Tl;dr: that "meta-analysis" linked above is a bunch of bunk science. This journal entry breaks it down well, but it's written in really academic terms and might not be super understandable without a public health/statistics background: https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111678
Disclaimer: I have a background in statistics and public health. I have no background in virology/immunology/anything of the like. I can tell you why these statistics are crap, I can't tell you how ivermectin or covid-19 works.
So that story is a meta-analysis of studies of ivermectin as a COVID treatment. In layman's terms, a meta-analysis is like a combination of a bunch of studies together. For example, if 10 universities conducted independent studies of smoking and lung cancer, another university could do a study where they look at the populations from all 10 of those studies combined and see if the same conclusions hold. A meta-analysis is typically a very powerful tool to confirm a hypothesis since it has a giant sample size and a very diverse, generalizable population. But a meta-analysis is only as good as the data fed to it, it doesn't generate new data.
Now, a little background on the ivermectin craze: Ivermectin started getting traction because a few computer simulations and very early test-tube studies showed it might be able to fight the virus. Cranks and some doctors -particularly in Latin America - took this as evidence that ivermectin should be good for clinical use despite absolutely no clinical trials or clinical evidence for it working. The most-cited test-tube study used a dose of 5 micromole concentration before ivermectin had positive effects on fighting the virus. That's over 100-times the concentration of ivermectin that you would get from an FDA standard dose. In layman's terms, that means "so we dumped 100 times the normal amount of horse dewormer in a test tube full of covid and it had some effect." Not exactly airtight science.
Now, let's look at the meta-analysis. If there were really that many good trials on ivermectin as a COVID cure, that would be pretty impressive! But it's an example of "garbage in, garbage out." For example, none of these "studies" in the linked article tell you how people were registered for the trials, how they got their control groups, the strategies they used to search for appropriate test subjects, or the level of certainty of their estimates.
Let's dive into their data a little bit. So, right off the bat, if you go to the "All Studies" tab at the top of their restults section, you can look at the "Improvement, RR [CI]" header. That means "Improvement, Relative Risk [Confidence Interval]". This is a pretty normal metric in epidemiology, basically the risk of an outcome of people who got the treatment vs people who didn't. The confidence interval is like the margin of error. For results to be "statistically significant", the confidence interval shouldn't contain zero (i.e., you're confident the treatment's effect is not zero!). The first four studies here all happen to have a lower confidence interval of 0.01 or 0.02. So it just happened to be a wonderful coincidence that these studies were just barely statistically significant. I'm pretty skeptical of that.
So, these ivermectin studies. What were they actually studying? Was it to prevent death? Hospitalization? Symptoms at all? Well...turns out they were just combining any study they can get their hands on to make the data look significant. Stay in the "All Studies" section. The first study was against "hosp." (hospitalization), the second study was testing for increased viral load, the third study against death, the fourth one against death, etc. So all of these studies were studying different things. You can't do a meta-analysis for completely different outcomes! Furthermore, look at the ivermectin doses on the right column. First study used a dose of 14mg, then 12mg, then 36mg, etc.
So bottom line: there's no standard dose and they weren't even looking for a specific outcome. They just cherry-picked any data from any study that looked significant and stuck it in their "meta-analysis." None of this would pass peer review.
I can't tell you the methodological flaws with every study in this "meta analysis" because it would take forever, but hell I guarantee you the people who made this shit didn't read the studies either.
“so we dumped 100 times the normal amount of horse dewormer in a test tube full of covid and it had some effect"
Jesus. Christ.
🤦
Lol they just poured horse dewormer on viral particles and cells and then were suprised when shit broke. Fucking brain geniuses we got here. Tell ya what I'll take some covid positive cells and pour 100g of salt on em, bet that'll work. Get these chuds drinking salt water by next week, I'll sell crimson Saltwater for 20$a bottle.
And they'd deserve the kidney stones for being chuds. I draw the line at shitting out their own intestinal lining, that's a fate too cruel for even chuds.
Well…turns out they were just combining any study they can get their hands on to make the data look significant.
What ths fuck is wrong with these people? Seriously deranged shit.
there’s no standard dose and they weren’t even looking for a specific outcome. They just cherry-picked any data from any study that looked significant and stuck it in their “meta-analysis.” None of this would pass peer review.
Fucking clowns.
:funny-clown-hammer:
Friendly reminder that bleach, hydrochloric acid, and fire will all eliminate the presence of covid-19 in an in vitro study.
That's true, but the petri dish won't scream while it dies, so you can pretend that nothing went wrong!
BMF noooo. not this hill bud, it's covered in layers of intestinal linings and shit.
Ok I'm using this comment to troll all the ivermectin supporters on the South African subreddit
Vaccine and Covid disinformation on Hexbear will be moderated/ removed as it is reported and noticed by the mod team.
FDA statement on why you should not use Ivermectin to treat or prevent covid 19.
Beau of the Fifth Column video on Ivermectin, the feed store, and public health.
Ivermectin is a neurotoxin. At incredibly low dosages, it is used to treat severe parasitic infestations in humans.
This comment is not medical advice and you should not be looking to Hexbear for any medical advice.
Unlike :reddit-logo:, we care about the health of our community.
Thanks for this. There are people from my country that have died because of this. As much as we like to laugh at the chuds taking themselves out, innocent people will die because of misinformation. It can't be allowed to get any foothold here
o7 mods and admins :07: :rosa-salute:
you cannot dose Ivermectin at a human level.
Joke's on you, I'll just make homeopathic ivermectin
If this medication treated covid it'd be in hospitals. A chud who owns a jetski dealership doesn't know more than a doctor.
I mean a jetski dealership, sure, but hear me out; what about, like, a pool supply store owner, whose sister in law is a physician's assistant?
A meta analysis is a paper doing an overview of an overall set of data sets. This can be useful for researcher to get a general idea of where things currently stand in a research field, especially allowing to see where there are gaps in research. It is NOT useful for determining the empirical truth of anything. It is just a tool to inspect tools.
The actual empirical validity of a meta analysis is only as good as the underlying data, and there is zero evidence that any of his studies have any validity. If you have 1000 studies saying pouring piss in your eyes increases eye health then guess what your meta analysis will say? That's right time to start passing in your eyes. Poor understanding if data and tge ability to see crap studies from good studies is a serious problem in science and contributes the the replicability crisis.
Underlying all this fancy numbers and graphs and shot is the fact that they have no proposed pathway of action for ivermectin on covid. Ivermectin targets neuronal tissue, and because parasites are smaller than us they are more susceptible to small doses. It is effectively a poison. This has zero effect on covid directly unless you count killing your cells before covid can a treatment, fun fact it's not might as well go with bleach. If it has side effects that alleviate symptoms of covid, well we can probably find a less harmful more effective drug that does that better. For example they use NaHeparin to treat cardiovascular side effects because it is an anticoagulant and vovid has been seen to cause clotting and cardiovascular dilation.
Hope this helps and am happy to answer any other questions.
Here's the thing: none of us without biomedical training are going to be able to figure out whether Ivermectin is an effective treatment. If there was anything to this, the massive corps that produce ivermectin would be going HAM to get this approved.
One of the many companies that sells ivermectin is Merck, which doesn't have a vaccine to sell. Instead, Merck is releasing public statements begging people not to buy one of their products. A giant corporation that is entirely profit driven and straight up evil can't even figure out a way for ivermectin to pass the sniff test.
What we can do is list off the many reasons it hasn't been approved as a treatment, why the studies antivaxers are pointing to are bunk, the harm it does to the human body at the dosages mentioned in those studies, etc.
Hopefully I don't sound too pissed at you or anyone else here, I just have to deal with this shit in real life too and it's exhausting. I know you're just trying to get more info to talk your brother off the ledge and I hope you're able to because this shit is dangerous.
Edit: I just Googled "Merck ivermectin" and the second result is a crazy as shit antivaxxer site. Fuck this country. Hope it fucking burns to the ground in a pile of intestinal sloughings.
:jokerfied: :amerikkka:
I don’t think he’s reading this stuff intending on personal use
That's good to hear. This shit is brutal.
I would be dubious of any study that a CHUD presents, but as far as studies go this one isn't terrible. They present a clear methodology and pathway of action, in this case by inhibiting active transport of vial DNA across the nuclear membrane, and a pretty simple experiment, infecting cells and then pelleting them to collect viral particles for quantification. That being said this is one data point that needs to be replicated to have any real relevance. Also this is still 'in vitro' "aka in test tubes for non nerds" which is completely different from in "vivo trials" which is different from actual therapeutic use. It is possible that ivermectin is effective in preventing active transport across cell membranes, but it is also possible that the dose required would kill or seriously harm a live subject. It is also possible their study suffers from systemic errors, Steve might have improperly inoculated the test samples with COVID for example because he grabbed a vial of distilled water instead of COVID . In short one study is at best an interesting starting point for investigation, but more importantly why fucking bother when we have a vaccine that has 80%-99% effectiveness.
because there was a study that said it cured covid in vitro (albeit at extremely high concentrations). so I looked at the safety studies and they checked out, so I figured it was worth a shot. Didn't do anything.
I am sorry this is literally made to kill multiplecelluar life, how in the hell can you claim that a high dosis is safe?
I'm only claiming that a scientific study claimed that. Which it did. Scientific studies can be wrong, I guess.
I'm not encouraging anybody to take that high a dosage (or even to take the drug at all) I certainly didn't take 10x.And how did you even get the adequate pharmaceutical equipment to get a non-lethal dosis?
....because I got it prescribed by a doctor?
Covid predictably brought all the snake oil salesman out of the woodwork. Between that and the antivaxx shit you now have a bunch of weird cranks each getting their shot at poisoning people.
The recent CTH mentions it, people are segregated into markets of "trust the experts" or "be rugged individualists who do it yourself". Considering Amerikkka is a place where people literally do their own dentistry, I think the fault should be placed with capitalism in alienating these people from healthcare.
It was started by some batshit foolish South African farmers around December 2020 who give ivermectin to animals regularly before hand, saw a bothced Egyptian scientific study saying that ivermectin can prevent or cure covid, and ran with it. They first published an article on it in January 2020, which I'll link below. (It's in Afrikaans, use Google translate and feel free to ask questions about the translation)
https://afriforum.co.za/ivermektien-afriforum-se-regspan-oorweeg-moontlike-regsaksie/
Since then the idea got popular in SA through Facebook groups linked to Afriforum, and eventually spread to US chuds though the online US chud-white SA farmer pipeline. Now it's everywhere
afrikaans is not a language in which science is permitted to be performed :very-smart:
It was started by some batshit foolish South African farmers around December 2020 who give ivermectin to animals regularly before hand, saw a bothced Egyptian scientific study saying that ivermectin can prevent or cure covid
This isn't true, the paper that "started it all" is from June 2020 (linked in OP)
maybe they started the "horse paste" one, but the Ivermectin craze was well alive in Summer 2020, it just hadn't hit the mainstream yet. That was when I was looking into it to treat long-COVID
Yeah those were the scientific papers. A bunch of farmers didn't do scientific experiments, they were just the ones that pushed it into the mainstream by suing the South African government for not using ivermectin on humans, going on the big conservative news networks and social media though the US chuds - white SA farmer pipeline
Yeah, the scientific papers were just scientists investigating every way possible (except for the ones that appear to be fraudulent, but that's another discussion). The misrepresentation of the research and mainstreaming was done by SA farmer chuds
It’s a neurotoxin whose recommended dose in humans (who have parasites) is measured in micrograms. Even if it did work (which it doesn’t) no one without medical training should be dosing it themselves. But if anyone thinks going blind, having seizures, or straight up dying is preferable to getting a shot at CVS and sleeping for a day, they can feel free to try it out themselves.
Also, the company who manufactures this is Merck. You don’t get much more Big Pharma than Merck and if this did work, they’d be the ones profiting off of it. Instead, they released a statement practically begging people to not start killing themselves using their product.
Yeah Beau sums it up pretty well in his vid. Also if you try to buy ivermectin from a supplier, they'll quiz you on why you need it to keep chudfucks from killing themselves with it.
That's just big pharma colluding to lead you toward taking the vaccine!
Gonna nitpick a little bit, it's dosed in mcg/kg, but lexicomp shows on-label indications around 200 mcg/kg and off label as high as 400. It's only sold for human use in 3mg tablets in the US. It's not like fentanyl which is VERY MUCH dosed in micrograms.
Tell your brother to deal with his death drive like a normal person: by getting into an extreme sport or buying a motorcycle
These fools don't know the difference between parasites and viruses.
Probably but ivermectin isn't being used because they think parasite = virus.
It's just "inject yourself with bleach" with a monocle.
Edit: but then I find stuff like this that at least offer a plausible mechanism of action (messing with nuclear transport proteins and preventing viral rna from crossing) idk
There is a plausible mechanism of action. That doesn't make it a good treatment or even an effective treatment in humans. "Plausible mechanisms of action" are basically what scientists look for to find new medical stuff to research, it's better than using a dartboard. Then you start researching how something works "In Vitro" which means if it works in a test tube. There are lots of things that can kill Covid in a test-tube; ivermectin, bleach, UV light, fire, etc. Then after that there's a long process for testing it in living things (In Vivo). It has to not only be effective at curing Covid, it has to do so at doses low enough that it doesn't harm the human.
TLDR: Tell your brother that taking ivermectin to cure covid is like drinking bleach, getting the concentration high enough to actually matter is going to kill you and taking an ineffective dose will just make you sick. If you think your brother will start drink bleach, tell him something else.
Edit: I'm not seeing the word placebo a lot in the first link. What exactly are they comparing against?
There was some early indications that it might help treat covid, like with chloroquine, so antivax idiots take that and claim its a magic cure.
but then I find stuff like this that at least offer a plausible mechanism of action (messing with nuclear transport proteins and preventing viral rna from crossing)
"Messing with nuclear transport proteins"
You know what the MRNA vaccine does right?
You're basically opting for surgery with a shotgun instead of a scalpel, because you're afraid of knives.
ya but vaccine mrna got some spooky stuff where ur DNA makes you go to hell.
If I cain't pass on my prize-winnin' DNAs to my cousin, how'm I gonna save the hwhite race?
Sorry, my language was probably too aggressive. My point is this. People are turning to a drug that has drastic effects on the human body and might, in the process of just generally wreaking havoc on a cellular level, slow down the coronavirus. So why wouldn't you take the vaccine, which also operates on a cellular level but has been custom tailored to solve this problem? Made by the exact same scientists hired by the exact same pharmaceutical corporations.
Like, your evil doctor can't slip you some mind control shit when he's dosing you with ivermectin? You have no idea what you're taking when you pop those pills or agree to that syringe. It's not rational to distrust a cure made by scientists because you think that a different medicine made by scientists works better. If these people were really worried about being poisoned by a pharmaceutical company, they'd be chewing on arrowroot living naked in Borneo, because that's the only way you would actually have any control over whether or not something got into your system against your will.
It might prevent you from getting heartworm, so that's good
