, this stuff may be the answer to the problem. Let's get it on it. Now!'.
Instead we seem to hear a lot of patronizing pooh poohing over trial sizes and structure. I find this cool response inconsistent with wanting to fix the problem, and save lives, being the overriding priority.
I am in a town with a supposed world class medical establishment. The physicians I see are incurious and basically uninterested in the medical conditions they see. Most act like they are shopkeepers ( I have great respect for working shopkeepers) in that they open shop and close shop and spend their time thinking about their real estate deals and investments rather than reading the literature, thinking about anomalies in patient's presentation, etc. This is a generalization, since I have been treated my some thoughtful people; but they are rare.
When I was a post-doc in NY Medical Centers this was definitely not the case, and I had long conversations about medicine with my physicians. Whether this is the fault of the control of corporate medicine today, I do not know, but physicians may simply not have the time or motivation to engage in medicine given the control of their practices by the MBAs.
The physician sunshine act and subsequent policies have limited this a lot. Some physicians do bank off of drug companies but it is a minority. Most are probably too busy seeing patients and getting through their endless amount of Charting to garner more interest than looking at the cdc website, uptodate, and a few news stories here and there. Your average physician is not the enemy. It is the power brokers.
Word games. Yes, at prescribed levels. (as the saying goes: water can be fatal if too much is ingested). And if you were my physician and provided that response, I'd find another doctor. Let me just say that I seriously doubt you are an MD by your comment : "Ivermectin is a great way to de-worm your cattle AND your mother, too! " Surely as a physician, you would know that it has been used to great success to cure River Blindness and Elephantiasis, among other human conditions (and, btw, I AM a mother and you are an asshole ). That comment is a give-away: You are not an MD.
As a physician I believe he probably is a doctor. Physicians are a cynical and snarky bunch. Largely (I contend) as a defense against an ever imposing health care system and demanding patients— as Matt proposed, capitalist medicine is a very mixed bag. Hospital systems must squeeze more “production” out of their docs and this created great moral distress and cynicism from those who didn’t go into the job expecting to be treated as cattle… so we make cattle jokes. It’s not good but it’s there.
I am curious on one point. Many people suspect that physicians are somehow captured by Big Pharma. Although there may be other vectors out there, I can think of three ways this might happen:
1) a doc works for a large practice or hospital which has some arrangement with the pharma companies (discounted medications, for example) and so is actively encouraged to promote the Big Pharma 'take'.
2) an individual doc might be given soft perks by Big Pharma - all expense paid trips for him or her (and the spouse) to attend this or that medical conference, which just so happens to be at a resort location, for example.
3) some sort of direct payment (or, in plain language, kickback) arrangement whereby an individual doctor is actually somehow directly compensated by a drug company for prescribing a certain medication.
Can you comment on (or refute) these or other arrangements? Thanks.
I’d be curious if you’ve applied the same level of scrutiny to the covid vaccines. Are you at all concerned that they simply don’t have a safety record beyond a few months?
Apparently you are only "stressed" by the fact that an off-patent drug widely used around the planet with virtually zero adverse effects is far more effective than the expensive drugs pushed by big Pharma. Your linguistic dissembling is par for the course for Lefty hacks.
I think you might understand meta-analysis better if you watch the segment where this is discussed on the JRE podcast. (sorry don't have time stamp) Nonetheless, I think your understanding is incorrect on a fundamental level.
People need realize pig pharma knew 1+yr ago that HCQ+zn & IVM worked to zap C19! To get EUAs for experi vaxes, they censored/prevented world from learning about HCQ & IVM efficacy, willfully condemning millions to suffering and DEATH. Why is that not premeditated mass murder? And all the pretend MDs blathering here are complicit. Shills are compensated in blood money. Not worth it for a decent human being.
You are correct on HCQ (see Didier Raoult for chapter and verse) and your question is apt.
The war on generics has certainly not been confined to the US - it has been a worldwide assault but most effective in the western world. Poorer countries have - to their credit - had less patience with Big Pharma's agenda.
WL: good luck to you on this site, armed with your viable reading of the best research, you expertise in the field, comprehension of the available data, no left/right blinders, no apparent iron in the political fires. Commenters here know what they like, and like what they know
You underestimate this audience. And how could you know this poster is reading the 'best' research? How could you verify their expertise in the field? Even if they are a PhD MD, they very well may not have any specialized knowledge relevant to the topic. Here you must rely on the merit of your comments - we've been doing the forum thing for decades and anonymous appeals to authority are worthless in the absence of substantial contributions to the conversation.
To put it charitably; MT's Ivermectin articles seem to have summoned several never-before-seen commenters out of the woodwork, a few of whom specialize in tedious ad hominem attacks and/or invective.
Perhaps they are, in fact, longtime subscribers who have become suddenly enthused and energized by this topic.
If you look at the areas of industry knowledge and contrast them to the gaps (an “ER” doc? Is this 1988? Lol), the pattern fits a pharma rep quite well. Which is more evidence that the entire narrative is paid for.
It's "commenter," not "poster." And the only remuneration I seek is the lord's blessing for my humble truth seeking, and his unwavering faith in my blessed pursuit of certain eternal truths, truths that will make me free, and deliver me to the gates of heaven, where eternal life awaits.
Me underestimate this audience? I doubt that. I'm continually wowed by this audience. This audience, for me---or so I like to think---continually surpasses expectations every day, almost on every thread.
I don't know anything about this guy, WL, who I'm told is now commenting under the nom de plume "Horatio." This development certainly ought to be scrutinized and carefully monitored. And I'd like updates whenever available. What's the consensus here with this WL/Horatio fellow anyway? A no-goodnik, a mountebank? Maybe a russian outfit guy on the run, here on TK cosplaying an ersatz suburban PCP (that's "primary care physician," not "phenylcyclohexyl piperidine") presenting himself as fully up-to-snuff on this Ivermectin thing? I hereby retract any sort of "supporting" comment or comments that I may have leant this eery fellow previously. It's gotten our man Sevender, here, thinking I'm on the take. If only it were so! Working one of the substack back alleys for Big Vaccine! Convince'em that a tin of Skoal is more effective than that ivymarxin concoction in treat'n "The Virus." Why, it's mostly sulphur, magnesium and a touch of molasses. Everyone knows that! Winners dance with the spike protein! What's a matter, kid---you 'fraid of needles? But in my defense, once you've heard one IVM salesman, you have heard them all.
Question. Why would anyone who is not a medical professional, with absolutely no formal training in medicine, think that parroting reams of second-hand information on a topic such as the drug ivermectin is a valuable use of their time? Or if you were a medical professional, but with no special knowledge or expertise of ivermectin or complex viruses in general, why would you proselytize for or against Ivermectin? Especially in a forum such as this one? Why do I think WL/Horatio knows what he's talking about? That he's a reliable guide to the efficacy of IVM in treating covid-19? I don't. Nor could I possibly know whether he's spot-on or a falling-down fraud. Nor, knowing myself, could I possibly ever care about such a thing. Why would anyone who is not trained and educated in such matters, even attempt to speak authoritatively on a subject like ivermectin---the nuances and complexities of which are quite clearly beyond their grasp? Answer me, kids---what's this debate really about?
It's too bad because it's very much against the entire ethos of why I read Taibbi to begin with. I'm just jousting at windmills, but thanks for the kind words :)
And if meta analysis doesn't rise to that high level then what does mr. expert opinion? Balderdash!! That is exactly the best evidence because individual trials can have errors baked in. You should really read more!
Meta data analysis lacks control of multiple variables although algorithms an be use to minimize biases associated with those variables. There are positive signs that it works albeit the studies are small in number. Further studies are warranted.
Further studies are always warranted. That doesn’t mean that they’re required. In this case the combination of existing evidence and the overall pros and cons appear to be easily in favour of it.
The evidence for ivermectin and fluvoxamine is a hell of a lot better than it ever was for remdesivir, yet somehow the expensive on-patent drug that requires a hospital stay got pushed a lot harder by everyone in charge.
The pharmaceutical companies appear to have fully captured the regulatory process, the media (with massive sums spent on advertising), and the medical journals which are instrumental in the peer review process. I simply cannot come up with another explanation that covers the full breadth of resistance to using it even trying safe and well understood drugs that happen to be off-patent. The Argentinian results on ivermectin alone are sufficient reason to prescribe it given its safety profile.
The mention of Merck downplaying ivermectin is particularly aggravating because even though they developed it, they stand to lose money if it gained acceptance over their on-patent drugs and their co-development of the J&J vaccine.
This fiasco should be a wake-up call to the entire medical industry that the system is broken and ethics are practically non-existent. And I say that as someone who wholly opposes socialized healthcare (Although I think the CDC has completely justified my resistance to it in the past year).
Patients can be treated for one dollar with hydroxycloroquin or ivermectin while Remdesivir costs $3,000 per treatment. Does capitalism have a play in this?
Capitalism per se isn't to blame. Regulatory capture isn't a feature of capitalism, it is a corruption of the functions of government, i.e. it's a failure of democracy. Capitalism provides the structural incentives for the concentration monopolistic corporate power but allowing that power to own what should be our government is a political failure.
And the intransigence of academics, professionals, bureaucrats etc. once they have staked out a position isn't a feature of capitalism, it's human nature.
Who corrupts the functions of government? Who has the means and desire to do so? When the only goal is profit, all means are acceptable for achieving that goal.
I think that left to its own devices, capitalism will indeed degenerate into a few monopolists controlling everything. In fact, we see it around us every day.
The fact YouTube can do what it does is the direct result of the monopoly power.
"Who corrupts the functions of government?" Good question. It's been well know for thousands of years that unfettered creditor power always defeats democracy one way or another. So our first job as a democracy with a market economy is to fetter creditors and the concentration of capital and the power that comes with it.
Americans bought into the Reagan/Clinton ideology so completely that even now, after four years of Trump and the year of our plague, they still want it (Biden). That ideology was explicit: remove government.
Now to your question... who did this? We did it. All the boomers and most of the genxers who cling to this bankrupt theology need to die before the rest of us get another crack at it.
The very best evidence-based treatment for hospitalized COVID-19 patients is IV dexamethasone which is a fairly old, inexpensive, readily available steroid
You mean the exact corticosteroid that Dr Kory was instrumental in getting accepted as a treatment for COVID-19 despite receiving huge pushback and criticism at the time? Yes, it’s almost like people should be paying attention to him again this time, right?
** specific pharmacotherapy to be clear, most "care" has nothing to do with a specific drug but rather supportive measures like fluid and blood pressure support, airway support etc
Well, for most diseases, there is no "single drug." In COVID-19, it will depend on how sick they are.
If they have a cough and headache they can take tylenol and stay at home or whatever.
If they have florid ARDS and are brought in by ambulance in distributive shock with ground-glass opacities on CXR and sats in the toilet, they are going to get RSI dose roc and etomidate and I am going to put a tube in their throat to help them breathe.
Then they will get a million other drugs to manage their other problems like norepinephrine for hypotension, bicarb to correct their acidosis, some kind of sedative drip like ketamine to keep them comfortable while they are intubated and proned, Lasix to clear their extra fluid when they inevitably develop kidney failure if they're here long enough, and so on and so forth.
Thats why IDGAF about ivermectin or remdesivir or any of those drugs that, at the very least, I can say for certain are not a silver bullet. If they don't get the patient to walk out of the ICU - if we're measuring success in meaningless terms - who cares?
I believe that most people that are advocating ivermectin are seeing it being used well before people land in the ICU. It is best used either for prophylaxis or treatment in the viral stage.
You say "If they have a cough and headache they can take tylenol and stay at home or whatever."
The 'whatever' is ivermectin and if they took that you would have a lot less to deal with in the ICU.
That's exactly what I was going to say...if I knew what it all meant...😳
I think these issues get lost in the stupidities of everyone imagining they know something about the topic because they saw it on the internet, when, in fact, they don't have a clue. IADGAF when mopes that have no apparent connection to ongoing issues suddenly turn up on Joe Rogan and Youtube and suddenly gain validity via pop exposure and watch YT stuff all the time, but I do NOT get my medical advice on either one. Generally, I like Joe, but the credibility some seem to think is imparted by Joe is idiotic. It's Joe. It's pop culture, not medical proficiency.
The evidence for all of these drugs is fairly poor. I do agree that it is ridiculous that remdesivir got an EUA, though to be fair there are even worse offenders. ie. bamlanivimab (probably didn't spell correctly, but it's eli lilly's product).
Regardless of whether it has been conclusively shown to help with Covid or there are only indications it might help, ivermectin has been widely prescribed for decades with minimal adverse reactions. I don’t see why doctors shouldn’t prescribe it prophylactically like they do all kinds of things that might help and almost certainly won’t hurt, like taking daily low-dose aspirin as a blood thinner for people with heart disease or hypertension. The fact that the medical establishment is so against it while obfuscating exactly why seems suspicious. I have read speculation that if ivermectin is effective at treating Covid it would interfere with the emergency use authorizations for the (very lucrative) vaccines, so maybe that’s the reason.
There is a large amount of very conclusive, high quality evidence that effective pharmacotherapeutic control of high blood pressure can lower your all-cause mortality risk largely by preventing or slowing the progression of cardiovascular disease. same for
There is a small amount of low quality evidence of mixed conclusions to suggest that ivermectin might be helpful in the setting of COVID-19. I linked one of those studies above, but I will repost it here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33175880/
I am not sure who you are referring to when you refer to "the medical establishment" as there are lots of different organizations I could imagine falling under that umbrella, but there is generally no interest in it because there haven't been any specifically effective therapies for COVID-19 (excepting vaccination).
The strongest evidence for any drug in the treatment of COVID-19 is the use of the steroid dexamethasone for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. You can read that study here. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2021436
Why would Oxford bother with yet another study if there were no "there" there? There are more studies regarding the efficacy of Ivermectin than Remdesivir, yet Remdesivir is FDA approved for Covid 19 treatment. Since Ivermectin has been proven to be safe, and there is at least evidence that it might be helpful, there is no down side to using it that I can see. Better to bless doctors to prescribe the human kind than to have people eating horse-paste, right? By the way, I don't have an MD or a PhD and I've been drinking.
To be fair you're right there is enough interest that someone is looking into it. Good. I don't have a problem with that. I just think it will be a waste of time, but I am of a fairly cynical nature because I have seen both sides of the benchtop to bedside research pipeline.
There is always a downside to using drugs, even if it is subtle. If you had a headache and I told you to take Miralax because it might help, would you? Why not?
If you can't answer that question, then I'm curious about the interest in ivermectin - an anti-worm drug - to treat a viral infection with superimposed multisystem critical illness (ARDS) with autoimmune features.
The argument that has been advanced by Dr Kory and others is extremely thready, heavily based in benchtop science hypotheses (mice and cells in a dish) that did not produce an effect in the best trial on the topic that I've read to date. You can read that one here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33175880/
You seem to be missing quite a lot of research (it has moved well beyond "mice and cells in a dish"). I doubt if you have even read the most of the studies (another good one just came out of Israel). Many years before the pandemic, researchers were already investigating Ivermectin's antiviral capabilities for other viral illnesses - that is how the critical care doctors discovered it during the pandemic. There are doctors and researchers from major universities in the US and all over the world who began using it and recognized a signal. Why would these practicing doctors and researchers risk their credibility? The fact is, people are wired not to put their livelihoods in jeopardy, so that just bolsters their credibility. There is no ROI in trying to change your mind (your bias is showing, in any event). I have learned during the pandemic that the layers of bias that envelop people are pretty much intractable. The fact is, it really doesn't matter if I convince you or not (and you're probably a troll and I'm probably wasting my time right now). I'll tell you what is really telling, and that is when Facebook and Youtube take down any post mentioning the word "Ivermectin" and all of the "articles" start coming out leading with the words "horse paste" or "anti-worm drug" when describing Ivermectin.
I realized that I didn't answer your question about Mirilax: your analogy is a logical fallacy. However, assuming, arguendo, that Mirilax had notside effects and was generally considered safe, and I trusted your judgment because you convinced me on some level of your authority and trustworthiness, I might just try it (in other words, there is no downside so why not?).
“There is always a downside to using drugs, even if it is subtle. If you had a headache and I told you to take Miralax because it might help, would you? Why not?”
If a patient was dying, does it matter that they are given a placebo? If all other options have been tried, and they are still dying, would it harm them to swallow a placebo? This drug isn’t harming the patient, unless they have some sort of allergic reaction to it. It has been given to humans billions of times. So it’s effects on Covid are, at worse neutral and at best life-saving. I’d say a doctor would be fulfilling his oath to do no harm if he prescribed the drug for patients that had not improved with any other treatment.
You are still full of it. You know better than Kory, Barody, McCullough, Risch, Marek, Varon, Syed, Lawrie, Zelenko and thousands frontline MDs risking their reps to save lives? Yuch to your puny degrees, only make you credentialed blowhard.
I think it was those with MDs and PhDs who were behind the hormone replacement debacle for menopausal women. My experience in that era eroded my trust in the recommendations of medical professionals and it has not recovered.
No you don’t. The fact that you can’t recognise that your response is a complete non sequitur shows that you probably don’t have what it takes to achieve either of those qualifications.
So is it your position that any mention of the drug should be censored off the internet until there are higher quality studies, Dr? Or that hospitals should refuse to administer it when prescribed? Do you have any conflicting interests to disclose?
I don't think anything should be censored off the internet. That's silly.
I don't think that it should be given to treat COVID-19 because there isn't any evidence that it works.
I'm not opposed to somebody else studying it further to see if it does, but seems likely to be a waste of time, based on my knowledge of the literature that is out there.
Lol, and no, I have no conflicting interests to disclose, but that's funny. Does the free breakfast burritos at grand rounds count?
If you had said “sufficient evidence” you might have at least sounded like you were trying. But saying “any evidence” shows that you either know nothing about this topic or you are a deliberate liar.
Thanks for being a voice of reason here. It’s clear that people want ivermectin to be everything it’s claimed to be because it will back up their prior view that this is a global conspiracy. This is not about ivermectin at all, it’s just a means to an end to confirm a world view. Bret has clearly jumped the shark, just look at his last few posts.. he is devolving in front our eyes… sad.
Matt: I have virtually attended several conferences featuring the doctors and researchers who either conducted Ivermectin studies or who are utilizing it in practice. I have been following the Ivermectin story since April of last year, when I first heard about it from an educational (not fringe) YouTube channel called MedCram. The doctor who mentioned Ivermectin in those videos is a quadruple board certified M.D. and professor of medicine at Riverside in California. There are many, many highly credentialed doctors from all over the world touting the benefits of Ivermectin. So how do you reconcile the support and advocacy of all of these big medical brains (and all of the published studies) with this being a DIY populist movement? I would have never chosen to take Ivermectin as a prophylaxis (the human kind, prescribed by a doctor and not a veterinarian) if not for the doctors and scientists supporting it. By the way, I am a pretty lefty person who became disillusioned with "my people" during the pandemic. They were on the wrong side of so many things, including this.
Same same same. We got our hands on IVM after hearing that some people are using it for long haulers issues. It’s awesome! Big improvements in our house. 👏🏻
I graduated from nursing school 45 years ago and have had a front row seat to observe the deterioration of medical care -- all of it -- from the compromised ethics of doctors (no, not all of them), the gouging of patients for life saving drugs, crippling insurance rates and co-pays and ridiculous hospital charges. The profit motive, belief that in every case they are NEVER to be questioned and, sorry to say, a lack of empathy that is directly related to the time spent face to face with the patient.
I'll give you an example -- an elderly man was admitted to our unit after a suicide attempt. His family doctor sent word by his son that he had been put on a certain antidepressant drug recently and was concerned it had had an adverse effect. I showed the note to his physician and rather than discussing this with the patient and the family, arrogantly doubled the drug. His reason? "They don't know what they're talking about." It doesn't take too many encounters like this for people to lose faith.
Your comment resonates deeply with me. I've had fatigue and depression most of my life and spent literally decades trying to figure it out. Almost every doctor I saw put me on anti-depressants, which made me feel weird. I wondered how many doctors actually knew what anti-depressants make you feel like (I suspect not many). Anyway, I finally found an endocrinologist in private practice who was not hamstrung by "the system." She diagnosed a genetic disorder (confirmed via DNA) that would have eventually and slowly killed me if I had not figured it out. I think the medical system is designed to keep you miserable and tethered to it in perpetuity.
What I've seen over and over is doctor's don't really listen to patients. It's as if they've already made up their mind what's wrong and ignore any information that doesn't fit with their preconceived diagnosis. I think in some ways, this has impacted their willingness to listen to individual accounts of effectiveness of ivermectin (not to mention its been politicized).
Amen. I was in the field from the late 70s to early 90s and I too have witnessed how the field has deteriorated . Well meaning physicians suffer under requirements to see as many patients as possible and you’re lucky to get 10 minutes with a doctor. I’ve seen firsthand the monetization and the turning of the medical profession into an industry.
Last month I had a visit with my primary care Dr. This appointment had to be set up a few months in advance. As it was explained, these types of visits require more time with the physician than an normal office visit.
I would estimate we were in the office together for about 20 minutes. I would estimate 80% of that time the physicians eyes and actions were focused on completing all of the tasks required by the computer system. I grew up accustom to having 70% of the time focused on the patient. I'm fortunate to be mostly healthy.
"The Machine" consumes so many resources just to survive, never gets smaller and offers less and less choices as time goes on.
Sounds like a recipe for failure, unless somebody else is paying for it.
I have also noticed a decline in the quality of nursing care. A friend of mine is also a Registered Nurse in ICU and she and I compared horror stories about newer grads sitting on their phones texting while their patients need nursing care, not just an IV hung or vitals checked. Turning, oral care, skin care, communication etc. The compassion is lacking with doctors and nurses.
Before I retired a year ago I worked with several new grads and was appalled at their lack of knowledge and lack of interest in gaining any real experience. One -- any I'm not making this up -- worked the night shift and a man who kept telling her he had terrible chest pain, sweats, etc. (classic signs of a heart attack) told him those were signs of detox and he'd be fine. He died. This nurse is planning on furthering her career as a nurse practitioner.
Every person I've known who has had a family member in the hospital, I've encouraged to stay with them as much as possible. And anytime I've gone to a doctor's office it's been the same scenario -- he (or she) rushes in, smiles, sits down in front of the computer and types as you tell them your symptoms. It's no wonder so much is missed. My sister-in-law went to 5 different doctors before she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma even though she had bones breaking for no reason.
I am an internist in fly-over country here in the USA.
Here in my community, we had our big surge of COVID patients and tragedies in the NOV-JAN time frame this past winter.
I will say right up front - I trend toward being a liberal DEM. I had been reading about this drug Ivermectin for months beforehand. I was initially incredulous - this is a worm pill for God's sake. However, after I read the paper from Argentina and about its effects in health care workers ( the paper seemed to demonstrate overwhelmingly positive results as far as prophylaxis), I changed my practice and my mind. At this point, the safety profile of this drug is absolutely overwhelmingly positive - very very safe - and it seemed to me ridiculous to withhold it. Indeed, the medical ethics enshrined in the Helsinki Declarations make it IMPOSSIBLE for physicians to withhold this drug at this time.
So, as our community began to get slammed - I began to hand it out to everyone who was positive - to all their family members and contacts - and to those who wanted prophylaxis. Not one safety issue arose the whole time ( this is something I cannot say about the vaccines which have yielded one death, and 3 hospitalizations and multiple dozens of other minor issues in my practice). And the efficacy results were dramatic. The patients entering the hospital from my practice crashed in just 2 weeks. If you look at other physician's practices in town as control groups - the effect on hospitalization was just amazing. To the point that the hospital admin began to look into my practice to see what I was doing. (They were running out of beds and in a panic).
Was it perfect? ABSOLUTELY NOT - there were still patients who got sick. Did it seem to have an effect - ABSOLUTELY - when compared to other docs around me. And not to mention another fact. In surrounding rural counties, there has been large and widespread use of veterinary ivermectin among large swaths of the population. This has not been true in the county in which I live. Those surrounding counties had huge decreases in patient case numbers, deaths and hospitalizations. At times dramatically so. ( I AM NOT ADVOCATING THE USE OF VETERINARY IVERMECTIN - it is tragic that in the middle of a pandemic like this that people have had to resort to that - I view that as a stain on my profession).
When docs are honest with themselves and their colleagues - these types of outcomes are happening. This drug has an amazing safety profile. At least in my experience and what I am seeing around me as outlined above - it is dramatically more efficacious than anything we have available - the risk benefits are overwhelmingly positive - even more so than the vaccines - and we should be using this without abandon. Screw the RCT - that can come later.
It is a tragedy of the ages - that this kind of stuff has become politicized. I am old enough to have been a young doc in the AIDS epidemic. Back then in the 80's, these kinds of things bubbled up from the troops on the ground all the time - and pissed off the NIH masters ( Bactrim for PCP is but one example) - however we did not have Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity yelling lies at the American public in that era - and medical treatment remained in the realm of medicine and not litigated by the clowns on cable TV and the NYT every day. Our media and CDC/FDA were not nearly as captured by Big Pharma as they are today.
I will keep right on using Ivermectin for my patients. The COVID positivity is already on the way up in my little area - even among the vaccinated. There are those of us who still need to take care of our patients. The rest of these charlatans I am hoping are going to rot in hell one day for what they have done - that especially applies to the Zuckerbergs of the world who are kneecapping our ability as professionals to discuss these issues with our colleagues.
This has not been a good look for America - we can do so much better.
This guy sounds like a REAL doctor (unlike some of the people on this thread who are claiming to be doctors). Thank you for your open mind and genuine compassion for your patients.
Thanks for the great comment, however there’s no difference between “veterinary” Ivermectin and “human” Ivermectin. Same molecule, different dosages. e.g People still think Ketamine is a “horse tranquilizer”, when in fact it was patented in 1962 as a safer battlefield anaesthetic.
I'm a life long liberal who has basically always voted Dem, but would put myself squarely in the "untrust" camp when it comes to the medical and pharmaceutical industrial complexes. There is so much corruption and perverse incentives baked into the American system that it is impossible to trust.
When I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, my mindset was to do everything the doctors told me to do. I simply did not have the time and energy to do my own research, so I placed my trust firmly in their judgment and expertise. I was put on a series of harmful drugs, culminating in a prescription for Humira, a self-injectible drug with a sticker price of around $30,000 per year. None of these drugs did anything to improve my symptoms, and all of them came with considerable side effects, including increased cancer risk. I was then referred to a surgeon to have part of my intestine removed.
Desperate by this point, I turned to the "quacks" on the internet and adopted a new-agey and not-at-all researched protein-powder liquid diet that my doctor specifically told me would not work. Guess what? It worked. I avoided surgery and now do not take any drugs for my condition. I treat myself with alternative non-pharmaceutical approaches based on my own research, and it has turned out to be a far safer and more effective way to go.
All of the incentives of the American for-profit medical and pharmaceutical industries are in favor of expensive drugs and invasive procedures. That is how they make money. There is no financial incentive to invest in research into less invasive and less expensive medical and lifestyle interventions. I am now seeing the same dynamics playing out in the COVID response, with predictably disastrous results. I am pro-science and pro-data, but the corruption behind what data is collected, how it is coded, what experiments are run, where research grant money flows, etc., is so obvious that I cannot trust the existing American system. When people say "listen to the science," they are really saying "listen to the money." There is also now a bizarre layer of authoritarian thinking and tribalism sweeping through these institutions that further undermines their claims to be engaging in anything resembling impartial science. The censorship deepens my mistrust further still.
Despite my distrust, my initial reaction was to get the first approved COVID vaccine I could get my hands on. However, because I now live in a developing country with limited vaccine availability, I still have not had the opportunity to get the vaccine. This time for further reflection and accumulation of further evidence has pushed me towards the socially unacceptable category of "vaccine hesitant." Like with my Crohn's disease experience, I now believe it quite possible that there is a less invasive, less dangerous, less expensive, and possibly more efficacious way to gain resistance to this virus. Ivermectin may be just that. Thankfully countries outside of the U.S., including the vaccine-poor country in which I currently live, are taking that option seriously and conducting RCTs. I will follow the evidence and the science, not the corrupt American institutions.
Great input, thanks! And glad your health regimen is working for you. Well done.
Agreed with your analysis of bad incentives in the US health system. I'll go further and posit the cause is profit comes from a small cadre making decisions above, rather than diffuse consumers making choices from below. If the real customer is regulators, insurance corps and giant pharma, serving the needs of the patient is circumstantial to the conversation.
Aside from patients the next biggest losers are doctors. Their autonomy to help the patient is constantly chipped away by directives from above. Like everything else in life, free people making their own choices, in aggregate, will result in best outcomes.
My daughter has Crohn's and RA. I've been trying to interest her in diet changes for many years now - diagnosed at 13, she's 26 now. She's had a hip replacement already and had several feet of bowel removed. One of these days... smart kid too but she is just convinced that the apex of Western medicine is the apex of how she needs to be treated.
She's on the biologic of the week - they stop working randomly - and methotrexate. I'd almost rather her be diabetic like me. At least insulin just makes you gain weight and acts like a steroid.
I too have a distrust of medical expertise, even though I was once in the medical field. I trust science but not necessarily all clinicians. I had some issues and went to multiple doctors, all who wanted to start me on pain killers as they could find no underlying condition for my pain. I just stopped going and didn’t take all the drugs. I’ve found reducing stress and meditation have been best for me. Having said that, I absolutely made sure I didn’t have a neurological condition such as ALS or MS . I’m probably a socialist if categorizing my political views.
Stress reduction and meditation have also been a big part of my treatment regime. So much so that I quit my job as a litigator and moved to Buddhist country where I go on regular meditation retreats. The ambient stress in the U.S. is toxic.
So true. I moved out to WV and got myself 7 acres of land with lots of trees ~2 years ago. Stopped watching TV entirely. It's been like a great new world for me.
The collapsing confidence in the professional, aka expert, classes was a long time in the making and long predated Trump. It is actually one reason why Trump was elected. The growing perception that the technocracy who rules Western societies are no longer really serving the people who voted for them or who placed them in positions of responsibility, and instead have become adherents to a different kind of outlook in life, an outlook that tells them it's justified to bend the rules and expectations of a liberal democracy "in the name of the greater good."
Nor is it unique to America. It's the mindset that caused European governments to successively overrule referendum outcomes to sign up to closer EU integration. It's the mindset that went berserk when Britain voted to leave the EU. It's the mindset that completely lost it when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. It's the mindset that swept through the scientific community surrounding the emergence of COVID-19, who immediately pivoted to the natural outbreak rather than lab escape despite plenty of circumstantial and even scientific evidence it could very well have been a lab escape. It's a mindset that embraces control of information in the name of good. It's a mindset of a technocracy that does not trust, and increasingly dislikes, the people it ostensibly rules.
One of the hallmarks of a liberal democratic society was trust in the people - that the people were trusted to accept the information available and make their own decisions and to be responsible voters, and it did rest upon the acceptance that people were educated and intelligent enough to handle this responsibility. This was what separated liberal democracies from the populist democracies and was one of the great praises of American democracy. It certainly wasn't perfect as no society is, but until a few years ago no one ever questioned the right of the American people to know just about anything to be known.
Suddenly we've been thrusted into an age of censorship and dogmatic political correctness. Why are Americans not trusted to know about ivermectin? Why did the technocracy feel justified in withholding information on a relatively benign drug that could potentially save lives. It's because the technocracy no longer trusts, respects or likes the people it rules and instead sees them very much as obstacles and even an enemy to their own interests. That's why we have a government that wants a commission on January 6 but refuses a commission on the Wuhan lab.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
"The growing perception that the technocracy who rules Western societies are no longer really serving the people who voted for them or who placed them in positions of responsibility"
A lot of the technocrats aren't even "placed" in positions of responsibility by the people. Who the fuck ever voted for John Brennan or James Clapper for anything? Yet there they are, first running intelligence agencies and then stinking up the mass media.
I'd argue -- from gut feeling and no empirical (although prolific anecdotal) evidence -- that we're at a tipping point between "technocracy/meritocracy" and "neofeudalism/nepotism." We may have already tipped.
Who among us has done time amidst the expert/technocrat class? Who among us thought that they were generally the smartest and most capable people in the room? Who among us knew people who achieved senior positions through dedication, knowledge, and personal integrity; or, conversely, achieved senior positions because they were somebody's relative or "knew somebody?"
I am not part of anything anymore. I write that not out of false modesty or disinterest; I am of a certain age and mindset. I have lived; I have seen.
What is causing these great upheavals of American society? I am shocked at what Americans allowed to be DICTATED to them during the last 15 months. If anyone with half a brain thinks about it, they should ask questions, they should object; but they don't. Lalala.
The vax passport is basically here. I can't believe it.
Several years ago, I think I was a public defender then, but anyway it was awhile back. There was a huge case in Illinois about whether the State Police could set up "Safety Checks" to stop drivers and question them (looking for DUIs). Of course, it passed constitutional muster. I thought about that the other day, thinking about what else our government will be allowed to do to make us "safe."
Someone got neocon in our neoliberal! The Noble Lie is alive and well and suppressing treatments to make vaccination more compelling, suppressing aerosol transmission theories to prevent costly requirements, and save masks for docs. People aren't trusted by experts, who are no longer trustworthy anyway. Credentials and connections suffice for 'expertship', and both are for sale. And why shouldn't they be? Markets are always best, let the truth be decided by PR budgets, controlled by the omniscient beneficence of the invisible hand!
So what you're saying here, effectively, is that all the pros have gone rogue and now we should start relying on the amateurs? Say, maybe, our next door neighbor, who just happens to teach chemistry at the local community college? Other than the usual TK fife-and-drum shit one encounters all too often (all too often) on these threads, that's pretty much the message here, even if the commenter can't recognize it.
I'd also be careful conflating your tin-foil politics with the humanities and especially the sciences. Yes, the political class in this country require some serious straightening out, but this ain't the route to do the straightening. Neither is it imbuing trust to opportunistic charlatans such as D. Trump. Grassy-knoll talk is fun, but if this were really the case in the sciences, and if you framed it as you have above in a public forum such as this one, either you'd be happily oblivious to it, or if you were genuinely aware of it and bitching about it in this manner would get you hauled out of your basement and clamped into leg irons. Those days are not here, but who knows, perhaps they are near at hand.
Here's Taibbi: "A secondary consequence: while there are plenty of doctors of all political persuasions showing interest in researching the drug, the public voices on the subject are almost exclusively either conservatives or denizens of alternative media. It’s no accident that Lorigo, in addition to being ivermectin’s de facto litigator in America, is also the Chairman of the Erie County Conservative Party. “Outside of Fox News, no one is covering it,” Lorigo sighs...."
Mostly, ivermectin is only controversial to a small minority of right-wing no-nothings who primarily traffic in ignorance, misinformation, and outright propaganda, in service of their beloved retrograde beliefs. Ivermectin is the latest right-o-rage. IVM warriors. And anyway, if really you do believe all this shit---any plans to get active and do something about it? Or is this as far as it goes? Slick high-school newspaper editorials posted on a substack that make you feel like a somebody? But expose you in all probability as a nobody? Get to work.
But, hey, why end this comment on such an unpleasant note? Here's a link below that describes who the real enemies are in the U.S., and yes, around the world. Mazel tov, baby!
"So what you're saying here, effectively, is that all the pros have gone rogue and now we should start relying on the amateurs?"
The Stupid/Ignorant* Person's Dilemma:
1. This person's "betters", i.e. experts and/or authorities, tell him A is true.
2. Later, this person discovers A is contrary to what their experience tells them, and thus apparently false.
3. This person's "betters", i.e. experts and/or authorities, tell him B is true.
4. Later, this person discovers B is contrary to what their experience tells them, and thus apparently false.
...
[This goes on many, many times, with serious life consequences, for years, maybe decades]
...
n. This person's "betters", i.e. experts and/or authorities, tell him X is true.
n'. Will this person believe X? *Should* this person believe X, either rationally, or morally? What should this person do? Remember, this person does *not* likely have a trust network of experts to rely on -- this person is *on their own*.
n+1. [The future, not yet known.]
------------------
* It would be better to neutralize this, as I do not intend it to be perjorative, as stupidity, and yes, ignorance, are *primarily* un-bootstrappable. Maybe "The limited capacity, uninformed person's dilemma" is better, but it is awkward ... and in any case, I'd rather not give into the Woke Word Games' whack-a-mole.
Just to be clear, I am one who occupies this role. You are not the author of your own brain, you cannot rewind the decades to a different worldview, and and there are only so many hours in a day. Live in the here and now, and don't let them shame you for demanding explanations before changing your mind.
To the best of my knowledge, the IPCC has never stated what the Davos- sponsored Swedish Doom Goblin and her ilk shriek about. The summary for policymakers gets twisted and distorted by the “media” and the rest of the sociopathic technos.
But isn't that the point of the article and the major discussion here? Who do you believe? Once upon a time it would have been the government experts, but now they argue amongst themselves and as Snarcalita has pointed out, purposely lie to us and then make excuses later as to why they lied.
What agency/organization/union do you turn to for "the truth". The UN -- after the OPCW fakery?
I used to have really bad back problems, walked around like a penguin. After having tried several medial professionals (surgery) and chiropractors, I fixed it myself. I've tried to pass on how I did it to others with the same complaint, but they all think I'm just nuts. (so I won't explain it here other than to say that it felt like a freight train pulling out of the station and 20 years later I'm still doing fine -- which is why I absolutely know that was what worked).
Even among you guys who insist that we "trust the science", there is huge debate as to what the science actually tells us.
It should be obvious that billions are going to die due to Climate Change and over population of the planet. When will this occur? I dunno, but Guy McPhearson makes a good case for his vision of the dystopian future we face. The ennui has invaded the soul of humanity and is propagating faster then the Delta Variant. The last election proved that there is no way the Oligarchy is going to allow anything to be done about these problems.
" '[T]trust the science", there is huge debate as to what the science actually tells us."
Right. There is no such thing as "the science". Never was, never will be. Risking oversimplification, I'd say science often reaches wide and deep consensus after a bit of time, and sometimes doesn't, but in any case is *never* unassailably settled. It's the nature of the beast, because humans are universally and forever imperfect interpreters of the world.
So "trust the science" at the beginning of investigation into a "novel" pathogen is simply propaganda for herding the masses. Beginning last year, they implemented the most ruthless enforcement of this pretense to date, shutting down *all* public debate, by both lay people *and* science/medical professionals.
Oh, and by the way, climate change may not work out the way we're warned either. And I'm not even a critic of it.
It’s not working out for the Climate Jehovahs either; the models are all running hyperbolically hot, yet climate reality is disproving the doomer theories. Wonder why CNN shifted from Rona to climate boogabooga just like that guy busted by Vertias said they’d do when he was on that fateful Tinder date? 🤪
I placed no time limit on when the events will happen. It is quite possible that there will be a nuclear war and the follow on nuclear winter -- still killing billions.
That's the thing about predicting the future, so many possible futures.
If the sudden interest in UFOs turns out to be real, perhaps an alien civilization will save us from Climate Change.
Perhaps the drought across the West and Mid-West will suddenly be broken in the next couple of weeks, despite what is being forecast and we won't have to worry about food shortages.
Perhaps the "phony meat" will become much cheaper and easier to produce and we will all be able to survive on Soylent Green.
You seem to be saying that there's nothing to see here and that everything is just "fine". Obviously, I don't see that.
McPherson is not a cultist, he has a theory that has credibility. As a theory, it may or may not prove to correspond to reality, but it certainly cannot be thrown out as if it is meaningless.
I cannot confirm that Professor McPherson is the same person as the sexual abuse counselor McPherson. But there is little credibility to the accusations (or perhaps more correctly, no reliable sources in support of the accusation). Something that I imagine happens to many in that profession.
Nuking volcanos seems like there'd be a lot of unpredictable side-effects that might make the problem even worse than it is. I can imagine that while it would reduce solar energy warming the planet, it might also severely inhibit the ability to grow crops, thus resulting in the billions of deaths I see coming.
I live in a Canada, working In one of the Covid epicentres. A friend and doctor has been treated myself and a select group with Ivermectin as a prophylactic to covid. He is brave and also scared shitless of the consequences of getting caught. But it won’t stop him. He is sure and so are we that it has saved us. A surgeon in Saskatchewan has been stripped of his job for cautioning against the vaccination of children. I am devastated at the state of discourse on our continent. I feel our institutions have been captured(Brets term) by forces so beyond my understanding and control that I feel unmoored from my country.
The Ivermectin question is quite simple, so let's not wade too far into the weeds. Ivermectin has a safety profile that far exceeds, let's say, Tylenol, even though you can buy Tylenol over the counter. We have taken prescribed pharmaceuticals with far more significant side effects for uncomplicated diseases than this pandemic that could kill us. Ivermectin won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2015, improved the lives of 3.4 billion people worldwide, and has an excellent safety record. It's that simple when you or I or grandmother is dying from Covid. I graduated from university in the 80s and have always been a far-left progressive, far-left of how Obama governed, but this is beyond the middle, right, and left; we must discuss the science of Ivermectin, fuck politics. Media, politics, "journalists," not you, Matt, and corporations are not functioning normally, LOL, something else is happening, and we must understand and change this trajectory concerning science.
Susan, You can admit that this should be non partisan issue. Can you acknowledge that the far-left progressive ideology, of which you seem proud, has manifested in a large portion of "highly educated" people who value group think, obedience and the suppression of disparate ideas over individualism and common sense?
These days you do not need to be red pilled to be "conservative". Just be rational and you no longer fit the progressive mold.
I think middle-class Americans on the far right and left pay taxes and should expect the accurate science behind Ivermectin; we have not been given the truth or a semblance of it. Lg corporations, big media & pharma, & what we once called country club Republicans and neo-liberal Democrats are pitting the right and left on all fronts; the science of Ivermectin is only one of those fronts. The far right and left, should start talking, and stop listening to the wealthy middleman in government, Pelosi/ McConnell, who are funded by the wealthy & who don’t give a fuck about us
Yep. Agree 100%. Sorry to say Susan, but your rationality is no longer acceptable 5 degrees left of center.
I think the hardest thing for Republicans to reconcile is that the old GOP was the party of "NO", and no new thinking. Decades of doing nothing.
The hardest thing for Democrats to reconcile is that their ideals of classic liberal democracy - free speach, personal privacy, and "power to the people" over big government and corporations - is a quaint and faint memory. They are against everything they once stood for and that modern conservatives still appreciate.
Where the rubber meets the road today is that Pubs' recent track record is short and inconsequential. (Trump's corrective policies not withstanding. )
But the Dems's dossier is one of degradation and regression. The fact that Ivermectin is politicized and its benefits suppressed is not because Mitch & Co. are obstructionists. Its because leftist liberals control every institution that influences the conversations and policies surrounding it. The suppression of information and the control of conversations that would have "freed" the science is a lefties' wet dream.
Susan, you're too savvy to claim liberal bonafides. Clear thinking like yours is proof that yesterday's liberal is today's conservative.
Not much daylight between them. Keep clinging to the notion that a good liberal can still vote D while not enforsing all the lefty lunacy that dominates the party.
For one very important thing, we need better terms for those "on the other side" than "conservative" and "communist" (or "leftist).
No one ever thought to call me a conservative until the last few years. Somehow, this has become unavoidable, as I've noticed an increased degree in the mendacity of the mainstream press, a greater degree of corporate capture of the political and legislative powers and a willingness of people who were once "the good guys" to spout poisonous, hateful and very sloppy social ideas.
I know what I consider to be bad for the flourishing of the country and the people in it. That doesn't make me a conservative. Same with the difficulty the real conservatives have regarding useful labels for their opponents.
Not sure what the solution is. So far all I've come up with is a determination to resist the urge to the binary, the urge to oversimplify. It's easier to have simplistic labels than not, but that isn't a good reason to indulge the urge.
Trolli, I get your thinking. Generic binary terms tend to oversimplify where nuance could clarify.
I too have been at odds to simply call people left/right, liberal/conservative, Republican/Democrat. But such terms offer convenience to frame large issues and their political influences.
Over the last year or two, I'm hard pressed to spend the time thinking of better terms.
For better or worse "Republicans", as a party distinction, have been feckless and weak in dealing with Americans' concerns - healthcare, climate, infrastructure, corporate overreach. I have not a single friend who calls themselves Republican. We have gravitated to "conservative" because we still believe in the same tenets as those who fought for them two centuries ago. Deference to God, the inalienable rights of the individual, the containment of big government, and the larger notion of being left alone to pursue our definition of happiness.
One could argue that 20-30 years ago, many Democrats/liberals shared similar notions, but varied around the margins as to how to achieve them.
Such core beliefs that kept us united as Americans no longer exist on the liberal side, at least when considering the positions held by the liberal politicians.
I have concluded that while a few classic liberals still exist, the Democrat party is on a tear to destroy America and that anyone that still votes with them has tacitly endorsed the same.
One can argue and get little push back from me that Republicans have not done much to advance our society, as it clearly needs upgrading for the modern world.
But it's a stretch to say that, by action or a lack of it, Republicans have done much to actively degrade our country.
By contrast, Democrat policies can't even be framed as misguided. They are knowingly and inherently destructive. Racial politics, blind ambitious "climate justice" and alternative energies that are not rooted in sustainable science, big Gov overreach into our lives for health, education, childcare, disdain for 1A and 2A, the endorsement if not active weaponization of the intelligence state, deriding patriotism and the flag when it suits them and equating them to white supremacy... I can expound for paragraphs with more examples.
I am open to critique of the "right" any time and would be the first to call out its shortcomings. But IMO the "left" has become far detached from anything resembling American values. It is now full steam ahead in tearing down everything that is good for the sake of ghosts like racism, patriarchy, colonialism, flatulent cows and the impending doom of the planet. They are throwing out so many babies in dispensing the bathwater, that I'm convinced that they dont care anymore how much they destroy on their quest for utopia.
For those liberals who believed for decades that theirs was the party of and for the people, and whose support gave them the moral high ground, I'm sorry to say that that ship sailed. While conservatives have stood firmly with the same core beliefs of yesteryear, liberals have gone off the reservation on a warpath of wanton, or at least complicit, destruction.
If one votes Democrat, they are defacto leftists and complicit ideologues willing to destroy our country on the notion of progressive goodness.
I haven't identified as a Republican for at least 15 years. GWB was about it for me. What an asshole - but my reasons aren't the reasons most people thought he was a jerk.
It has been mind boggling to witness how politicized literally everything about Covid has been. By far the weirdest has been how otherwise intelligent people have allowed Trump to continue to live rent free in their minds. TDS has caused them to lose the ability to reason. The very idea that the potential efficacy of a drug must be demonized because Trump or Ron Johnson thinks it might be beneficial, rather than analyzing the drug on its merits, is amazing. I don't pretend to know what drugs will or won't work, but this kind of shallow "thinking" is dangerous.
Your boy trump is the dude that politicized this shit in the first place. He was the one that tried to blame “blue states” for “trying to make him look bad” because the COVID numbers were highest in CA, NY etc early on. If he’d have just offered federal guidance for how every state should respond to COVID, instead of being a little bitch, terrified of angering his supporters, and saying,”Everybody just do what they want!” then we’d be better off. We’re way past judging Ron Johnson or fat donald for the drugs they advocated for. Maybe ask yourself why they advocated for those drugs in the first place. Why didn’t they just say,”Wear a fucking mask, wash your hands and try not to go out in public for a few months,”? This is a public health issue; right-wingers made it a political one.
Trump never advocated for hydro, he was simply trying to instill hope for a country in need of a solution. He never said "use it", he said it looked promising, and it did. It still does.
As far as the politicizing of covid, maybe if you idiots hasn't carried water for our lying press and politicized medical community's demand to "Wear a fucking mask, wash your hands and try not to go out in public", three things we've come to realize are ineffective, at best, but likely the worst thing to do, in actuality, we wouldn't be in opposition.
1) Wear a fucking mask: Not a single study has shown masks work. Further, anyone observing the fidgeting and close proximity communication done with their "face shields" protecting them realize how counter-productive they are.
2) Wash your hands: Of course. Always do this! But further study has shown that covid is spread via respiratory droplets and we never had to wash our groceries.
3) Try not to go out in public for a few months: As it turns out, to Coumo's chagrin, spending more time outside was something the CDC should have insisted we do a long time ago.
Going out in public and going outside are two entirely different things; the first implies mixing with others, while the second is merely making your way outdoors. I routinely did the latter while avoiding the former as much as possible during the pandemic, as I thought being around freely moving air was safer than staying indoors or mixing in close quarters with strangers.
The object lessons of the last 16 months should be at least three things; reject the neoliberal free trade mantra that left the US unable to provide basic needed things that all countries with any sort of productive capacity should always maintain a capability to produce; people should wash their hands far more than they do; I've not gotten a cold or the flu for the last 16 months, a rarity for me; and finally, comparing the deaths from covid and those from terrorism should make us demand that our government greatly reduce its bloated and useless Pentagon budget, one they cannot pass an audit on, and instead to focus on having a world class medical capacity available to all. Saving more lives for far less money seems a logical priority, but then again. the MIC and our combat virgin political elites seem not willing to go there.
The terrorism thing is, in general, a method of scaring people in and of itself. Anti-terrorism is a form of terror itself. That said, some military capability to deter attack is better than fighting off the attacks after they come looking for us.
With how good the peacetime military is at picking technologies to invest in, I shudder to think of the boondoggles that would be involved in redirecting military spending to things medical.
If you don't realize that today's military is essentially a jobs program, same as the medical stuff you'd like them to be investing in, you should think about it carefully. I don't have high hopes of getting something of value out of either one, undirected.
All governments tend to work a lot better when under mortal threat.
Any study will show that far more jobs can be produced by non military than military spending; it's not even close. Then we have the easily predictable cost overruns for super complex and difficult to maintain weapons systems designed to be used against similar high tech enemies, of which we have none, (the PRC is an economic, not military threat, as why would they choose to fight us when their economic plans are going so smoothly, especially when contrasted with our stubborn insistence on seeing the world through a military prism) and are instead used on foes without a military pot to piss in, killing five here, seven there etc., and still managing to not achieve any worthwhile objectives, unless large numbers of dead Muslims counts.
And then we have the all too familiar blow back from ill conceived foreign policy adventures that relied on either direct military force or behind the scenes attempts at regime change(Iran a long time ago, Afghanistan in the 80's and the more recent disasters in Iraq, Libya and Syria. If the last 19 years of abject military failure, even admitted by the military in the now forgotten Afghanistan Papers, don't open our eyes, then what could?
Perhaps, if you haven't read him, a few books by Andrew Bacevich, his most recent being "After the Apocalypse", might shed some light on a subject he knows both from personal experience and education.
I'll just end with two numbers: 3,000 dead from terrorists, well over 600,000 from a pandemic. In my world one number is quite a bit bigger than the other, but I do know that in the US, 9-11 changed everything, even math.
The difference is that you think government action could do something. I don't. I think it's all just money shoveled into jobs programs that do nothing useful at all other than provide salaries.
I agree although I think it cuts both ways. I have Republican family members and QAnon friends and it’s appalling to me how they so readily dismissed anything that had a modicum of validity to it because they viewed it as liberal bias.
I guess they’re still waiting for anything that had a modicum of believability then. Seems the Orange Bloody Bastard Piss Whore was right on many counts.
I think equally weird, if not even more so, are the legions of Trumpers taking hook, line and sinker literally anything that comes out of his mouth regardless of the lack of studies or evidence about whatever it is he's pushing. For every lefty knee-jerking a Trump claim there's a right winger blindly accepting it. In my opinion, the latter group potentially causes more harm.
“Trump claim”? The Orange Devil was merely trying to give hope by mentioning a few possible paths forward. Your “media” has turned you into a robot for the technocracy. Conflgrats.
You missed my point entirely, but I'll go ahead and humor you by replacing "claim" with "suggestion," "idea" or anything you want to describe what Trump pulls out of his ass. It doesn't change my point that pants-dropping Trump cult members hang on every word he says, giddy with anticipation of their dear leader's latest pandering tweet. That you can't handle even the tiniest grain of criticism of your hero, or offer any valid criticism yourself, outs you, not me, as the robot. Trump doesn't have the slightest business offering medical advice or recommendations of any sort under any conditions, but that doesn't mean crap to the cult. Congrats.
Wow. You smooth-brained shitlibs forget people outside the USA pay for Matt’s work.
A- I’m not a “Trumper”. Don’t care, don’t have to care. (I live blissfully far away from you idiots.)
B- Not once did he “recommend” anything more than an African tribal leader might tell his people that it might rain again- during a prolonging drought.
That's a pretty snippy response from someone who doesn't care. And wherever you're living so blissfully, my fellow idiots invite you to stay there. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
The total membership in the group you carved out as legions are in fact very small in number. I live in a pretty conservative area, and I know of only a couple of drooling fools that would follow Trump no matter what. Secondly, you are trapped by excepting the meme put out about what Trump said. It's been twisted and blown out of proportion.
Just because the Trump crowd has few people who can intelligently represent them in quarters like this, they get maligned by shitbirds who couldn't bother to find out what they actually think. The usual elitism.
Where I live, Iowa, the numbers are much higher. Trump is the overwhelming favorite among the rural folk with virtually zero pushback against any of his actions. His rural base still supported him even when he balked on ending ethanol waivers for small oil refineries, a blow to Iowa's ethanol industry, which involves half of Iowa's corn crop.
And I'm not trapped by any meme. There's no "meme" about Trump. Everything he says publically is on record somewhere, he made sure of that. It's all there on video or in print for anyone to make a judgement about.
I'm a big fan of Matt, but I do think that he's got this one a bit wrong.
"Should the entire world be allowed to practice self-care on a grand scale? That’s a different issue."
It's a different issue--and indeed, it's not the issue here at all. Ivermectin prescriptions are allowed "off-label." Off-label prescribing is a time-honored tradition that allows doctors to prescribe drugs with known safety profiles if they think it might help a condition for which it was not initially approved; think Botox for migraines. 20% of all prescriptions in the USA are off-label, so it's not uncommon. What is uncommon is a regulatory agency stepping into say "doctors cannot prescribe use this product off-label for this specific off-label use."
Additionally, off-label drugs still must be prescribed by a physician. Suggesting that this amounts to "self care on a grand scale" really only makes sense if you define "self care" as "doctors making decisions that are in any way independent of the guidelines set out by regulatory bodies like the CDC." Maybe that kind of top-down approach appeals to some people, but as someone with ME/CFS where the official recommendation was, for years, not only unhelpful but downright dangerous, I have a hard time imagining a worse way to practice medicine. If I'm going to be subject to a potentially harmful procedure, at least give me some choice in the matter!
Finally, as others have mentioned, Ivermectin is probably safer than Tylenol. Heck, unlike with tylenol I don't think you could kill yourself with a bottle of Ivermectin taken all at once (iirc it took 40 mg/kg body weight of ivermectin to kill dogs, and the recommended dose is 0.2-0.4 mg per kg, so you'd need to take 100X the high dose to kill yourself, whereas with Tylenol liver injury becomes possible a little over 4X the recommended dose).
So on the policy front, this is really a fight between those who believe that people should be allowed to make some basic decisions regarding their own lives/bodies/beliefs, and those who believe that any choice which is meaningful is too dangerous to be left up to even trained experts--unless, that is, the trained experts are politically connected and seen on right-thinking news programs.
Which is why I'm sad to see Matt straddling the fence on this one, even a bit.
People with chronic conditions, even more those with chronic conditions that are uncommon, are less naïve about the practice of medicine and have more nuanced and realist takes on guidelines, standards of care, and doctors in general.
I won't pretend to be an expert on botox, but I *think* that this use--permanently paralyzing facial muscles as a way to "remove" wrinkles--is the use it was approved for. But I do know it has a number of other uses for which it was not initially studied, such as helping to control migraines. Maybe it was a bad example--I just googled "botox off label" and found the migraine thing, but wikipedia says that the FDA actually approved this use in 2010. So maybe I should have said that it can be used to treat TMJ, or cervical dystonia, niether of which WIkipedia mentions as having explicitly been OK'd by the FDA as a use for botox.
In any case, it's an example of a drug which doctors are allowed to use in ways not foreseen when it was undergoing the approval trials, and which may or may not have been subsequently studied to an extent that one would find satisfactory. The logic is basically: We know it won't kill you or permanently harm you at this dose so if your doctor wants to give it a try, it's up to them.
But with Ivermectin there has been an effort to disallow doctors from prescribing it for COVID. I tried to get a prescription filled a month or so ago and was told that the pharmacist could lose their license if they gave it to me--in spite of my having a prescription from my doctor. I was told that this was nationwide.
I am also not an expert but a simple search indicates that Allergen first got approval for botox to treat ocular dystonias. It became a payday when it was subsequently discovered that it had a cosmetic application. I don't have time to research it, but I do recall that it was not FDA approved for the off label use, maybe it is now..but I am pretty certain it was not for many years. Botox is arguably more dangerous than Ivermectin yet I can walk into any city clinic and get my wrinkles paralyzed (at a fairly hefty price). I did not have a question, I was making a point. Your experience confirms it.
Off label by definition means the drug is used for an indication different than those for which it is FDA approved. The company that makes is not allowed to market it for indications other than those in the FDA approval. This does not mean it cannot be prescribed by doctors. Off label use of drugs is common practice.
For over half a decade at least, there has been massive pushback against the neo-liberal consensus around the world. Brexit in England. Modi in India. Mouvement des gilets jaunes in France. AFD in Germany. Trump. And so on. And all of that is due to the complete and utter failure of the professional class, at every level.
Now, you might ask, what does that have to do with Ivermectin. Well, everything. You see, all answers about how society should be moving must come from Top. Men. Who went to Harvard, or Oxford, or any other "world-class" institutions of neo-liberalism. But, as we have seen, these places are so ideologically one-sided as to not even know what the questions are that need to be asked, let alone what the right answer might be. But, in all of their wisdom, they know what to do, and any other answers, especially crowdsourced ones such as Ivermectin must be stamped out to allow space for their preferred answer, right or wrong as that may be, politically expeditious as that might be.
No, the response to Covid. The closing the economy, masks, shutting down schools, all of that across the western world. All top-down solutions, that often had no bearing on ordinary peoples lives, who still had to work delivering the food for the professional class, deliver the Amazon order, pack those orders, farm, etc. They didn't get the work from home so precious to the professional class, but they still paid the price in being forced to quit their jobs to watch the kids, making sure the deli meat still got cut for the deliveries, and so on.
We have known how to deal with respiratory diseases for 100 years, through the Spanish Flu, the Hong Kong Flue, and so on. We knew that none of this shit works. But, it was pushed down above and supported by models, models that have had very little resemblance to reality. As I said, right or wrong, it was still that classes prefered answer.
Yes, as to the lockdowns. I got extremely frustrated with my upper middle class friends, software developers all, who kept complaining that people did not stay home and 'do the right thing'.
Since I value the friendships I bit my tongue but I felt like saying something like 'not everyone has the luxury of making a living by sitting in their bedroom tapping on a keyboard'.
Matt is understandably tiptoeing ("the Oxford group will complete their studies, and the public will have an answer") around what potentially might be the worst example of a mass deception in history.
No illness, until COVID19, has been treated by one and only holy medicine (the vaccine), excluding anything else. This by itself is the biggest red flag in the whole unholy story. Every single sick patient, no matter if they are suffering from cancer or a serious flue is a unique human being, reacting differently to various approaches and any conscious doctor, remembering The Hippocratic Oath, would do anything to help a patient - he or she would prescribe, adjust, change the medications and / or approach to the patient's reactions.
But not with COVID19!? Follow the old adagio and follow the money and I am afraid, we'd be getting the true, ugly beyond belief, story about this. And if my worst nightmare has even a modicum of truth in it, I fear we'd yet have to see the worst. "They," that monstrous alliance of the pharmaceutical industry and the government would have to double-down on their dogmatic, bureaucratic approach, and keep pushing this health dogma and ominous population control behind it. I can't believe I believe "they" are that evil, but than...
Absolutely. Vaccines are one of the greatest invention in the history of medicine.
Alas, never before a vaccine was an experimental genetic treatment, not really approved but pushed as an emergency solution (thusly excluding any other treatment for if anything would've been a valid alternative to the vaccine the emergency approval could not have been given). Everything around this pandemic stinks to heavens.
mRNA vaccines have actually been in development for quite some time, and Spinraza has been a game changer for SMA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nusinersen). Other nucleic acid therapies are out there as well. as for the EUA I don't have strong feelings about it but so far safety data is quite reassuring
Well, now you're talking "development" vs. ongoing "treatment." This does not enhance the discussion. At the end, that's the key -- the rampant censorship of any discussion aside the blind adoration of the vaccine dogma is truly bothersome.
I am confused by this statement. It is not censorship to say that there is in fact a great body of evidence to suggest this vaccine is efficacious and safe, as well as other, similarly designed therapies for different diseases. That's me stating an opinion based on my professional expertise.
"quite a few diseases have been cured with vaccines" should read "quite a few diseases have been prevented with vaccines"' Vaccines don't work when you already have the disease.
They do work to attenuate the severity of infection (easy example of this is flu shot) and besides, in my opinion, a disease you don't ever get is as close to the word cure that we have.
I personally don't feel like almost anything we do for medical/surgical management of people's health problems lives up to the promise in the word "cure" but that's just a personal belief
Total agreement. All criticism aside, where would we be right now if Operation Warp Speed had not happened? People would still be dying like flies and we would be waiting another year or two for a vaccine.
Anyone comparing the smallpox vaccines with the Covid vaccines is either very poorly informed or intellectually dishonest. Smallpox vaccines confer sterilizing immunity. Not the case for Covid.
The "sterilizing immunity" of old-fashioned vaccines was a little overblown. Walking around like a smallpox vaccine was like a moon suit protecting you from variola was not all that smart. It's about 95% effective.
Speaking as someone who got a booster in this century.
It is used to make obscene profits at the cost of millions of lives, if this is allowed to go on, the path of our civilization to self extinction is not hard to see... the same is happening with global warming, AKA "climate change" (doesn't sound nearly as bad as global warning, does it...)
Simple reason why Ivermectin has been so totally censored by the media, the medical establishment and the government is this: If there is an effective drug that can cure and kill the virus, then the drug companies would not be able to get emergency use authorization for their experimental drugs, where they are making a killing financially and actually. And talking about double - blind studies, these m-RNA gene therapies (they are not vaccines) have been barely tested, and their testing was only on healthy people between 18-60.
This seems like the obvious reason. But now I'm starting to think it goes even deeper than that, they started clinical trials on the "spike protein" vaccines within two weeks of the virus' emergence, and if the lab leak is true, it looks like the "spike protein" was added to the natureal coronavirus backbone to allow it to access human cells.
As an MD, it seems mighty odd that large double blinded studies are required to give inexpensive harmless medications the green light, when Remdesivir gets approval without proof of efficacy. In fact, Remdesivir has proved to be useless except perhaps within 2 days of symptoms...and that is yet to be proven. Thousands of dollars a pop.
Looking at myself: a fan of science and tech, a strong believer in western medicine and somebody who received an advanced multi discipline hi tech treatment that worked, familiar with Fauci from the AIDS crises days, I have over the course of Covid Pandemic become truly concerned and than outright antagonistic towards CDC, Fauci, AMA and HCP's and see them politicized and run by woke incompetents that intimidate the professionals around them and who should know better. The Wuhan and Lancet fiascos. CDC leadership signing a manifesto arguing against vaccinating the elderly first because whites would benefit disproportionately? Forget the CRT stuff, focus on the fact that people who run that outfit cannot even figure out that if blacks have generally worse health outcomes, as they claim, they would have actually killed tons of orderly blacks if that stupid idea became a policy. The suppression of regular enquiry in cohort with the ad salesman of Big Tech is the biggest tragedy, medieval dark ages style. Fauci went from hero to an old man sorry figure seeking attention and relevance. And all of this against a background of what one could argue was a triumph of science against this deadly disease. So here you have it, transformed from a fan to doubter to animus. And yes my shots worked.
I think you're down playing the ample data on Ivermectin. You didn't address the recent meta-data analysis showing the efficacy of Ivermectin for both treatment and prophylaxis. As Weinstein, Kory and countless highly reputable doctors and researchers have stated, the call for a big-budget, large scale study seems unnecessary in light of all the data coming in from around the globe, and impractical given the limited time we have with respect to virus spread. The squashing of Ivermectin as a covid prevention is, to me, notably egregious especially as more and more news of variant breakthrough infections comes in. As Weinstein points out in the Rogan interview, the inventor of mRNA tech admitted that if a national Ivermectin protocol were put in place the virus could be eradicated. That may sound hyperbolic (and unfeasible) but should at the very least, promote an open and honest discussion about the efficacy of Ivermectin and other repurposed drugs, rather than the myopic hawking of brand new, relatively untested vaccine technology as the sole solution.
The relationship between the major pharmaceutical and corporate interests and the military and economic powers should make the bigger picture quite clear.
They don’t want to allow Ivermectin or discussion of any therapeutics because then the whole justification for their longer term overhauls of the system falls apart….
Whitney Webb’s latest expose should wake anyone up who hasn’t already caught on.
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/06/investigative-reports/a-leap-toward-humanitys-destruction/
I'm loathe to go down that rabbit hole of imagining that this is a money/power grab situation because that would be truly evil to me. But the behaviors are there and are stacking up. If the end game is truly virus mitigation and treatment, why wouldn't all avenues be explored? Especially ones that have been proven to be safe over decades and billions of doses? Why wouldn't they want to combat vaccine hesitancy with alternatives, thereby leading to less virus transmission than with vaccines alone? Like I said, I have my suspicions. But I hope they're wrong.
I appreciated your comments above, and this one as well. It does me no pleasure to encourage you to accept the bad news of the corruption you suspect. To me the evidence is conclusive that our gov't intentionally suppressed ivermectin and similar drugs for the purpose of directing billions to pharma via enforcing vaccines as the sole remedy. Secondary benefit to their strategy is demonstrating state power by sowing fear. The episode is also a searing indictment of the MSM, demonstrating yet again the corrosion caused by TDS. Truth and objectivity are foreign concepts now. Matt here is a Shining Star in that dark universe.
As the 2020 elections unfolded and the evidence of a stolen election mounted, it hurt. I was raised to love this country, and in my 3 score so far I found it mostly deserving of praise, lumps and all. The most essential point of pride was the will of the people expressed via a gov't elected by the people. And now that is torn from us, by the same people who manipulated COVID for money, power, and ideology. It hurts to have your faith broken by bad actors. 2020 sure hurt for me. But you must be true to yourself and accept your own conclusions.
The good news is there will be a tomorrow, almost everyone you meet is a good person, and the idea and promise of America still beats in millions of hearts. Long term, I believe we'll be fine. :)
As long as this nation is filled with mostly people who think the 2016 election was turned by the Russians or the 2020 election was stolen, then, long term, I'm positive things will continue down the shit hole we've been on for decades.
Michael, Unless unless circumstantial and hard evidence, to you, are useless biproducts of critical analysis, then the logical conclusion of 2016 was that the Russia most likely had very little influence. (MT is largely on Substack because he was willing to say that, and that Orange Man was not a Putin conspirator.)
Conversely, 2020 generated a mountain of circumstantial evidence that may not have provided a smoking gun (yet) but is substantially significant enough to warrant grave concern about the legitimacy of the process, if not the outcome. Read the Time article about the "shadow" campaign and tell us that was an altruistic effort. https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
I realize that MT's readers tend to be the kind who call bullshit, regardless of what party shovels it. However, even when running the objective middle of the road, there are times when one finds that they are still on the wrong side of it.
Red or blue, there is plenty of foolishness to go around. Yet the shithole being dug currently is on a scale so grand and agresive that to not call it out and pin it squarely on the left is enough to get the best career umpires banished.
If you think this nation's obvious decline in all matters is due to the "left", which has 0.0% power in this country, then by all means indulge in that fantasy.
This nation is a full blown oligarchy, controlled by one party posing as two, whose primary concern is the maintenance of an empire that is failing on all fronts even as the nation itself is disintegrating, and uses cultural issues to keep both bone spur righties and snowflake libs at each others' throats, as meanwhile the rape continues full speed ahead.
Trump won in 2016 because the elites of both parties were totally removed from the concerns of the people and con man Trump saw that and played the card perfectly. Biden won in 2020 because Trump, true to his inheritance boy nature, couldn't see the pandemic in any terms other than how it might affect his own fortunes, and lacked the emotional maturity to simply say he was wrong in his initial depiction of the pandemic as not a real threat and simply admitted his error, an act that would have required both a level of maturity and concern for others he's never had, and never will.
Trump's great failing is not his narcissism; his is no worse than any other politician you might care to name, but his complete inability to recognize that fact and hide it, as even dumb ass Bush could do, and is surely Obama's greatest strength, which he did let slip with his shameful Flint Michigan performance, where he downplayed lead poisoning and feigned an unquenchable thirst, which one wetting of the upper lip vanquished.
I think everything was suppressed to green light the vaccine acceleration. Remember how Fauci said no way can we get a vaccine by end of 2020? Amazingly, all hurdles were removed, all potential alternatives talked down. Had there been "promising" medicine, the vaccines might have been delayed, more thoroughly tested. I think everyone went all in on the vaccines (incl. Trump) and the vaccine proponents HAD TO BE SQUASHED. Latest research I've seen shows those under 30 are more likely to be hospitalized due to a vaccine reaction than covid. But what do I know. I just read the data. I don't have MD or DO or PhD in my title.
It is interesting that the 'vaccines are the answer' mantra seems to have begun around early April of last year. Although I don't have the references at hand I remember reading that Fauci said something like 'what we need is a vaccine' sometime around that timeframe. And in France Macron took a call from either Gates himself or someone at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in early April, following which Macron publicly announced that the answer to the crisis is a vaccine. Up until that point he was a bit more ambiguous on the right medical approach to the crisis.
Although I don't remember when I saw the clip, I do specifically remember Gates himself being interviewed last year about Covid and saying (here I may be paraphrasing but not by much) 'the only thing that is going to fix this problem is a vaccine'.
When Bill speaks people listen.
I'm not sure the evidence is conclusive... it's more like a retrospective cohort study, warranting further experimentation ;)
I'd caution about ruling out evil. It exists all around us and is hidden when possible, but it is there.
I think we think alike here. I was resisting this hypothesis, too. With HCQ there was so much going on (need for combination versus monotherapy, etc) and the anti-Trump thing was huge. But with the clearer Ivermectin story, we have Occam's razor coming down to pharma.
One way I have thought about it is this: it's not necessarily super-active, but rather it's a network effect. The other day I saw a Twitter thread from someone that they started to shout down the lab leak hypothesis (this was a few weeks back actually) again, but then scientific friends reached out and said to them "hey, this actually might be real". So they stopped shouting it down and got on board. So it's not necessarily pharma actively pushing, but rather the pharma people who went to college with the media voices less actively chilling stories with "advice" and cooling ivermectin.
One thing that baffles me is how pharma could not want this drug to be widely used in the developing world, where no one will pay for their vaccines and now they are being threatened with loss of patent protection and massive IP problems.
Last year, an executive for Goldman Sachs reminded the attendees at a conference for the pharmaceutical industry that there's no profit in curing people. This is on record, although had it not been disclosed by independent media we'd never have heard about it.
Politicians are almost all sociopaths. There's way more "evil" than you may believe. The word "evil" has such religious connotations that I am reluctant to use it, but the common meaning of the word describes the situation and TPTB. 911, whether you want to believe it or not, had the direct involvement of our government and that was evil. There have been many false flags and there will more. Beware.
I wonder if the upcoming military “exercise” Sea Breeze led by the US, the UK and 30 other countries in The Black Sea near Ukraine might be the CFR’s latest military wet dream to get in Russia’s face by literally threatening to invade Crimea?:
https://seemorerocks.is/hal-turner-it-starts-next-week-june-28/
While we are discussing Covid, Kamala’s non-border visit etc., Biden and Co. are up to no good thousands of miles from our shores wasting more billions on provocative military exercises when the money could be used instead to better the lives of the American people.
We are being so punked.
Things are definitely in an end-game situation. These acts of encirclement and massive exercises are not signs of strength, they are signs of weakness and desperation. All their regime change and economic warfare tactics have failed. This is all they have left, but the reality is that Russia unveiled their new generations of weapons. The US and NATO are generations behind, there is no tactical or strategic way in which they could win.
But these guys really believe in the whole idea of just managing perception, trying to trip people up and getting them to psych themselves out.
It just shows how completely incompetent and rotted out with decadence the Western oligarchy has become.
On the other hand, the sooner we recognize the West has completely lost and is completely bankrupt, we can actually start talking about dealing with the realities and actually engaging other nations and cultures in a manner informed by an actual understanding of the history and culture of nations outside the West, and our common interests in mutual economic development, especially in the domain of science and infrastructure.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/06/25/russia-wants-to-be-relevant-feels-squeezed-by-china-and-other-popular-delusions-of-a-dying-technocracy/
If I were Putin, i'd have a couple regiments of Backfires ready for that event.
A US Navy without Phoenix missiles would be hard-pressed to deal with an attack such as that.
I agree, Jennifer. The anecdotes provided by Matt are also somewhat misleading in that ivermectin is probably not a miracle cure for patients near death. I recently watched an excellent discussion by Dr. Darrell DeMello (based in Mumbai) with Dr. Mobeen Syed (based in the U.S. or Canada, I believe) -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdKgxv5e2kk. Dr. DeMello claims outstanding success with his treatment plan which includes anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory drugs along with ivermectin (antiviral) when first presented with symptoms, rather than waiting for a test to confirm. He says that patients die from the immune response rather than from the virus directly. So it's important to prevent the problems the virus causes, and before irreparable damage is done.
His comments jibe with what I've heard from Weinstein and Kory -- the clinicians who have a lot of experience treating COVID patients directly and observing the results should be taken more seriously in relation to the scientists looking for definitive proof. Something is lost when we demand perfectly pure studies that try to remove all potentially complicating factors. Something is gained when we admit to the complexity of the interactions as observed on a first hand basis.
Mobeen is amazing. Love him. Hi from Ypsi 👋🏻
I agree with you Jennifer. I have been following this situation with growing alarm. There are many people discussing it and some going so far as to suggest that a crime against humanity has taken place. One of the less obvious conclusions that I have drawn is the fact that algorithms don't work. I am pretty sure that an honest investigation by unbiased staff at Facebook would not have prohibited discussion of Ivermectin. So it may be evidence that management solutions proposed by big tech don't work. You will notice that there is trolling going on here on Matt's substack. Someone is motivated to follow this and get us to argue about silly stuff and finally get exhausted from fighting trolls. I don't know what Matt can do about this. My question is who pays these people? I am pretty sure that corporations are paying trolls. Foreign governments may or may not be doing it but I am willing to bet that most trolls that absolutely ruin online discussion are paid well by our very own US corporations. Maybe Matt can look at what is going on right now on his new site and discover something?
The problem is that you think there are unbiased staff at Facebook.
Trolls, shills, whatever... they're here to make sure Matt doesn't deviate to much from 'the narrative'. It's okay to be an investigative journalist and all but deviating too far from the accepted version can have dire effects on your income and your standing in the 'progressive' community.
I think he's choosing not to take a position in the scientific and medical aspects of the conversation. And I'll come to his defense for that. Do you remember his story about the overreach of journalists fact-checking into adjudicating scientific controversies?
And reading through the comments here I don't have the impression that Matt not positively boosting ivermectin is doing it any harm at all. On the contrary, he's letting us come to our own conclusions and those are overwhelmingly skewing one way. So the cause is being served even while Matt sticks to a journalistic principle, about which he just recently made a song-and-dance. I don't see a big problem.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/fact-checking-takes-another-beating
A meta-analysis is simply a summary of a bunch of smaller studies. It absolutely doesn't rise to the level of evidence on which to base medical decisionmaking. Sorry, but you have been misinformed.
What exactly am I misinformed about? I never said a meta analysis was on par with large scale studies. I said given the volume of global data (smaller studies arguably being a better indicator as their aggregate signals aren't easily corrupted by a singular misstep) and the limited time we have for virus mitigation, a large scale study would be unnecessary and impractical.
I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean by " smaller studies arguably being a better indicator as their aggregate signals aren't easily corrupted by a singular misstep," but if I did, then you are incorrect.
Large, multi-center prospective clinical trials are the gold standard because they establish an apples to apples comparison as best as possible in the real world.
A meta-analysis - which is basically a big book report in which someone gives you their opinion about someone else's work - is the exact opposite. You compare apples from one study to pears from another study to oranges from a 3rd. This is intuitively less useful in every single way than a multi center clinical trial.
So am I to understand that you are advocating for waiting for your gold standard testing rather than trying a treatment with multiple efficacy studies and decades worth of safety data? And the promising prophylaxis statistics should be brushed aside and squashed for the vaccines that are proving to be questionable in the face of variants (not to mention the adverse reactions and safety issues cropping up). My issue is with the denial of discussion about possible alternative treatments. Clinging to your "gold standard" makes me relieved you're not my doctor.
Jennifer, it's not clear to me what you understand, if anything at all. You misuse terms and exhibit a generally poor understanding of the topic at hand.
It certainly is curious to me that you have such strong opinions on this topic. Do you have strong opinions on foreign currency exchange markets? How about nuclear physics?
None of those? So why experimental therapeutics for severe COVID-19?
You should know that interactions like this are why I chose a job in medicine where your opinions about me are very unlikely to matter should you be in need of my services, which generally are reserved for people who would die without them.
Should you require them every in the future by some stroke of chance, know that I would care for you with the same dedication and vigilance that I would give my family. Whether or not you would be thankful for them is utterly irrelevant.
Please let me know exactly which terms I have misused and what makes you think I am uninformed about the topic at hand. Because I assure you, I am not.
Also, you haven’t answered my question. Are you advocating for squashing a drug with efficacy and safety data in the middle of a pandemic because it hasn’t reached your gold standard of study?
You are not a doctor. That much is clear.
That you dispense so much condescension in light of that fact is truly disturbing.
Horatio, great reply from your lofty perch. Bravo, I say. But next time yell a little louder to us little people- we'll all feel better about it knowing our places.
Hey why are you so rude and arrogant?
You seem very lovely!
"Large, multi-center prospective clinical trials are the gold standard because they establish an apples to apples comparison as best as possible in the real world. "
Hmmmm. Too bad this gold standard doesn't apply to the vaccines. Because if it did then it would have been approved by the FDA.
How large, with multi-center prospective clinical trials were the current vaxes subjected to?
You don’t know basic terms. You’re embarrassing yourself. It’s like you’re addicted.
If one multi center clinical trial was the standard, the FDA wouldn't require two successful clinical trials for drug approval. They are applying exactly the logic Jennifer asserts - that one trial may suffer from some unknown bias.
you are being deliberately obtuse and come across as arrogant. RCT's have many serious limitations.
You said a large scale study was unnecessary because of “data coming in from across the globe”, which is completely untrue. A bunch of small studies showing efficacy is not the same as a large multi-center clinical trial. We already lived this story before with hydroxychloroquine. It’s not true we don’t need that data, and it’s not true that omitting a bunch of tiny studies as evidence from an article is “downplaying the ample data”. To be honest, it seems like you have a pretty poor grasp on statistics and how data around medical studies work.
I said a large scale study was unnecessary and impractical in the context of a mass-casualty inducing pandemic, in light of the data coming in from across the world. As to your reference to "a bunch of tiny studies", I'll just refer you to the detailed posts found throughout this comments section. You may want to read up.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ivermectin-is-the-new-hydroxychloroquine-take-2/
The only way to know for sure is by a large scale study as meta data analysis does not account for variables nor differing methodologies of the studies analyzed.
That is precisely what meta-analysis does.
You sir are misinformed - if I may kindly say so -
You clearly have not been trained in medical epidemiology or statistics.
Please do not say things or spread things online that are simply untrue.
RCT almost always have some kind of bias - ie when the drugs are begun in the illness time course - the dosing of the drugs may be too high in one and too low in another RCT, the patient population may be totally different.
Very sophisticated statistics have been developed that are able to put multiple RCT together into a large study called a meta-analysis. The biases of the individual studies is then minimized and researchers can glean signals that are not present in a single one.
Meta-analysis of RCT have been the gold standard of drug efficacy and safety for as long as I have been a physician - just look at the pages of any Annals of Internal Medicine or NEJM. The same can be said about studies evaluating diagnostic testing.
That all of a sudden all kinds of shade is being thrown on meta-analysis is very telling in my opinion. People like you are not approaching this in good faith. The readers of your comment need to know this. You have not a clue what you are talking about.
Also, a meta analysis is not just a "summary of a bunch of smaller studies". That's an absolute minimization. It's a detailed analysis of said studies in order to come to a broader conclusion.
"Detailed analysis" is very generous. At best you're aggregating patient cohorts with optimistically comparable demographics. They are retrospective, they have issues with finding appropriate control cohorts, and they suffer from the fundamental sin of multiple statistical testing as well (re-analysis results in multiple testing by definition, increasing the likelihood of Type II error
A so-called doctor who missed the lesson on hierarchy of evidence.
Reading through his comments, I’m genuinely baffled. He dismisses ivermectin as a “silly” drug and the testing of it a waste of time, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, during a pandemic when masses are dying and we don’t have the luxury of meeting the highest goals of study. And rather than provide a solid, robust debate from his alleged position in the medical profession, he links to one study claiming that ivermectin is of no benefit in severe cases. That’s it. That’s the evidence he gives for his opinion that the discussion and study of a safe drug that has shown across the world to be highly effective in early to moderate treatment as well as a prophylactic against a devastating new virus is a “waste of time”.
I’m not baffled anymore. At first I thought he was an intern playing grownup. Upon sober reflection it’s obvious he is a paid pharma shill. Just a touch of scientific training as these shills typically have, just enough to sound slightly credible.
Shown in very small studies with certain cohorts. Why is it to difficult to acknowledge the ĺimitations of the available evidence? You ask for a robust debate yet we have no robust evidence.
Try one of the vaccines, those actually work.
You should watch how Dr Kory handles your concern regarding meta-data on the Rogan show.
This guy will not watch that or educate him on the subject because he is being purposefully obtuse and trying to keep out anything that will pop his bias bubble.
well said
WL, I've read your many posts and assuming you are who you say you are (an MD and PhD), I have a few questions for you: Is Ivermectin proven safe ? If not, why not? If yes, do you believe adults should have the right to request this drug as a prophylactic or treatment? If not? why?
I'm not a doctor nor a veterinarian, but the anthelmintic, ivermectin, has a proven safety record and requires a very substantial overdose to begin to cause adverse side effects. All one has to do to know this is to read the package inserts which describe clinical trials. I've used it for decades on horses and dogs.
...who often have reactions to medications that humans tolerate.
What do you mean "proven safe?" Lots of things are safe when they are taken at certain doses for the treatment of certain diseases, and not safe when taken at other doses in different context. Ivermectin is a great way to de-worm your cattle AND your mother, too! No arguments here.
I think adults have the right to request whatever drugs they want for whatever reasons they want. Happens all the time! Physicians are also allowed to say no. Sorry, you do not have a constitutional right to prescription drugs.
Patients are also allowed to find other physicians who will write them silly drugs for silly reasons. totally fine by me. Not my patient, not my problem. People choose to drink and smoke and shoot heroin every day too - I'm not stressed about that either.
What surprises me about the response of some physicians to ivermectin is the total absence of curiosity, much less excitement, around the effectiveness of ivermectin as a treatment for Covid.
I would hope that my response as a physician to hearing someone like Kory describe his results with the drug and seeing what it seems to have done in India would be something along the lines of 'Holy Cow, this stuff may be the answer to the problem. Let's get it on it. Now!'.
Instead we seem to hear a lot of patronizing pooh poohing over trial sizes and structure. I find this cool response inconsistent with wanting to fix the problem, and save lives, being the overriding priority.
I am in a town with a supposed world class medical establishment. The physicians I see are incurious and basically uninterested in the medical conditions they see. Most act like they are shopkeepers ( I have great respect for working shopkeepers) in that they open shop and close shop and spend their time thinking about their real estate deals and investments rather than reading the literature, thinking about anomalies in patient's presentation, etc. This is a generalization, since I have been treated my some thoughtful people; but they are rare.
When I was a post-doc in NY Medical Centers this was definitely not the case, and I had long conversations about medicine with my physicians. Whether this is the fault of the control of corporate medicine today, I do not know, but physicians may simply not have the time or motivation to engage in medicine given the control of their practices by the MBAs.
Yes, and how much rigorous testing did the "rushed through" vaxes go through?
The physician sunshine act and subsequent policies have limited this a lot. Some physicians do bank off of drug companies but it is a minority. Most are probably too busy seeing patients and getting through their endless amount of Charting to garner more interest than looking at the cdc website, uptodate, and a few news stories here and there. Your average physician is not the enemy. It is the power brokers.
Word games. Yes, at prescribed levels. (as the saying goes: water can be fatal if too much is ingested). And if you were my physician and provided that response, I'd find another doctor. Let me just say that I seriously doubt you are an MD by your comment : "Ivermectin is a great way to de-worm your cattle AND your mother, too! " Surely as a physician, you would know that it has been used to great success to cure River Blindness and Elephantiasis, among other human conditions (and, btw, I AM a mother and you are an asshole ). That comment is a give-away: You are not an MD.
As a physician I believe he probably is a doctor. Physicians are a cynical and snarky bunch. Largely (I contend) as a defense against an ever imposing health care system and demanding patients— as Matt proposed, capitalist medicine is a very mixed bag. Hospital systems must squeeze more “production” out of their docs and this created great moral distress and cynicism from those who didn’t go into the job expecting to be treated as cattle… so we make cattle jokes. It’s not good but it’s there.
I am curious on one point. Many people suspect that physicians are somehow captured by Big Pharma. Although there may be other vectors out there, I can think of three ways this might happen:
1) a doc works for a large practice or hospital which has some arrangement with the pharma companies (discounted medications, for example) and so is actively encouraged to promote the Big Pharma 'take'.
2) an individual doc might be given soft perks by Big Pharma - all expense paid trips for him or her (and the spouse) to attend this or that medical conference, which just so happens to be at a resort location, for example.
3) some sort of direct payment (or, in plain language, kickback) arrangement whereby an individual doctor is actually somehow directly compensated by a drug company for prescribing a certain medication.
Can you comment on (or refute) these or other arrangements? Thanks.
Thanks for your perspective.
But ivermectin is used to deworm humans.
A good deworming is good for everyone.
I’d be curious if you’ve applied the same level of scrutiny to the covid vaccines. Are you at all concerned that they simply don’t have a safety record beyond a few months?
Exactly!
Apparently you are only "stressed" by the fact that an off-patent drug widely used around the planet with virtually zero adverse effects is far more effective than the expensive drugs pushed by big Pharma. Your linguistic dissembling is par for the course for Lefty hacks.
I'm an MD and your bias is clear and against the scientific published papers out there.
I think you might understand meta-analysis better if you watch the segment where this is discussed on the JRE podcast. (sorry don't have time stamp) Nonetheless, I think your understanding is incorrect on a fundamental level.
Wow Horatio, your condescension and Gish gallops sure scream Industry Professional.
People need realize pig pharma knew 1+yr ago that HCQ+zn & IVM worked to zap C19! To get EUAs for experi vaxes, they censored/prevented world from learning about HCQ & IVM efficacy, willfully condemning millions to suffering and DEATH. Why is that not premeditated mass murder? And all the pretend MDs blathering here are complicit. Shills are compensated in blood money. Not worth it for a decent human being.
You are correct on HCQ (see Didier Raoult for chapter and verse) and your question is apt.
The war on generics has certainly not been confined to the US - it has been a worldwide assault but most effective in the western world. Poorer countries have - to their credit - had less patience with Big Pharma's agenda.
Conspiracy alert. Ignore.
Straw man alert.
WL: good luck to you on this site, armed with your viable reading of the best research, you expertise in the field, comprehension of the available data, no left/right blinders, no apparent iron in the political fires. Commenters here know what they like, and like what they know
You underestimate this audience. And how could you know this poster is reading the 'best' research? How could you verify their expertise in the field? Even if they are a PhD MD, they very well may not have any specialized knowledge relevant to the topic. Here you must rely on the merit of your comments - we've been doing the forum thing for decades and anonymous appeals to authority are worthless in the absence of substantial contributions to the conversation.
It’s a paid poster praising another paid poster.
To put it charitably; MT's Ivermectin articles seem to have summoned several never-before-seen commenters out of the woodwork, a few of whom specialize in tedious ad hominem attacks and/or invective.
Perhaps they are, in fact, longtime subscribers who have become suddenly enthused and energized by this topic.
If you look at the areas of industry knowledge and contrast them to the gaps (an “ER” doc? Is this 1988? Lol), the pattern fits a pharma rep quite well. Which is more evidence that the entire narrative is paid for.
On the other hand, if there really is someone out there willing to pay me for this shit, then I ain't gonna get in the way of THAT payday....
It's "commenter," not "poster." And the only remuneration I seek is the lord's blessing for my humble truth seeking, and his unwavering faith in my blessed pursuit of certain eternal truths, truths that will make me free, and deliver me to the gates of heaven, where eternal life awaits.
Me underestimate this audience? I doubt that. I'm continually wowed by this audience. This audience, for me---or so I like to think---continually surpasses expectations every day, almost on every thread.
I don't know anything about this guy, WL, who I'm told is now commenting under the nom de plume "Horatio." This development certainly ought to be scrutinized and carefully monitored. And I'd like updates whenever available. What's the consensus here with this WL/Horatio fellow anyway? A no-goodnik, a mountebank? Maybe a russian outfit guy on the run, here on TK cosplaying an ersatz suburban PCP (that's "primary care physician," not "phenylcyclohexyl piperidine") presenting himself as fully up-to-snuff on this Ivermectin thing? I hereby retract any sort of "supporting" comment or comments that I may have leant this eery fellow previously. It's gotten our man Sevender, here, thinking I'm on the take. If only it were so! Working one of the substack back alleys for Big Vaccine! Convince'em that a tin of Skoal is more effective than that ivymarxin concoction in treat'n "The Virus." Why, it's mostly sulphur, magnesium and a touch of molasses. Everyone knows that! Winners dance with the spike protein! What's a matter, kid---you 'fraid of needles? But in my defense, once you've heard one IVM salesman, you have heard them all.
Question. Why would anyone who is not a medical professional, with absolutely no formal training in medicine, think that parroting reams of second-hand information on a topic such as the drug ivermectin is a valuable use of their time? Or if you were a medical professional, but with no special knowledge or expertise of ivermectin or complex viruses in general, why would you proselytize for or against Ivermectin? Especially in a forum such as this one? Why do I think WL/Horatio knows what he's talking about? That he's a reliable guide to the efficacy of IVM in treating covid-19? I don't. Nor could I possibly know whether he's spot-on or a falling-down fraud. Nor, knowing myself, could I possibly ever care about such a thing. Why would anyone who is not trained and educated in such matters, even attempt to speak authoritatively on a subject like ivermectin---the nuances and complexities of which are quite clearly beyond their grasp? Answer me, kids---what's this debate really about?
It's too bad because it's very much against the entire ethos of why I read Taibbi to begin with. I'm just jousting at windmills, but thanks for the kind words :)
I think WL is now Horatio... and I agree with your assessment.
What kind of lowlife sociopath earns a living spewing deadly lies for venal vax cartel predators? Paid by the word or the corpse?
The usual garden variety run of the mill deadly lie spewing lowlife sociopath...(?)
LOL
And if meta analysis doesn't rise to that high level then what does mr. expert opinion? Balderdash!! That is exactly the best evidence because individual trials can have errors baked in. You should really read more!
Brilliant summary! The officials at Metck who so subtly nudged the suppression of Ivermectin should be charged with manslaughter.
Agree... lives are at stake, and that should be front and center of EVERYONE'S thinking!
Meta data analysis lacks control of multiple variables although algorithms an be use to minimize biases associated with those variables. There are positive signs that it works albeit the studies are small in number. Further studies are warranted.
Further studies are always warranted. That doesn’t mean that they’re required. In this case the combination of existing evidence and the overall pros and cons appear to be easily in favour of it.
Oh I absolutely think it’s worth trying ivermectin; I just don’t think we have conclusive evidence.
The evidence for ivermectin and fluvoxamine is a hell of a lot better than it ever was for remdesivir, yet somehow the expensive on-patent drug that requires a hospital stay got pushed a lot harder by everyone in charge.
The pharmaceutical companies appear to have fully captured the regulatory process, the media (with massive sums spent on advertising), and the medical journals which are instrumental in the peer review process. I simply cannot come up with another explanation that covers the full breadth of resistance to using it even trying safe and well understood drugs that happen to be off-patent. The Argentinian results on ivermectin alone are sufficient reason to prescribe it given its safety profile.
The mention of Merck downplaying ivermectin is particularly aggravating because even though they developed it, they stand to lose money if it gained acceptance over their on-patent drugs and their co-development of the J&J vaccine.
This fiasco should be a wake-up call to the entire medical industry that the system is broken and ethics are practically non-existent. And I say that as someone who wholly opposes socialized healthcare (Although I think the CDC has completely justified my resistance to it in the past year).
Patients can be treated for one dollar with hydroxycloroquin or ivermectin while Remdesivir costs $3,000 per treatment. Does capitalism have a play in this?
Capitalism per se isn't to blame. Regulatory capture isn't a feature of capitalism, it is a corruption of the functions of government, i.e. it's a failure of democracy. Capitalism provides the structural incentives for the concentration monopolistic corporate power but allowing that power to own what should be our government is a political failure.
And the intransigence of academics, professionals, bureaucrats etc. once they have staked out a position isn't a feature of capitalism, it's human nature.
Who corrupts the functions of government? Who has the means and desire to do so? When the only goal is profit, all means are acceptable for achieving that goal.
I think that left to its own devices, capitalism will indeed degenerate into a few monopolists controlling everything. In fact, we see it around us every day.
The fact YouTube can do what it does is the direct result of the monopoly power.
"Who corrupts the functions of government?" Good question. It's been well know for thousands of years that unfettered creditor power always defeats democracy one way or another. So our first job as a democracy with a market economy is to fetter creditors and the concentration of capital and the power that comes with it.
Americans bought into the Reagan/Clinton ideology so completely that even now, after four years of Trump and the year of our plague, they still want it (Biden). That ideology was explicit: remove government.
Now to your question... who did this? We did it. All the boomers and most of the genxers who cling to this bankrupt theology need to die before the rest of us get another crack at it.
Nice, if morbid reply <g>
The very best evidence-based treatment for hospitalized COVID-19 patients is IV dexamethasone which is a fairly old, inexpensive, readily available steroid
You mean the exact corticosteroid that Dr Kory was instrumental in getting accepted as a treatment for COVID-19 despite receiving huge pushback and criticism at the time? Yes, it’s almost like people should be paying attention to him again this time, right?
Bingo. Organizing pneumonia.
** specific pharmacotherapy to be clear, most "care" has nothing to do with a specific drug but rather supportive measures like fluid and blood pressure support, airway support etc
Thanx for that. It's not just about the drug.
Well, for most diseases, there is no "single drug." In COVID-19, it will depend on how sick they are.
If they have a cough and headache they can take tylenol and stay at home or whatever.
If they have florid ARDS and are brought in by ambulance in distributive shock with ground-glass opacities on CXR and sats in the toilet, they are going to get RSI dose roc and etomidate and I am going to put a tube in their throat to help them breathe.
Then they will get a million other drugs to manage their other problems like norepinephrine for hypotension, bicarb to correct their acidosis, some kind of sedative drip like ketamine to keep them comfortable while they are intubated and proned, Lasix to clear their extra fluid when they inevitably develop kidney failure if they're here long enough, and so on and so forth.
Thats why IDGAF about ivermectin or remdesivir or any of those drugs that, at the very least, I can say for certain are not a silver bullet. If they don't get the patient to walk out of the ICU - if we're measuring success in meaningless terms - who cares?
I believe that most people that are advocating ivermectin are seeing it being used well before people land in the ICU. It is best used either for prophylaxis or treatment in the viral stage.
You say "If they have a cough and headache they can take tylenol and stay at home or whatever."
The 'whatever' is ivermectin and if they took that you would have a lot less to deal with in the ICU.
That's exactly what I was going to say...if I knew what it all meant...😳
I think these issues get lost in the stupidities of everyone imagining they know something about the topic because they saw it on the internet, when, in fact, they don't have a clue. IADGAF when mopes that have no apparent connection to ongoing issues suddenly turn up on Joe Rogan and Youtube and suddenly gain validity via pop exposure and watch YT stuff all the time, but I do NOT get my medical advice on either one. Generally, I like Joe, but the credibility some seem to think is imparted by Joe is idiotic. It's Joe. It's pop culture, not medical proficiency.
$3000 a dose vs. $2 a dose, and ivermectin probably more effective.
Money honey. Screw healing.
'Appear to" is the understatement of the century. There's money to be made and everyone is whoring.
Except that the COVID-19 Plandemic was just that: planned and released.
So.. it follows logic.
Hmm, plandemiic? Can I patent the word? 😅 No, full disclosure - I didn't invent the word.
The evidence for all of these drugs is fairly poor. I do agree that it is ridiculous that remdesivir got an EUA, though to be fair there are even worse offenders. ie. bamlanivimab (probably didn't spell correctly, but it's eli lilly's product).
Regardless of whether it has been conclusively shown to help with Covid or there are only indications it might help, ivermectin has been widely prescribed for decades with minimal adverse reactions. I don’t see why doctors shouldn’t prescribe it prophylactically like they do all kinds of things that might help and almost certainly won’t hurt, like taking daily low-dose aspirin as a blood thinner for people with heart disease or hypertension. The fact that the medical establishment is so against it while obfuscating exactly why seems suspicious. I have read speculation that if ivermectin is effective at treating Covid it would interfere with the emergency use authorizations for the (very lucrative) vaccines, so maybe that’s the reason.
There is a large amount of very conclusive, high quality evidence that effective pharmacotherapeutic control of high blood pressure can lower your all-cause mortality risk largely by preventing or slowing the progression of cardiovascular disease. same for
There is a small amount of low quality evidence of mixed conclusions to suggest that ivermectin might be helpful in the setting of COVID-19. I linked one of those studies above, but I will repost it here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33175880/
I am not sure who you are referring to when you refer to "the medical establishment" as there are lots of different organizations I could imagine falling under that umbrella, but there is generally no interest in it because there haven't been any specifically effective therapies for COVID-19 (excepting vaccination).
The strongest evidence for any drug in the treatment of COVID-19 is the use of the steroid dexamethasone for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. You can read that study here. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2021436
The evidence is not low quality. Catch up.
I have an MD and a PhD. How about you?
Why would Oxford bother with yet another study if there were no "there" there? There are more studies regarding the efficacy of Ivermectin than Remdesivir, yet Remdesivir is FDA approved for Covid 19 treatment. Since Ivermectin has been proven to be safe, and there is at least evidence that it might be helpful, there is no down side to using it that I can see. Better to bless doctors to prescribe the human kind than to have people eating horse-paste, right? By the way, I don't have an MD or a PhD and I've been drinking.
To be fair you're right there is enough interest that someone is looking into it. Good. I don't have a problem with that. I just think it will be a waste of time, but I am of a fairly cynical nature because I have seen both sides of the benchtop to bedside research pipeline.
There is always a downside to using drugs, even if it is subtle. If you had a headache and I told you to take Miralax because it might help, would you? Why not?
If you can't answer that question, then I'm curious about the interest in ivermectin - an anti-worm drug - to treat a viral infection with superimposed multisystem critical illness (ARDS) with autoimmune features.
The argument that has been advanced by Dr Kory and others is extremely thready, heavily based in benchtop science hypotheses (mice and cells in a dish) that did not produce an effect in the best trial on the topic that I've read to date. You can read that one here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33175880/
You seem to be missing quite a lot of research (it has moved well beyond "mice and cells in a dish"). I doubt if you have even read the most of the studies (another good one just came out of Israel). Many years before the pandemic, researchers were already investigating Ivermectin's antiviral capabilities for other viral illnesses - that is how the critical care doctors discovered it during the pandemic. There are doctors and researchers from major universities in the US and all over the world who began using it and recognized a signal. Why would these practicing doctors and researchers risk their credibility? The fact is, people are wired not to put their livelihoods in jeopardy, so that just bolsters their credibility. There is no ROI in trying to change your mind (your bias is showing, in any event). I have learned during the pandemic that the layers of bias that envelop people are pretty much intractable. The fact is, it really doesn't matter if I convince you or not (and you're probably a troll and I'm probably wasting my time right now). I'll tell you what is really telling, and that is when Facebook and Youtube take down any post mentioning the word "Ivermectin" and all of the "articles" start coming out leading with the words "horse paste" or "anti-worm drug" when describing Ivermectin.
I realized that I didn't answer your question about Mirilax: your analogy is a logical fallacy. However, assuming, arguendo, that Mirilax had notside effects and was generally considered safe, and I trusted your judgment because you convinced me on some level of your authority and trustworthiness, I might just try it (in other words, there is no downside so why not?).
That’s an interesting question.
“There is always a downside to using drugs, even if it is subtle. If you had a headache and I told you to take Miralax because it might help, would you? Why not?”
If a patient was dying, does it matter that they are given a placebo? If all other options have been tried, and they are still dying, would it harm them to swallow a placebo? This drug isn’t harming the patient, unless they have some sort of allergic reaction to it. It has been given to humans billions of times. So it’s effects on Covid are, at worse neutral and at best life-saving. I’d say a doctor would be fulfilling his oath to do no harm if he prescribed the drug for patients that had not improved with any other treatment.
IVM warrior.
You are still full of it. You know better than Kory, Barody, McCullough, Risch, Marek, Varon, Syed, Lawrie, Zelenko and thousands frontline MDs risking their reps to save lives? Yuch to your puny degrees, only make you credentialed blowhard.
You have a bruised ego because you're mad about something you truly don't understand. So sorry!!! Consider taking a walk :)
Hey WL and others, thanks for acting out that whole populist/anti populist drama Matt describes in the article. Very illustrative!
IVM warrior.
Mengele too had an MD and a PhD.
Ouch!!
I have laughter for your pathetic attempts to argue from authority.
So you think it's better to argue from a place of total ignorance? That is clearly your strategy so, bold move.
Looks like we found the proverbial doctor at the bottom of the class.
Do you understand what a false dichotomy is?
A really obtuse IVM warrior.
I think it was those with MDs and PhDs who were behind the hormone replacement debacle for menopausal women. My experience in that era eroded my trust in the recommendations of medical professionals and it has not recovered.
Oh - so you're one of the experts.
Almost certain he's not what he says he is. Prove me wrong WL.
No you don’t. The fact that you can’t recognise that your response is a complete non sequitur shows that you probably don’t have what it takes to achieve either of those qualifications.
Gibsons Law...For every PhD, there is an equal and opposite Phd...
Would you want him as your surgeon?
Compared to you? 😆 😆 😆
IVM warrior.
So is it your position that any mention of the drug should be censored off the internet until there are higher quality studies, Dr? Or that hospitals should refuse to administer it when prescribed? Do you have any conflicting interests to disclose?
I don't think anything should be censored off the internet. That's silly.
I don't think that it should be given to treat COVID-19 because there isn't any evidence that it works.
I'm not opposed to somebody else studying it further to see if it does, but seems likely to be a waste of time, based on my knowledge of the literature that is out there.
Lol, and no, I have no conflicting interests to disclose, but that's funny. Does the free breakfast burritos at grand rounds count?
“based on my knowledge of the literature”
So, nothing.
If you had said “sufficient evidence” you might have at least sounded like you were trying. But saying “any evidence” shows that you either know nothing about this topic or you are a deliberate liar.
What is the downside of ivermectin? Is there a serious risk of harm to the patient?
Thanks for being a voice of reason here. It’s clear that people want ivermectin to be everything it’s claimed to be because it will back up their prior view that this is a global conspiracy. This is not about ivermectin at all, it’s just a means to an end to confirm a world view. Bret has clearly jumped the shark, just look at his last few posts.. he is devolving in front our eyes… sad.
Agreed.
There you go! We have a winner! In the category: "Why are all the nut jobs so enthralled with ivermectin"? They're IVM warriors!
Do you have anything to offer except for an ad hominem? Your lack of substantive argument speaks volumes.
Matt: I have virtually attended several conferences featuring the doctors and researchers who either conducted Ivermectin studies or who are utilizing it in practice. I have been following the Ivermectin story since April of last year, when I first heard about it from an educational (not fringe) YouTube channel called MedCram. The doctor who mentioned Ivermectin in those videos is a quadruple board certified M.D. and professor of medicine at Riverside in California. There are many, many highly credentialed doctors from all over the world touting the benefits of Ivermectin. So how do you reconcile the support and advocacy of all of these big medical brains (and all of the published studies) with this being a DIY populist movement? I would have never chosen to take Ivermectin as a prophylaxis (the human kind, prescribed by a doctor and not a veterinarian) if not for the doctors and scientists supporting it. By the way, I am a pretty lefty person who became disillusioned with "my people" during the pandemic. They were on the wrong side of so many things, including this.
Have your people changed over the last few years? A lot of folks on your side of the aisle are asking that question.
On ivermectin, good points. MedCram is a very solid site which I have dipped into a time or two but did not know they were looking into ivermectin.
Same same same. We got our hands on IVM after hearing that some people are using it for long haulers issues. It’s awesome! Big improvements in our house. 👏🏻
I graduated from nursing school 45 years ago and have had a front row seat to observe the deterioration of medical care -- all of it -- from the compromised ethics of doctors (no, not all of them), the gouging of patients for life saving drugs, crippling insurance rates and co-pays and ridiculous hospital charges. The profit motive, belief that in every case they are NEVER to be questioned and, sorry to say, a lack of empathy that is directly related to the time spent face to face with the patient.
I'll give you an example -- an elderly man was admitted to our unit after a suicide attempt. His family doctor sent word by his son that he had been put on a certain antidepressant drug recently and was concerned it had had an adverse effect. I showed the note to his physician and rather than discussing this with the patient and the family, arrogantly doubled the drug. His reason? "They don't know what they're talking about." It doesn't take too many encounters like this for people to lose faith.
Your comment resonates deeply with me. I've had fatigue and depression most of my life and spent literally decades trying to figure it out. Almost every doctor I saw put me on anti-depressants, which made me feel weird. I wondered how many doctors actually knew what anti-depressants make you feel like (I suspect not many). Anyway, I finally found an endocrinologist in private practice who was not hamstrung by "the system." She diagnosed a genetic disorder (confirmed via DNA) that would have eventually and slowly killed me if I had not figured it out. I think the medical system is designed to keep you miserable and tethered to it in perpetuity.
What I've seen over and over is doctor's don't really listen to patients. It's as if they've already made up their mind what's wrong and ignore any information that doesn't fit with their preconceived diagnosis. I think in some ways, this has impacted their willingness to listen to individual accounts of effectiveness of ivermectin (not to mention its been politicized).
That is why you have to own your own health and what is being done. Just like you did.
Amen. I was in the field from the late 70s to early 90s and I too have witnessed how the field has deteriorated . Well meaning physicians suffer under requirements to see as many patients as possible and you’re lucky to get 10 minutes with a doctor. I’ve seen firsthand the monetization and the turning of the medical profession into an industry.
Last month I had a visit with my primary care Dr. This appointment had to be set up a few months in advance. As it was explained, these types of visits require more time with the physician than an normal office visit.
I would estimate we were in the office together for about 20 minutes. I would estimate 80% of that time the physicians eyes and actions were focused on completing all of the tasks required by the computer system. I grew up accustom to having 70% of the time focused on the patient. I'm fortunate to be mostly healthy.
"The Machine" consumes so many resources just to survive, never gets smaller and offers less and less choices as time goes on.
Sounds like a recipe for failure, unless somebody else is paying for it.
I have also noticed a decline in the quality of nursing care. A friend of mine is also a Registered Nurse in ICU and she and I compared horror stories about newer grads sitting on their phones texting while their patients need nursing care, not just an IV hung or vitals checked. Turning, oral care, skin care, communication etc. The compassion is lacking with doctors and nurses.
Before I retired a year ago I worked with several new grads and was appalled at their lack of knowledge and lack of interest in gaining any real experience. One -- any I'm not making this up -- worked the night shift and a man who kept telling her he had terrible chest pain, sweats, etc. (classic signs of a heart attack) told him those were signs of detox and he'd be fine. He died. This nurse is planning on furthering her career as a nurse practitioner.
Every person I've known who has had a family member in the hospital, I've encouraged to stay with them as much as possible. And anytime I've gone to a doctor's office it's been the same scenario -- he (or she) rushes in, smiles, sits down in front of the computer and types as you tell them your symptoms. It's no wonder so much is missed. My sister-in-law went to 5 different doctors before she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma even though she had bones breaking for no reason.
Matt,
I am an internist in fly-over country here in the USA.
Here in my community, we had our big surge of COVID patients and tragedies in the NOV-JAN time frame this past winter.
I will say right up front - I trend toward being a liberal DEM. I had been reading about this drug Ivermectin for months beforehand. I was initially incredulous - this is a worm pill for God's sake. However, after I read the paper from Argentina and about its effects in health care workers ( the paper seemed to demonstrate overwhelmingly positive results as far as prophylaxis), I changed my practice and my mind. At this point, the safety profile of this drug is absolutely overwhelmingly positive - very very safe - and it seemed to me ridiculous to withhold it. Indeed, the medical ethics enshrined in the Helsinki Declarations make it IMPOSSIBLE for physicians to withhold this drug at this time.
So, as our community began to get slammed - I began to hand it out to everyone who was positive - to all their family members and contacts - and to those who wanted prophylaxis. Not one safety issue arose the whole time ( this is something I cannot say about the vaccines which have yielded one death, and 3 hospitalizations and multiple dozens of other minor issues in my practice). And the efficacy results were dramatic. The patients entering the hospital from my practice crashed in just 2 weeks. If you look at other physician's practices in town as control groups - the effect on hospitalization was just amazing. To the point that the hospital admin began to look into my practice to see what I was doing. (They were running out of beds and in a panic).
Was it perfect? ABSOLUTELY NOT - there were still patients who got sick. Did it seem to have an effect - ABSOLUTELY - when compared to other docs around me. And not to mention another fact. In surrounding rural counties, there has been large and widespread use of veterinary ivermectin among large swaths of the population. This has not been true in the county in which I live. Those surrounding counties had huge decreases in patient case numbers, deaths and hospitalizations. At times dramatically so. ( I AM NOT ADVOCATING THE USE OF VETERINARY IVERMECTIN - it is tragic that in the middle of a pandemic like this that people have had to resort to that - I view that as a stain on my profession).
When docs are honest with themselves and their colleagues - these types of outcomes are happening. This drug has an amazing safety profile. At least in my experience and what I am seeing around me as outlined above - it is dramatically more efficacious than anything we have available - the risk benefits are overwhelmingly positive - even more so than the vaccines - and we should be using this without abandon. Screw the RCT - that can come later.
It is a tragedy of the ages - that this kind of stuff has become politicized. I am old enough to have been a young doc in the AIDS epidemic. Back then in the 80's, these kinds of things bubbled up from the troops on the ground all the time - and pissed off the NIH masters ( Bactrim for PCP is but one example) - however we did not have Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity yelling lies at the American public in that era - and medical treatment remained in the realm of medicine and not litigated by the clowns on cable TV and the NYT every day. Our media and CDC/FDA were not nearly as captured by Big Pharma as they are today.
I will keep right on using Ivermectin for my patients. The COVID positivity is already on the way up in my little area - even among the vaccinated. There are those of us who still need to take care of our patients. The rest of these charlatans I am hoping are going to rot in hell one day for what they have done - that especially applies to the Zuckerbergs of the world who are kneecapping our ability as professionals to discuss these issues with our colleagues.
This has not been a good look for America - we can do so much better.
This guy sounds like a REAL doctor (unlike some of the people on this thread who are claiming to be doctors). Thank you for your open mind and genuine compassion for your patients.
And a doc that actually treats patients, as opposed to, for example, a bureaucrat or academic.
Thanks for the great comment, however there’s no difference between “veterinary” Ivermectin and “human” Ivermectin. Same molecule, different dosages. e.g People still think Ketamine is a “horse tranquilizer”, when in fact it was patented in 1962 as a safer battlefield anaesthetic.
I'm presuming 'safer than opioids'? Serious question.
Yes, precisely.
Hi IM Doc. Nice to have you here. I have very much valued your contributions at NC.
Thanks for your honesty and professionalism
Bingo.
I'm a life long liberal who has basically always voted Dem, but would put myself squarely in the "untrust" camp when it comes to the medical and pharmaceutical industrial complexes. There is so much corruption and perverse incentives baked into the American system that it is impossible to trust.
When I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, my mindset was to do everything the doctors told me to do. I simply did not have the time and energy to do my own research, so I placed my trust firmly in their judgment and expertise. I was put on a series of harmful drugs, culminating in a prescription for Humira, a self-injectible drug with a sticker price of around $30,000 per year. None of these drugs did anything to improve my symptoms, and all of them came with considerable side effects, including increased cancer risk. I was then referred to a surgeon to have part of my intestine removed.
Desperate by this point, I turned to the "quacks" on the internet and adopted a new-agey and not-at-all researched protein-powder liquid diet that my doctor specifically told me would not work. Guess what? It worked. I avoided surgery and now do not take any drugs for my condition. I treat myself with alternative non-pharmaceutical approaches based on my own research, and it has turned out to be a far safer and more effective way to go.
All of the incentives of the American for-profit medical and pharmaceutical industries are in favor of expensive drugs and invasive procedures. That is how they make money. There is no financial incentive to invest in research into less invasive and less expensive medical and lifestyle interventions. I am now seeing the same dynamics playing out in the COVID response, with predictably disastrous results. I am pro-science and pro-data, but the corruption behind what data is collected, how it is coded, what experiments are run, where research grant money flows, etc., is so obvious that I cannot trust the existing American system. When people say "listen to the science," they are really saying "listen to the money." There is also now a bizarre layer of authoritarian thinking and tribalism sweeping through these institutions that further undermines their claims to be engaging in anything resembling impartial science. The censorship deepens my mistrust further still.
Despite my distrust, my initial reaction was to get the first approved COVID vaccine I could get my hands on. However, because I now live in a developing country with limited vaccine availability, I still have not had the opportunity to get the vaccine. This time for further reflection and accumulation of further evidence has pushed me towards the socially unacceptable category of "vaccine hesitant." Like with my Crohn's disease experience, I now believe it quite possible that there is a less invasive, less dangerous, less expensive, and possibly more efficacious way to gain resistance to this virus. Ivermectin may be just that. Thankfully countries outside of the U.S., including the vaccine-poor country in which I currently live, are taking that option seriously and conducting RCTs. I will follow the evidence and the science, not the corrupt American institutions.
Great input, thanks! And glad your health regimen is working for you. Well done.
Agreed with your analysis of bad incentives in the US health system. I'll go further and posit the cause is profit comes from a small cadre making decisions above, rather than diffuse consumers making choices from below. If the real customer is regulators, insurance corps and giant pharma, serving the needs of the patient is circumstantial to the conversation.
Aside from patients the next biggest losers are doctors. Their autonomy to help the patient is constantly chipped away by directives from above. Like everything else in life, free people making their own choices, in aggregate, will result in best outcomes.
My daughter has Crohn's and RA. I've been trying to interest her in diet changes for many years now - diagnosed at 13, she's 26 now. She's had a hip replacement already and had several feet of bowel removed. One of these days... smart kid too but she is just convinced that the apex of Western medicine is the apex of how she needs to be treated.
She's on the biologic of the week - they stop working randomly - and methotrexate. I'd almost rather her be diabetic like me. At least insulin just makes you gain weight and acts like a steroid.
I used specific carbohydrate diet to cure my son’s IBD. 👏🏻
I wish your daughter the best. Unfortunately, the medical profession is pretty clueless when it comes to treating Crohn's.
I too have a distrust of medical expertise, even though I was once in the medical field. I trust science but not necessarily all clinicians. I had some issues and went to multiple doctors, all who wanted to start me on pain killers as they could find no underlying condition for my pain. I just stopped going and didn’t take all the drugs. I’ve found reducing stress and meditation have been best for me. Having said that, I absolutely made sure I didn’t have a neurological condition such as ALS or MS . I’m probably a socialist if categorizing my political views.
Stress reduction and meditation have also been a big part of my treatment regime. So much so that I quit my job as a litigator and moved to Buddhist country where I go on regular meditation retreats. The ambient stress in the U.S. is toxic.
So true. I moved out to WV and got myself 7 acres of land with lots of trees ~2 years ago. Stopped watching TV entirely. It's been like a great new world for me.
Not watching TV is a quick quality of life enhancer.
So glad for you.
Excellent.
The collapsing confidence in the professional, aka expert, classes was a long time in the making and long predated Trump. It is actually one reason why Trump was elected. The growing perception that the technocracy who rules Western societies are no longer really serving the people who voted for them or who placed them in positions of responsibility, and instead have become adherents to a different kind of outlook in life, an outlook that tells them it's justified to bend the rules and expectations of a liberal democracy "in the name of the greater good."
Nor is it unique to America. It's the mindset that caused European governments to successively overrule referendum outcomes to sign up to closer EU integration. It's the mindset that went berserk when Britain voted to leave the EU. It's the mindset that completely lost it when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. It's the mindset that swept through the scientific community surrounding the emergence of COVID-19, who immediately pivoted to the natural outbreak rather than lab escape despite plenty of circumstantial and even scientific evidence it could very well have been a lab escape. It's a mindset that embraces control of information in the name of good. It's a mindset of a technocracy that does not trust, and increasingly dislikes, the people it ostensibly rules.
One of the hallmarks of a liberal democratic society was trust in the people - that the people were trusted to accept the information available and make their own decisions and to be responsible voters, and it did rest upon the acceptance that people were educated and intelligent enough to handle this responsibility. This was what separated liberal democracies from the populist democracies and was one of the great praises of American democracy. It certainly wasn't perfect as no society is, but until a few years ago no one ever questioned the right of the American people to know just about anything to be known.
Suddenly we've been thrusted into an age of censorship and dogmatic political correctness. Why are Americans not trusted to know about ivermectin? Why did the technocracy feel justified in withholding information on a relatively benign drug that could potentially save lives. It's because the technocracy no longer trusts, respects or likes the people it rules and instead sees them very much as obstacles and even an enemy to their own interests. That's why we have a government that wants a commission on January 6 but refuses a commission on the Wuhan lab.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Excellent comment.
"The growing perception that the technocracy who rules Western societies are no longer really serving the people who voted for them or who placed them in positions of responsibility"
A lot of the technocrats aren't even "placed" in positions of responsibility by the people. Who the fuck ever voted for John Brennan or James Clapper for anything? Yet there they are, first running intelligence agencies and then stinking up the mass media.
I'd argue -- from gut feeling and no empirical (although prolific anecdotal) evidence -- that we're at a tipping point between "technocracy/meritocracy" and "neofeudalism/nepotism." We may have already tipped.
Who among us has done time amidst the expert/technocrat class? Who among us thought that they were generally the smartest and most capable people in the room? Who among us knew people who achieved senior positions through dedication, knowledge, and personal integrity; or, conversely, achieved senior positions because they were somebody's relative or "knew somebody?"
I am not part of anything anymore. I write that not out of false modesty or disinterest; I am of a certain age and mindset. I have lived; I have seen.
What is causing these great upheavals of American society? I am shocked at what Americans allowed to be DICTATED to them during the last 15 months. If anyone with half a brain thinks about it, they should ask questions, they should object; but they don't. Lalala.
The vax passport is basically here. I can't believe it.
Several years ago, I think I was a public defender then, but anyway it was awhile back. There was a huge case in Illinois about whether the State Police could set up "Safety Checks" to stop drivers and question them (looking for DUIs). Of course, it passed constitutional muster. I thought about that the other day, thinking about what else our government will be allowed to do to make us "safe."
Someone got neocon in our neoliberal! The Noble Lie is alive and well and suppressing treatments to make vaccination more compelling, suppressing aerosol transmission theories to prevent costly requirements, and save masks for docs. People aren't trusted by experts, who are no longer trustworthy anyway. Credentials and connections suffice for 'expertship', and both are for sale. And why shouldn't they be? Markets are always best, let the truth be decided by PR budgets, controlled by the omniscient beneficence of the invisible hand!
So what you're saying here, effectively, is that all the pros have gone rogue and now we should start relying on the amateurs? Say, maybe, our next door neighbor, who just happens to teach chemistry at the local community college? Other than the usual TK fife-and-drum shit one encounters all too often (all too often) on these threads, that's pretty much the message here, even if the commenter can't recognize it.
I'd also be careful conflating your tin-foil politics with the humanities and especially the sciences. Yes, the political class in this country require some serious straightening out, but this ain't the route to do the straightening. Neither is it imbuing trust to opportunistic charlatans such as D. Trump. Grassy-knoll talk is fun, but if this were really the case in the sciences, and if you framed it as you have above in a public forum such as this one, either you'd be happily oblivious to it, or if you were genuinely aware of it and bitching about it in this manner would get you hauled out of your basement and clamped into leg irons. Those days are not here, but who knows, perhaps they are near at hand.
Here's Taibbi: "A secondary consequence: while there are plenty of doctors of all political persuasions showing interest in researching the drug, the public voices on the subject are almost exclusively either conservatives or denizens of alternative media. It’s no accident that Lorigo, in addition to being ivermectin’s de facto litigator in America, is also the Chairman of the Erie County Conservative Party. “Outside of Fox News, no one is covering it,” Lorigo sighs...."
Mostly, ivermectin is only controversial to a small minority of right-wing no-nothings who primarily traffic in ignorance, misinformation, and outright propaganda, in service of their beloved retrograde beliefs. Ivermectin is the latest right-o-rage. IVM warriors. And anyway, if really you do believe all this shit---any plans to get active and do something about it? Or is this as far as it goes? Slick high-school newspaper editorials posted on a substack that make you feel like a somebody? But expose you in all probability as a nobody? Get to work.
But, hey, why end this comment on such an unpleasant note? Here's a link below that describes who the real enemies are in the U.S., and yes, around the world. Mazel tov, baby!
https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank
Teaching chemistry at a local community college means they’re not an intellectual like you?
"So what you're saying here, effectively, is that all the pros have gone rogue and now we should start relying on the amateurs?"
The Stupid/Ignorant* Person's Dilemma:
1. This person's "betters", i.e. experts and/or authorities, tell him A is true.
2. Later, this person discovers A is contrary to what their experience tells them, and thus apparently false.
3. This person's "betters", i.e. experts and/or authorities, tell him B is true.
4. Later, this person discovers B is contrary to what their experience tells them, and thus apparently false.
...
[This goes on many, many times, with serious life consequences, for years, maybe decades]
...
n. This person's "betters", i.e. experts and/or authorities, tell him X is true.
n'. Will this person believe X? *Should* this person believe X, either rationally, or morally? What should this person do? Remember, this person does *not* likely have a trust network of experts to rely on -- this person is *on their own*.
n+1. [The future, not yet known.]
------------------
* It would be better to neutralize this, as I do not intend it to be perjorative, as stupidity, and yes, ignorance, are *primarily* un-bootstrappable. Maybe "The limited capacity, uninformed person's dilemma" is better, but it is awkward ... and in any case, I'd rather not give into the Woke Word Games' whack-a-mole.
Just to be clear, I am one who occupies this role. You are not the author of your own brain, you cannot rewind the decades to a different worldview, and and there are only so many hours in a day. Live in the here and now, and don't let them shame you for demanding explanations before changing your mind.
All of this makes Colbert's "Colbert Report" seem even more prescient than ever.
Too bad that show isn't on any longer. As the Late Show host, colbert kind of sux.
Yeah, it’s another late show. There are momentary flashes of brilliance, but nothing like Colbert Report.
I'd say he blows. He blows the people who let him on the show. The recent episode with John Stewart was very telling.
Well put, Thomas.... Frank? ;)
The collapsing confidence in the expert class.....well said.
Perhaps they read the latest IPCC report predicting that billions will die?
To the best of my knowledge, the IPCC has never stated what the Davos- sponsored Swedish Doom Goblin and her ilk shriek about. The summary for policymakers gets twisted and distorted by the “media” and the rest of the sociopathic technos.
But isn't that the point of the article and the major discussion here? Who do you believe? Once upon a time it would have been the government experts, but now they argue amongst themselves and as Snarcalita has pointed out, purposely lie to us and then make excuses later as to why they lied.
What agency/organization/union do you turn to for "the truth". The UN -- after the OPCW fakery?
I used to have really bad back problems, walked around like a penguin. After having tried several medial professionals (surgery) and chiropractors, I fixed it myself. I've tried to pass on how I did it to others with the same complaint, but they all think I'm just nuts. (so I won't explain it here other than to say that it felt like a freight train pulling out of the station and 20 years later I'm still doing fine -- which is why I absolutely know that was what worked).
Even among you guys who insist that we "trust the science", there is huge debate as to what the science actually tells us.
It should be obvious that billions are going to die due to Climate Change and over population of the planet. When will this occur? I dunno, but Guy McPhearson makes a good case for his vision of the dystopian future we face. The ennui has invaded the soul of humanity and is propagating faster then the Delta Variant. The last election proved that there is no way the Oligarchy is going to allow anything to be done about these problems.
" '[T]trust the science", there is huge debate as to what the science actually tells us."
Right. There is no such thing as "the science". Never was, never will be. Risking oversimplification, I'd say science often reaches wide and deep consensus after a bit of time, and sometimes doesn't, but in any case is *never* unassailably settled. It's the nature of the beast, because humans are universally and forever imperfect interpreters of the world.
So "trust the science" at the beginning of investigation into a "novel" pathogen is simply propaganda for herding the masses. Beginning last year, they implemented the most ruthless enforcement of this pretense to date, shutting down *all* public debate, by both lay people *and* science/medical professionals.
Oh, and by the way, climate change may not work out the way we're warned either. And I'm not even a critic of it.
Thank you for so clearly stating the point that my posts seem to somehow obscure from many who reply.
It’s not working out for the Climate Jehovahs either; the models are all running hyperbolically hot, yet climate reality is disproving the doomer theories. Wonder why CNN shifted from Rona to climate boogabooga just like that guy busted by Vertias said they’d do when he was on that fateful Tinder date? 🤪
It would be interesting to learn what your foundation for the claims above is?
May I point you towards this scientist?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr546o7ImhGM57qoY0hHvkA
“ It should be obvious that billions are going to die due to Climate Change and over population of the planet. ”
Not to sound like a dickhead, but neither of those things will happen.
(We all died 40 years ago from famine and the “Coming Ice Age”.)
I placed no time limit on when the events will happen. It is quite possible that there will be a nuclear war and the follow on nuclear winter -- still killing billions.
That's the thing about predicting the future, so many possible futures.
If the sudden interest in UFOs turns out to be real, perhaps an alien civilization will save us from Climate Change.
Perhaps the drought across the West and Mid-West will suddenly be broken in the next couple of weeks, despite what is being forecast and we won't have to worry about food shortages.
Perhaps the "phony meat" will become much cheaper and easier to produce and we will all be able to survive on Soylent Green.
You seem to be saying that there's nothing to see here and that everything is just "fine". Obviously, I don't see that.
It is
Anything can happen, but I prefer optimism and problem solving over cringy technocrats telling me the world will end last year.
This town crier shit has been going on forever.
I think the claim of a claim of coming Ice Age is true at all. It is popular in the right-wing echo chamber, but it is not true.
I hope you are not in the Pacific Northwest right now. Or Ontario. Or many other places experiencing unusual heat waves.
Um. No. I’m a liberal. Thanks for the weather report. The Doomers like you always come out to play in the summer. Enjoy the sunshine friiend. 🌅
McPherson is not a cultist, he has a theory that has credibility. As a theory, it may or may not prove to correspond to reality, but it certainly cannot be thrown out as if it is meaningless.
I cannot confirm that Professor McPherson is the same person as the sexual abuse counselor McPherson. But there is little credibility to the accusations (or perhaps more correctly, no reliable sources in support of the accusation). Something that I imagine happens to many in that profession.
Nuking volcanos seems like there'd be a lot of unpredictable side-effects that might make the problem even worse than it is. I can imagine that while it would reduce solar energy warming the planet, it might also severely inhibit the ability to grow crops, thus resulting in the billions of deaths I see coming.
OMG.
I’d love to argue with you, but you nailed it. You’re no fun at all. ;-)
One of the best comments I have read on any topic.
I live in a Canada, working In one of the Covid epicentres. A friend and doctor has been treated myself and a select group with Ivermectin as a prophylactic to covid. He is brave and also scared shitless of the consequences of getting caught. But it won’t stop him. He is sure and so are we that it has saved us. A surgeon in Saskatchewan has been stripped of his job for cautioning against the vaccination of children. I am devastated at the state of discourse on our continent. I feel our institutions have been captured(Brets term) by forces so beyond my understanding and control that I feel unmoored from my country.
The Ivermectin question is quite simple, so let's not wade too far into the weeds. Ivermectin has a safety profile that far exceeds, let's say, Tylenol, even though you can buy Tylenol over the counter. We have taken prescribed pharmaceuticals with far more significant side effects for uncomplicated diseases than this pandemic that could kill us. Ivermectin won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2015, improved the lives of 3.4 billion people worldwide, and has an excellent safety record. It's that simple when you or I or grandmother is dying from Covid. I graduated from university in the 80s and have always been a far-left progressive, far-left of how Obama governed, but this is beyond the middle, right, and left; we must discuss the science of Ivermectin, fuck politics. Media, politics, "journalists," not you, Matt, and corporations are not functioning normally, LOL, something else is happening, and we must understand and change this trajectory concerning science.
Given ivermectin, the EUA for experimental genetic vaccines looks unjustified.
Susan, You can admit that this should be non partisan issue. Can you acknowledge that the far-left progressive ideology, of which you seem proud, has manifested in a large portion of "highly educated" people who value group think, obedience and the suppression of disparate ideas over individualism and common sense?
These days you do not need to be red pilled to be "conservative". Just be rational and you no longer fit the progressive mold.
I think middle-class Americans on the far right and left pay taxes and should expect the accurate science behind Ivermectin; we have not been given the truth or a semblance of it. Lg corporations, big media & pharma, & what we once called country club Republicans and neo-liberal Democrats are pitting the right and left on all fronts; the science of Ivermectin is only one of those fronts. The far right and left, should start talking, and stop listening to the wealthy middleman in government, Pelosi/ McConnell, who are funded by the wealthy & who don’t give a fuck about us
Yep. Agree 100%. Sorry to say Susan, but your rationality is no longer acceptable 5 degrees left of center.
I think the hardest thing for Republicans to reconcile is that the old GOP was the party of "NO", and no new thinking. Decades of doing nothing.
The hardest thing for Democrats to reconcile is that their ideals of classic liberal democracy - free speach, personal privacy, and "power to the people" over big government and corporations - is a quaint and faint memory. They are against everything they once stood for and that modern conservatives still appreciate.
Where the rubber meets the road today is that Pubs' recent track record is short and inconsequential. (Trump's corrective policies not withstanding. )
But the Dems's dossier is one of degradation and regression. The fact that Ivermectin is politicized and its benefits suppressed is not because Mitch & Co. are obstructionists. Its because leftist liberals control every institution that influences the conversations and policies surrounding it. The suppression of information and the control of conversations that would have "freed" the science is a lefties' wet dream.
Susan, you're too savvy to claim liberal bonafides. Clear thinking like yours is proof that yesterday's liberal is today's conservative.
She said far left, not liberal.
Not much daylight between them. Keep clinging to the notion that a good liberal can still vote D while not enforsing all the lefty lunacy that dominates the party.
For one very important thing, we need better terms for those "on the other side" than "conservative" and "communist" (or "leftist).
No one ever thought to call me a conservative until the last few years. Somehow, this has become unavoidable, as I've noticed an increased degree in the mendacity of the mainstream press, a greater degree of corporate capture of the political and legislative powers and a willingness of people who were once "the good guys" to spout poisonous, hateful and very sloppy social ideas.
I know what I consider to be bad for the flourishing of the country and the people in it. That doesn't make me a conservative. Same with the difficulty the real conservatives have regarding useful labels for their opponents.
Not sure what the solution is. So far all I've come up with is a determination to resist the urge to the binary, the urge to oversimplify. It's easier to have simplistic labels than not, but that isn't a good reason to indulge the urge.
Trolli, I get your thinking. Generic binary terms tend to oversimplify where nuance could clarify.
I too have been at odds to simply call people left/right, liberal/conservative, Republican/Democrat. But such terms offer convenience to frame large issues and their political influences.
Over the last year or two, I'm hard pressed to spend the time thinking of better terms.
For better or worse "Republicans", as a party distinction, have been feckless and weak in dealing with Americans' concerns - healthcare, climate, infrastructure, corporate overreach. I have not a single friend who calls themselves Republican. We have gravitated to "conservative" because we still believe in the same tenets as those who fought for them two centuries ago. Deference to God, the inalienable rights of the individual, the containment of big government, and the larger notion of being left alone to pursue our definition of happiness.
One could argue that 20-30 years ago, many Democrats/liberals shared similar notions, but varied around the margins as to how to achieve them.
Such core beliefs that kept us united as Americans no longer exist on the liberal side, at least when considering the positions held by the liberal politicians.
I have concluded that while a few classic liberals still exist, the Democrat party is on a tear to destroy America and that anyone that still votes with them has tacitly endorsed the same.
One can argue and get little push back from me that Republicans have not done much to advance our society, as it clearly needs upgrading for the modern world.
But it's a stretch to say that, by action or a lack of it, Republicans have done much to actively degrade our country.
By contrast, Democrat policies can't even be framed as misguided. They are knowingly and inherently destructive. Racial politics, blind ambitious "climate justice" and alternative energies that are not rooted in sustainable science, big Gov overreach into our lives for health, education, childcare, disdain for 1A and 2A, the endorsement if not active weaponization of the intelligence state, deriding patriotism and the flag when it suits them and equating them to white supremacy... I can expound for paragraphs with more examples.
I am open to critique of the "right" any time and would be the first to call out its shortcomings. But IMO the "left" has become far detached from anything resembling American values. It is now full steam ahead in tearing down everything that is good for the sake of ghosts like racism, patriarchy, colonialism, flatulent cows and the impending doom of the planet. They are throwing out so many babies in dispensing the bathwater, that I'm convinced that they dont care anymore how much they destroy on their quest for utopia.
For those liberals who believed for decades that theirs was the party of and for the people, and whose support gave them the moral high ground, I'm sorry to say that that ship sailed. While conservatives have stood firmly with the same core beliefs of yesteryear, liberals have gone off the reservation on a warpath of wanton, or at least complicit, destruction.
If one votes Democrat, they are defacto leftists and complicit ideologues willing to destroy our country on the notion of progressive goodness.
Democrats aren’t leftists. Good lord. Lol.
I haven't identified as a Republican for at least 15 years. GWB was about it for me. What an asshole - but my reasons aren't the reasons most people thought he was a jerk.
Yeah, but Trump....
I miss that cheesy fucker. :-(
It has been mind boggling to witness how politicized literally everything about Covid has been. By far the weirdest has been how otherwise intelligent people have allowed Trump to continue to live rent free in their minds. TDS has caused them to lose the ability to reason. The very idea that the potential efficacy of a drug must be demonized because Trump or Ron Johnson thinks it might be beneficial, rather than analyzing the drug on its merits, is amazing. I don't pretend to know what drugs will or won't work, but this kind of shallow "thinking" is dangerous.
Your boy trump is the dude that politicized this shit in the first place. He was the one that tried to blame “blue states” for “trying to make him look bad” because the COVID numbers were highest in CA, NY etc early on. If he’d have just offered federal guidance for how every state should respond to COVID, instead of being a little bitch, terrified of angering his supporters, and saying,”Everybody just do what they want!” then we’d be better off. We’re way past judging Ron Johnson or fat donald for the drugs they advocated for. Maybe ask yourself why they advocated for those drugs in the first place. Why didn’t they just say,”Wear a fucking mask, wash your hands and try not to go out in public for a few months,”? This is a public health issue; right-wingers made it a political one.
Trump never advocated for hydro, he was simply trying to instill hope for a country in need of a solution. He never said "use it", he said it looked promising, and it did. It still does.
As far as the politicizing of covid, maybe if you idiots hasn't carried water for our lying press and politicized medical community's demand to "Wear a fucking mask, wash your hands and try not to go out in public", three things we've come to realize are ineffective, at best, but likely the worst thing to do, in actuality, we wouldn't be in opposition.
1) Wear a fucking mask: Not a single study has shown masks work. Further, anyone observing the fidgeting and close proximity communication done with their "face shields" protecting them realize how counter-productive they are.
2) Wash your hands: Of course. Always do this! But further study has shown that covid is spread via respiratory droplets and we never had to wash our groceries.
3) Try not to go out in public for a few months: As it turns out, to Coumo's chagrin, spending more time outside was something the CDC should have insisted we do a long time ago.
Think for yourself.
Going out in public and going outside are two entirely different things; the first implies mixing with others, while the second is merely making your way outdoors. I routinely did the latter while avoiding the former as much as possible during the pandemic, as I thought being around freely moving air was safer than staying indoors or mixing in close quarters with strangers.
The object lessons of the last 16 months should be at least three things; reject the neoliberal free trade mantra that left the US unable to provide basic needed things that all countries with any sort of productive capacity should always maintain a capability to produce; people should wash their hands far more than they do; I've not gotten a cold or the flu for the last 16 months, a rarity for me; and finally, comparing the deaths from covid and those from terrorism should make us demand that our government greatly reduce its bloated and useless Pentagon budget, one they cannot pass an audit on, and instead to focus on having a world class medical capacity available to all. Saving more lives for far less money seems a logical priority, but then again. the MIC and our combat virgin political elites seem not willing to go there.
The terrorism thing is, in general, a method of scaring people in and of itself. Anti-terrorism is a form of terror itself. That said, some military capability to deter attack is better than fighting off the attacks after they come looking for us.
With how good the peacetime military is at picking technologies to invest in, I shudder to think of the boondoggles that would be involved in redirecting military spending to things medical.
If you don't realize that today's military is essentially a jobs program, same as the medical stuff you'd like them to be investing in, you should think about it carefully. I don't have high hopes of getting something of value out of either one, undirected.
All governments tend to work a lot better when under mortal threat.
Any study will show that far more jobs can be produced by non military than military spending; it's not even close. Then we have the easily predictable cost overruns for super complex and difficult to maintain weapons systems designed to be used against similar high tech enemies, of which we have none, (the PRC is an economic, not military threat, as why would they choose to fight us when their economic plans are going so smoothly, especially when contrasted with our stubborn insistence on seeing the world through a military prism) and are instead used on foes without a military pot to piss in, killing five here, seven there etc., and still managing to not achieve any worthwhile objectives, unless large numbers of dead Muslims counts.
And then we have the all too familiar blow back from ill conceived foreign policy adventures that relied on either direct military force or behind the scenes attempts at regime change(Iran a long time ago, Afghanistan in the 80's and the more recent disasters in Iraq, Libya and Syria. If the last 19 years of abject military failure, even admitted by the military in the now forgotten Afghanistan Papers, don't open our eyes, then what could?
Perhaps, if you haven't read him, a few books by Andrew Bacevich, his most recent being "After the Apocalypse", might shed some light on a subject he knows both from personal experience and education.
I'll just end with two numbers: 3,000 dead from terrorists, well over 600,000 from a pandemic. In my world one number is quite a bit bigger than the other, but I do know that in the US, 9-11 changed everything, even math.
The difference is that you think government action could do something. I don't. I think it's all just money shoveled into jobs programs that do nothing useful at all other than provide salaries.
You're an idiot.
I agree although I think it cuts both ways. I have Republican family members and QAnon friends and it’s appalling to me how they so readily dismissed anything that had a modicum of validity to it because they viewed it as liberal bias.
I guess they’re still waiting for anything that had a modicum of believability then. Seems the Orange Bloody Bastard Piss Whore was right on many counts.
I think equally weird, if not even more so, are the legions of Trumpers taking hook, line and sinker literally anything that comes out of his mouth regardless of the lack of studies or evidence about whatever it is he's pushing. For every lefty knee-jerking a Trump claim there's a right winger blindly accepting it. In my opinion, the latter group potentially causes more harm.
“Trump claim”? The Orange Devil was merely trying to give hope by mentioning a few possible paths forward. Your “media” has turned you into a robot for the technocracy. Conflgrats.
You missed my point entirely, but I'll go ahead and humor you by replacing "claim" with "suggestion," "idea" or anything you want to describe what Trump pulls out of his ass. It doesn't change my point that pants-dropping Trump cult members hang on every word he says, giddy with anticipation of their dear leader's latest pandering tweet. That you can't handle even the tiniest grain of criticism of your hero, or offer any valid criticism yourself, outs you, not me, as the robot. Trump doesn't have the slightest business offering medical advice or recommendations of any sort under any conditions, but that doesn't mean crap to the cult. Congrats.
Wow. You smooth-brained shitlibs forget people outside the USA pay for Matt’s work.
A- I’m not a “Trumper”. Don’t care, don’t have to care. (I live blissfully far away from you idiots.)
B- Not once did he “recommend” anything more than an African tribal leader might tell his people that it might rain again- during a prolonging drought.
C - You’re a science denier.
That's a pretty snippy response from someone who doesn't care. And wherever you're living so blissfully, my fellow idiots invite you to stay there. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
Not snippy at all. You make inane shitlib assumptions based on your state propaganda, I respond in-kind. Enjoy your implosion. Popcorn is popping.
The total membership in the group you carved out as legions are in fact very small in number. I live in a pretty conservative area, and I know of only a couple of drooling fools that would follow Trump no matter what. Secondly, you are trapped by excepting the meme put out about what Trump said. It's been twisted and blown out of proportion.
Just because the Trump crowd has few people who can intelligently represent them in quarters like this, they get maligned by shitbirds who couldn't bother to find out what they actually think. The usual elitism.
Where I live, Iowa, the numbers are much higher. Trump is the overwhelming favorite among the rural folk with virtually zero pushback against any of his actions. His rural base still supported him even when he balked on ending ethanol waivers for small oil refineries, a blow to Iowa's ethanol industry, which involves half of Iowa's corn crop.
And I'm not trapped by any meme. There's no "meme" about Trump. Everything he says publically is on record somewhere, he made sure of that. It's all there on video or in print for anyone to make a judgement about.
Publicly, not publically.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
I'm a big fan of Matt, but I do think that he's got this one a bit wrong.
"Should the entire world be allowed to practice self-care on a grand scale? That’s a different issue."
It's a different issue--and indeed, it's not the issue here at all. Ivermectin prescriptions are allowed "off-label." Off-label prescribing is a time-honored tradition that allows doctors to prescribe drugs with known safety profiles if they think it might help a condition for which it was not initially approved; think Botox for migraines. 20% of all prescriptions in the USA are off-label, so it's not uncommon. What is uncommon is a regulatory agency stepping into say "doctors cannot prescribe use this product off-label for this specific off-label use."
Additionally, off-label drugs still must be prescribed by a physician. Suggesting that this amounts to "self care on a grand scale" really only makes sense if you define "self care" as "doctors making decisions that are in any way independent of the guidelines set out by regulatory bodies like the CDC." Maybe that kind of top-down approach appeals to some people, but as someone with ME/CFS where the official recommendation was, for years, not only unhelpful but downright dangerous, I have a hard time imagining a worse way to practice medicine. If I'm going to be subject to a potentially harmful procedure, at least give me some choice in the matter!
Finally, as others have mentioned, Ivermectin is probably safer than Tylenol. Heck, unlike with tylenol I don't think you could kill yourself with a bottle of Ivermectin taken all at once (iirc it took 40 mg/kg body weight of ivermectin to kill dogs, and the recommended dose is 0.2-0.4 mg per kg, so you'd need to take 100X the high dose to kill yourself, whereas with Tylenol liver injury becomes possible a little over 4X the recommended dose).
So on the policy front, this is really a fight between those who believe that people should be allowed to make some basic decisions regarding their own lives/bodies/beliefs, and those who believe that any choice which is meaningful is too dangerous to be left up to even trained experts--unless, that is, the trained experts are politically connected and seen on right-thinking news programs.
Which is why I'm sad to see Matt straddling the fence on this one, even a bit.
People with chronic conditions, even more those with chronic conditions that are uncommon, are less naïve about the practice of medicine and have more nuanced and realist takes on guidelines, standards of care, and doctors in general.
I thought Matt's leap from state-mandated medications to the entire population indulging self-care was odd too.
memento morijust now
In my former neck of the woods, women of a certain age got Botox injections regularly to hide wrinkles. What am I missing here?
I won't pretend to be an expert on botox, but I *think* that this use--permanently paralyzing facial muscles as a way to "remove" wrinkles--is the use it was approved for. But I do know it has a number of other uses for which it was not initially studied, such as helping to control migraines. Maybe it was a bad example--I just googled "botox off label" and found the migraine thing, but wikipedia says that the FDA actually approved this use in 2010. So maybe I should have said that it can be used to treat TMJ, or cervical dystonia, niether of which WIkipedia mentions as having explicitly been OK'd by the FDA as a use for botox.
In any case, it's an example of a drug which doctors are allowed to use in ways not foreseen when it was undergoing the approval trials, and which may or may not have been subsequently studied to an extent that one would find satisfactory. The logic is basically: We know it won't kill you or permanently harm you at this dose so if your doctor wants to give it a try, it's up to them.
But with Ivermectin there has been an effort to disallow doctors from prescribing it for COVID. I tried to get a prescription filled a month or so ago and was told that the pharmacist could lose their license if they gave it to me--in spite of my having a prescription from my doctor. I was told that this was nationwide.
I hope that answers your question.
Always remember that Viagra was originally developed to treat hypertension …. So which application is off label?
I am also not an expert but a simple search indicates that Allergen first got approval for botox to treat ocular dystonias. It became a payday when it was subsequently discovered that it had a cosmetic application. I don't have time to research it, but I do recall that it was not FDA approved for the off label use, maybe it is now..but I am pretty certain it was not for many years. Botox is arguably more dangerous than Ivermectin yet I can walk into any city clinic and get my wrinkles paralyzed (at a fairly hefty price). I did not have a question, I was making a point. Your experience confirms it.
Off label by definition means the drug is used for an indication different than those for which it is FDA approved. The company that makes is not allowed to market it for indications other than those in the FDA approval. This does not mean it cannot be prescribed by doctors. Off label use of drugs is common practice.
Well said.
The gods frown at being asked questions.
For over half a decade at least, there has been massive pushback against the neo-liberal consensus around the world. Brexit in England. Modi in India. Mouvement des gilets jaunes in France. AFD in Germany. Trump. And so on. And all of that is due to the complete and utter failure of the professional class, at every level.
Now, you might ask, what does that have to do with Ivermectin. Well, everything. You see, all answers about how society should be moving must come from Top. Men. Who went to Harvard, or Oxford, or any other "world-class" institutions of neo-liberalism. But, as we have seen, these places are so ideologically one-sided as to not even know what the questions are that need to be asked, let alone what the right answer might be. But, in all of their wisdom, they know what to do, and any other answers, especially crowdsourced ones such as Ivermectin must be stamped out to allow space for their preferred answer, right or wrong as that may be, politically expeditious as that might be.
Post more. Thank you.
Then Covid would logically be the neo-liberal response to this massive pushback , to show us who’s boss and make everyone toe the line.?
No, the response to Covid. The closing the economy, masks, shutting down schools, all of that across the western world. All top-down solutions, that often had no bearing on ordinary peoples lives, who still had to work delivering the food for the professional class, deliver the Amazon order, pack those orders, farm, etc. They didn't get the work from home so precious to the professional class, but they still paid the price in being forced to quit their jobs to watch the kids, making sure the deli meat still got cut for the deliveries, and so on.
We have known how to deal with respiratory diseases for 100 years, through the Spanish Flu, the Hong Kong Flue, and so on. We knew that none of this shit works. But, it was pushed down above and supported by models, models that have had very little resemblance to reality. As I said, right or wrong, it was still that classes prefered answer.
Yes, as to the lockdowns. I got extremely frustrated with my upper middle class friends, software developers all, who kept complaining that people did not stay home and 'do the right thing'.
Since I value the friendships I bit my tongue but I felt like saying something like 'not everyone has the luxury of making a living by sitting in their bedroom tapping on a keyboard'.
great response , right on , thanks!
Matt is understandably tiptoeing ("the Oxford group will complete their studies, and the public will have an answer") around what potentially might be the worst example of a mass deception in history.
No illness, until COVID19, has been treated by one and only holy medicine (the vaccine), excluding anything else. This by itself is the biggest red flag in the whole unholy story. Every single sick patient, no matter if they are suffering from cancer or a serious flue is a unique human being, reacting differently to various approaches and any conscious doctor, remembering The Hippocratic Oath, would do anything to help a patient - he or she would prescribe, adjust, change the medications and / or approach to the patient's reactions.
But not with COVID19!? Follow the old adagio and follow the money and I am afraid, we'd be getting the true, ugly beyond belief, story about this. And if my worst nightmare has even a modicum of truth in it, I fear we'd yet have to see the worst. "They," that monstrous alliance of the pharmaceutical industry and the government would have to double-down on their dogmatic, bureaucratic approach, and keep pushing this health dogma and ominous population control behind it. I can't believe I believe "they" are that evil, but than...
Uh, we totally eradicated smallpox from the earth with vaccinations.
so, yes, quite a few diseases have been cured with vaccines, actually. It is extremely well documented in the historical record.
Absolutely. Vaccines are one of the greatest invention in the history of medicine.
Alas, never before a vaccine was an experimental genetic treatment, not really approved but pushed as an emergency solution (thusly excluding any other treatment for if anything would've been a valid alternative to the vaccine the emergency approval could not have been given). Everything around this pandemic stinks to heavens.
mRNA vaccines have actually been in development for quite some time, and Spinraza has been a game changer for SMA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nusinersen). Other nucleic acid therapies are out there as well. as for the EUA I don't have strong feelings about it but so far safety data is quite reassuring
Well, now you're talking "development" vs. ongoing "treatment." This does not enhance the discussion. At the end, that's the key -- the rampant censorship of any discussion aside the blind adoration of the vaccine dogma is truly bothersome.
I am confused by this statement. It is not censorship to say that there is in fact a great body of evidence to suggest this vaccine is efficacious and safe, as well as other, similarly designed therapies for different diseases. That's me stating an opinion based on my professional expertise.
Ivermectin censorship.
Efficacious and safe yet the most vulnerable to covid were not included in any vax study, afaik. Nor were 3 year old kids, BTW.
"quite a few diseases have been cured with vaccines" should read "quite a few diseases have been prevented with vaccines"' Vaccines don't work when you already have the disease.
They do work to attenuate the severity of infection (easy example of this is flu shot) and besides, in my opinion, a disease you don't ever get is as close to the word cure that we have.
I personally don't feel like almost anything we do for medical/surgical management of people's health problems lives up to the promise in the word "cure" but that's just a personal belief
That's because doctors don't heal people. The body heals itself. It's not just semantics.
Total agreement. All criticism aside, where would we be right now if Operation Warp Speed had not happened? People would still be dying like flies and we would be waiting another year or two for a vaccine.
Well, unless ivermectin was fast tracked last summer. :)
Anyone comparing the smallpox vaccines with the Covid vaccines is either very poorly informed or intellectually dishonest. Smallpox vaccines confer sterilizing immunity. Not the case for Covid.
The "sterilizing immunity" of old-fashioned vaccines was a little overblown. Walking around like a smallpox vaccine was like a moon suit protecting you from variola was not all that smart. It's about 95% effective.
Speaking as someone who got a booster in this century.
"No illness, until COVID19, has been treated by one and only holy medicine (the vaccine)..."
Is this some kind of joke?
Dr. Marik's opinion on the Oxford study: https://youtu.be/O4gkLn-z4II?t=4506
"No illness, until COVID19, has been treated by one and only holy medicine (the vaccine)" is incorrect.
The vaccine is NOT being used to TREAT COVID19.
It is used to make obscene profits at the cost of millions of lives, if this is allowed to go on, the path of our civilization to self extinction is not hard to see... the same is happening with global warming, AKA "climate change" (doesn't sound nearly as bad as global warning, does it...)
The human body is incredibly tough- it has tremendous natural reserves. Reserves that are steadily being sapped by, among others, modern medicine.
Simple reason why Ivermectin has been so totally censored by the media, the medical establishment and the government is this: If there is an effective drug that can cure and kill the virus, then the drug companies would not be able to get emergency use authorization for their experimental drugs, where they are making a killing financially and actually. And talking about double - blind studies, these m-RNA gene therapies (they are not vaccines) have been barely tested, and their testing was only on healthy people between 18-60.
This seems like the obvious reason. But now I'm starting to think it goes even deeper than that, they started clinical trials on the "spike protein" vaccines within two weeks of the virus' emergence, and if the lab leak is true, it looks like the "spike protein" was added to the natureal coronavirus backbone to allow it to access human cells.
As an MD, it seems mighty odd that large double blinded studies are required to give inexpensive harmless medications the green light, when Remdesivir gets approval without proof of efficacy. In fact, Remdesivir has proved to be useless except perhaps within 2 days of symptoms...and that is yet to be proven. Thousands of dollars a pop.
Looking at myself: a fan of science and tech, a strong believer in western medicine and somebody who received an advanced multi discipline hi tech treatment that worked, familiar with Fauci from the AIDS crises days, I have over the course of Covid Pandemic become truly concerned and than outright antagonistic towards CDC, Fauci, AMA and HCP's and see them politicized and run by woke incompetents that intimidate the professionals around them and who should know better. The Wuhan and Lancet fiascos. CDC leadership signing a manifesto arguing against vaccinating the elderly first because whites would benefit disproportionately? Forget the CRT stuff, focus on the fact that people who run that outfit cannot even figure out that if blacks have generally worse health outcomes, as they claim, they would have actually killed tons of orderly blacks if that stupid idea became a policy. The suppression of regular enquiry in cohort with the ad salesman of Big Tech is the biggest tragedy, medieval dark ages style. Fauci went from hero to an old man sorry figure seeking attention and relevance. And all of this against a background of what one could argue was a triumph of science against this deadly disease. So here you have it, transformed from a fan to doubter to animus. And yes my shots worked.
Outstanding. All I can say is 'Me too'.