Ivermectin bonkersness

[Thebookswereherfriends]

I’ve just been reading about people all over the world who are buying a horse dewormer medicine to “cure” Covid-19. It makes people crap themselves, go blind and causes your intestinal lining to shed! How on earth does someone think taking a medication for animals is a good idea, but having a vaccine which is designed and tested for humans by actual doctors and scientists is crazy?!

If people can believe there are lizard people, or there are microchips in vaccine to control people, then they can believe anything. They are unwell, a victim in a way.

Maybe that's not the whole story.

No but it’s been through clinical trials (the human version) and is not hugely effective. And more importantly I believe Merck who manufacture the human version have suggested it’s not that useful. I mean it’s a pharma company. Can you imagine how much money they could make if it was a magic cure????

I mean these guys are all anti vaccine because it’s a pharma and big govt conspiracy. Why do they think pharma wouldn’t take advantage of a known easy to make drug if it could make money from it????

@Buzzinwithbez

Maybe that's not the whole story.

The whole story is that there are a significant number of people pushing ivermectin whilst also promoting anti-vaccine messaging. This is when there is no robust evidence for it's efficacy in preventing or treating COVID.

There have been several big trials now which have been proven to either be fraudulent or faked. Despite this, people like FLUCC are still promoting at great cost to the patient (so charging £££ for an online consult and then marking up the drug significantly).

Have been following closely, been involved with surveying the literature and yes I think bonkers is a good word for it @Thebookswereherfriends !

Buzz are you suggesting that people aren't buying ivermectin from pet stores because they can't get prescribed it by doctors?

I did actually get in contact with one the members of FLUCC who advertised it on prescription to see if they are still doing this.

So yup they're happy to prescribe it for me (for prevention) and my "relative" (for long COVID) despite their being no evidence for it being effective. They also linked their dodgy meta-analysis, which is already fraught with issues, but made worse by the fact it still includes the fraudulent trials.

Cost of an online appointment was £200 each, and the cost of ivermectin was substantially more than cost price.

Makes me very very cross.

Dr's Kory et al don't believe in randomised control trials, they believe in doctors just doing their own thing "coz doctors".

I find it so bizarre - "Ooh, I'm not putting that vaccine in my body, you have no idea what's in it & it's only been taken by 5 billion people. If I get sick I'll order an anti parasitic drug which the manufacturer has said does not work. I'm sure I know better than the doctors, drug companies and regulatory authorities"

Dr Gideon MK, an epidemiologist in Aus, has been doing a proper investigation and his 2 part update on the literature is worth a read.

gidmk.medium.com/is-ivermectin-for-covid-19-based-on-fraudulent-research-5cc079278602

Ivermectin is an incredibly safe drug that has been around for years, I worked in pharmacy for years and dispensed that drug a thousand times for a variety of conditions for people.
Alot of medication is used for animals and humans interchangeably, Ive dispensed plenty of veterinary prescriptions too for drugs that are mainly for people.

Not sure what the point of this thread is really.

They wouldn’t make money using ivermectin because its an incredibly cheap drug.
However they make much more money through vaccinations.

@Cindy974

Ivermectin is an incredibly safe drug that has been around for years, I worked in pharmacy for years and dispensed that drug a thousand times for a variety of conditions for people. Alot of medication is used for animals and humans interchangeably, Ive dispensed plenty of veterinary prescriptions too for drugs that are mainly for people.

Not sure what the point of this thread is really.

Beta blockers are incredibly safe drugs that have been around for years. Doesn't mean that we should be just using them to treat COVID for the hell of it.

There is no robust evidence ivermectin is effective in treating or preventing COVID. It is incredibly unethical to use it on sick patients for this reason.

I agree the fact that it is also used it veterinary medicine is irrelevant, but the fact remains people are buying it animal form, to treat a condition there is no evidence it works for, often accidentally overdosing because it is harder to judge doses correctly when using animal versions which are often pastes or gels.

@Cindy974

They wouldn’t make money using ivermectin because its an incredibly cheap drug. However they make much more money through vaccinations.

Hello again @Cindy974

As pointed out to you (repeatedly) on the last thread, many cheap drugs including the corticosteroids have been approved to treat COVID.

Large RCTs were set up as soon as possible, to identify drugs that could be repurposed for treating COVID.

speckledostrichegg

It has more long term data than the vaccinations though so dosed correctly we know its safe.
I think more research needs to be conducted for the effectiveness against covid it would certainly be a lot safer.

I mean it’s a pharma company. Can you imagine how much money they could make if it was a magic cure????

Hmm, well... I'm not at all sure about this. I don't think it's possible to make much from old drugs which are off-patent. The argument (which I don't know enough about one way or another) here is that pharma are making far MORE money by denying Ivermectin works than they could ever dreaming of making from selling Ivermectin. This is because you can't get emergency interventions/measures (like the vaccines) through when there are established effective treatments.

It seems to me that there's legitimate debate about whether or not Ivermectin actually works (the highest quality meta-analysis of RCTs still showed a significant positive effect AFTER the most controversial study - the one highlighted by the Guardian) was removed. But clearly more research is needed. Censorship of positive stuff about Ivermectin has definitely been happening, but whether that means it works or not I have no idea.

@Cindy974

speckledostrichegg

It has more long term data than the vaccinations though so dosed correctly we know its safe.
I think more research needs to be conducted for the effectiveness against covid it would certainly be a lot safer.

This is such a ridiculous comment.

There is long term safety data for antibiotics, beta blockers and domperidone. The fact that there is no evidence they are effective in treating COVID is why they shouldn't be used.

Sorry for typos - in a hurry!

I was going to say the same thing as cindy and will add that it’s worth looking at covid death rates across countries that regularly prescribe ivermectin as an anti parasitic like central Africa and now large parts of India. There is a correlation with low death and infection rates, so much so that if you cared to research a little further than Wikipedia you would see that Japan are about to start using it.
The vaccines are all still authorised for emergency use and if a treatment exists then that useage is cancelled hence why pharma aren’t exactly rushing to promote its wide useage. Hoping for and exploring an effective, cheap and safe treatment for covid does not make someone antivax.

@KeepYourCustardCreams

I mean it’s a pharma company. Can you imagine how much money they could make if it was a magic cure????

Hmm, well... I'm not at all sure about this. I don't think it's possible to make much from old drugs which are off-patent. The argument (which I don't know enough about one way or another) here is that pharma are making far MORE money by denying Ivermectin works than they could ever dreaming of making from selling Ivermectin. This is because you can't get emergency interventions/measures (like the vaccines) through when there are established effective treatments.

It seems to me that there's legitimate debate about whether or not Ivermectin actually works (the highest quality meta-analysis of RCTs still showed a significant positive effect AFTER the most controversial study - the one highlighted by the Guardian) was removed. But clearly more research is needed. Censorship of positive stuff about Ivermectin has definitely been happening, but whether that means it works or not I have no idea.

No it didn't @KeepYourCustardCreams

a) there are several meta-analyses - many done incorrectly and not properly assessing risk of bias
b) when this is accounted for, there remains no protective effect of ivermectin in treating or prevention

@Lostinacloud

I was going to say the same thing as cindy and will add that it’s worth looking at covid death rates across countries that regularly prescribe ivermectin as an anti parasitic like central Africa and now large parts of India. There is a correlation with low death and infection rates, so much so that if you cared to research a little further than Wikipedia you would see that Japan are about to start using it. The vaccines are all still authorised for emergency use and if a treatment exists then that useage is cancelled hence why pharma aren’t exactly rushing to promote its wide useage. Hoping for and exploring an effective, cheap and safe treatment for covid does not make someone antivax.

No, Japan has not approved ivermectin to treat COVID.

No, comparing raw death rates across countries is not evidence of a causal relationship.

India’s death toll from COVID is horrific. I wouldn’t use that as a positive.

There is a cheap and effective treatment. Dexamethasone. It hasn’t resulted in emergency vaccine use being cancelled?
Also Pfizer is not longer under EUA. It’s got full approval.

Who says that an effective treatment cancels vaccine usage? We have TB drugs. The BCG vaccine is still widely used.

@ChaBishkoot

Who says that an effective treatment cancels vaccine usage? We have TB drugs. The BCG vaccine is still widely used.

Common oft-repeated claim by anti-vaxxers that doesn't actually make sense.

@speckledostrichegg - the evidence is not of high quality. There is high risk of bias in many of the studies. However, based on best available evidence that there IS, there's a positive effect of Ivermectin. This is even after weighting the studies for their risk of bias. So - as I said, the evidence base is not good, so I can understand people waiting for more and not wanting to prescribe. But there are certainly some positive indicators for it. And as others have stated, there are interesting mortality differences in locations where Ivermectin is and is not used. Again, it's correlational, but it's interesting

What I will say is that drugs get prescribed routinely for things (big case in point psychiatric drugs for all manner of poorly defined types of distress) with far LESS evidence of efficacy than there is of Ivermectin for covid