I hear you’re in charge of shaping young minds. It’s important for you to have the basics down.
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The underlying assumption is that ChrisV is telling the truth when he says he is not pro-ivermectin.
Do you think that they people who say above are truthful in their belief that 9/11 was carried out by Al-Qaeda? That hasn’t been my experience. They’re just saying that to avoid ridicule. Is that what you think ChrisV is doing?
A bad poker analogy is a fitting place to end this AIDS derail, so I’m going to do it and then ban me if I post about ivermectin again for the next week.
What I’m saying is that taking ivermectin (as directed) is close to zero EV in either direction. The chances of serious side effects are very small. If it were helpful for COVID, especially in prophylaxis, that would be a big plus, but the chances of that are also small. I think they’re small enough that I wouldn’t take ivermectin myself. Since the chances of negative effects are so small, though, it wouldn’t take much of an increase in the potential of being +EV to tip the balance.
It’s sort of like speculating with a suited connector preflop in a dubious spot. Nits like to rationalize their “tight is right” worldview by pretending that this is some sort of unforgivable sin which will lead directly to financial ruin, instead of what it is, which is a likely marginally -EV play that really doesn’t matter in the scheme of things. There’s then a separate debate to be had about messaging to beginners, like maybe we should tell people it’s really bad so they don’t do it, especially since beginners are more likely to mess up “trouble hands”. And there are, obviously, good reasons why the medical world is set up to discourage people from speculatively taking medications.
What I’m being pressured to do here is agree not merely that taking ivermectin is -EV, which I do agree with, but that our level of certainty in making this judgement is high, something I don’t agree with. This pressure is there because people are uncomfortable with there being any ambiguity in their worldview. CaffeineNeeded is exhibit A in this regard, expressing himself with total certainty at all times (not resonating!) and treating any kind of ambiguity or epistemological nuance as weakness. But the fact is, while I think taking ivermectin is -EV, I’m also not 100% sure about that. If that’s “defending ivermectin” then IDGAF. As company in the “probably doesn’t work, but not sure” camp I have the two guys on Twitter who spend their spare time unmasking ivermectin fraud.
This is all separate to the phenomenon of people taking ivermectin instead of getting vaccinated, which is a very very bad public health issue. But again, I am not convinced this problem can be addressed by exaggerating how -EV ivermectin is and I think the impulse to do this ultimately makes things worse.
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I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here. So I assume you meant to say that there were in vitro trials done that shows ivermectin may be a useful treatment for covid. Since ivermectin has already passed safety studies for these other deadly and dangerous diseases we can roll right into highly controlled and monitored efficacy trials. Because at no point did the bulk of the medical community say let’s just hand out ivermectin to everyone who has covid because it might do something positive. The only people prescribing ivermectin on a regular basis are people who turned their MD into a grift.
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No. Obviously this never happened. All I am saying is that there was a time before we have the evidence that we have now and that reasoning was used by some docs. And at that time, that thought process would not have been that unreasonable. We have more evidence now.
Again, that’s not how it works. It’s time to stop.
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Nah, man. It was a direct response to a categorical statement that you made, that was not, in fact, categorically correct.
I see we’re at the “you can’t prove voter fraud didn’t happen” portion of the proceedings. Fantastic 100 post derail. JFC
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I’m going to stop posting about this but I’ll just say that I already posted about a few of the (admittedly thin) more credible trials which got a positive result for ivermectin.
I mean, I want to believe him. I’ve liked his posting for a long time. I’m not sure exactly what’s up with him on this particular subject, but he seems to be really invested in telling a pro-ivermectin story while also hedging behind limited denials about it.
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I don’t know, man. I think he is pretty obviously being truthful about his general position on ivermectin. But I can see how if you think he is lying or might be lying, then the whole thing reads very differently.
Sorry man, the uncertainty isn’t that high. There’s enough uncertainty there that there are still rct going for ivermectin, but the doctors who actually treat covid won’t touch the stuff off label. Do you have any idea how rare it is for doctors to put up with massive amounts patient and family complaints for refusing to prescribe something? That conversation almost always goes down like this, “doc why are we giving this med, it ain’t helping anything?” “Well the patient really thinks it will help, and it most likely isn’t going to hurt.”
There are families threatening to transfer their loved ones to another state just to get their precious ivermectin, and the Intensivists, hospitalist, and infectious disease docs uniformly refuse to even consider prescribing it. So the smartest people I work with who literally specialize in weighing the cost/benefit of prescribing drugs are all saying fuck no. I’m going to go with their expertise on this one.
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Ay yo, can we get a separate thread for the dewormer stuff?
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You think his cousin Pinky owns Ivermectin Inc.?
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It would only be like that if everyone on both sides agreed that voter fraud was super rare and that voter id laws are a bad idea. If you can imagine everyone in the argument agreeing on those two points, then that is pretty much where we are at right now.
Oh, yeah, that’s totally what I’m accusing him of when I say
2nd. Let’s give this thread something that deworms it.
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A couple studies is not the body of evidence. Are they reputable studies? sure. Are they evidence of efficacy? Nope. We don’t turn down cheap and effective treatments, we turn down treatments that don’t work.
It’s hard for me to imagine what motivations you’ve conjured up to reject that it’s his honest belief, so instead of being coy, how about just telling us exactly what it is you think he’s doing?