Ivermectin

[BobBob]

And as for one of the other widely promoted solutions..LOCKDOWNS..
Johns Hopkins Study Shows Government Cure for COVID Was Worse Than Disease, Lockdown Benefit Provided No Mitigation of Death from Virus......

.......An analysis of each of these three groups support the conclusion that lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality. More specifically, stringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average. SIPOs were also ineffective, only reducing COVID-19 mortality by 2.9% on average. Specific NPI studies also find no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality.
While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.

https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf

This spends the first 14 pages justifying why it's ignoring data from nearly all studies

Pages 14 to 40 might sensibly termed "our cherry picked data and the ambiguous results, proving nothing"
In their words "Out of the 1,048 studies, 34 met our eligibility criteria." IE they call ita meta then ignored 97% of the data
They looked at 1048 studies and drew their conclusions from 34 of them, IE they ignored 97% of the data LMAO

At the same time it claims that lockdowns don't work despite China's draconian lockdowns resulting in zero deaths for the past year or so

It's not a computer virus, it is spread by human interaction so significantly limiting human interaction will reduce spread.

The massive level of filtering of studies and dubious justification for this makes any conclusions meaningless and calling this a meta analysis questionable

Not sure of the relevance to Ivermectin other than it's as unproven and unfounded as this study

 

[BobBob]

I don't need excuses. Nor do the majority of people in my state who don't wear them.
Placebos are not my thing.

Placebos that work and reduce your risk by 90% are not placebos. We call those "effective."

90% is well outside of the range on mask efficacy research. Let's see some research that show masks are 90% effective against omicron.

An N99 mask is 99% effective at blocking droplets.
Feel free to argue how sticky the droplets are, how much dried virus survives or variations in filtration absorbtion adsorbtion etc. There is a ton of data out there on this.

Omicron is spread by droplets therefore the masks stop the spread of omicron

The effect of limiting the viral dose (not viral load) is dependent on how your body reacts, how fast, whether it's antibodies, B cells, T cells etc that provide the protection but if you get a small dose you have a better chance of a good outcome.

Little blue squares of cloth might stop high volume / big droplets of gloop being sprayed but protect you less from fine droplets.

N95 and N99 N100 masks provide 95, 99 or 99.97% reduction in droplets (simplification), it's in the name, but the effectiveness of wearing masks includes the choice of masks, whether you have a beard, whether you have been trained to fit a mask effectively and how strictly you follow the protocols for not touching your face, washing your hands etc.

 

[spinningmagnets]

April 29, 2022...Ivermectin is now an FDA allowed treatment to add to clinical trials.

https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antiviral-therapy/ivermectin/

 

[CONSIDERABLE SHOUTING]

April 29, 2022...Ivermectin is now an FDA allowed treatment to add to clinical trials.

https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antiviral-therapy/ivermectin/

Finally we actually have hard science and rationale instead of just "DA ELITES" talk. I remember I posted a deep dive into studies last year that had a similar "we don't know yet" conclusion about it's efficacy because some were still trying to find even what the therapeutic dose would be. Also, It's been in Clinical trials for a bit, late April for this article but they've been doing it earlier.

Of note in the article:

Reports from in vitro studies suggest that ivermectin acts by inhibiting host importin alpha/beta-1 nuclear transport proteins, which are part of a key intracellular transport process.3,4 Viruses hijack the process and enhance infection by suppressing the host’s antiviral response. In addition, ivermectin docking may interfere with SARS-CoV-2 spike protein attachment to the human cell membrane.5

This here, is the hard science that we've needed to ever give this attention. How does it work? How does it inhibit a virus? How does an anti-helminth keep a virus from replicating? And if this is how it works, does this therapeutic affect also hurt human beings?

Ivermectin has been shown to inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2 in cell cultures.9 However, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies suggest that achieving the plasma concentrations necessary for the antiviral efficacy detected in vitro would require administration of doses up to 100-fold higher than those approved for use in humans.

Not only does that mean the oral paste likely isn't enough, but that could also mean you need toxic doses of it to even have an affect. It's not the first drug we use for people that rides that line, drug like Vancomyacin, Amphotericin-B and Phenytoin all have very fine lines between therapeutic and toxic.

Ivermectin is a minor cytochrome P450 3A4 substrate and a p-glycoprotein substrate.

Notable because many drugs- specifically lots of antidepressants like SSRIs/St. Johns Wort- induces this enzyme, so taking both could potentiate and lead to toxic levels of either drug.

The FDA first issued a warning in April 2020 that ivermectin intended for use in animals should not be used to treat COVID-19 in humans. This warning was updated and reiterated in 2021.

Haven't read this one yet, but bears repeating. I imagine its because oral Iver isn't in a measured dose and thus, you have no idea how much you're actually consuming.

Finally, I still work in the same ICU and I haven't seen a single COVID patient taking Ivermectin in almost a year (still get plenty of COVID patients tho). I had actually had forgotten about it for some time until I thought of it randomly a couple weeks back- we were getting several thanks to one pulmonologist out west. I believe there's lots of reasons for this, and sadly one of them is that COVID killed off our most vulnerable and most the remainder have finally gotten vaccinated in some form.

 

[neptronix]

April 29, 2022...Ivermectin is now an FDA allowed treatment to add to clinical trials.

https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antiviral-therapy/ivermectin/

This is likely due to the huge failure of pfizer's pill which works along similar pathways to inhibit viral replication.
Pfizer's pill was studied in ideal conditions where it can have an effect ( very very early in the infection ), and it shows an effect, but the effect is so small that it barely passes a risk vs reward evaluation.

Ivermectin was mostly studied in non-ideal conditions ( not early in the infection ) where pfizer's pill would also fail. Both drugs have the same problem. Both are protease inhibitors that need to be administered early in the infection to have any appreciable effect. Paxlovid comes with serious side effects though whereas Ivermectin's side effects are milder per effective dose. Also, in most ivermectin trials, the dosage is extremely low, whereas the dosage for paxlovid is very high. This may be the cause of the much higher side effects in the pfizer drug.

I'd like to see what comes out of these clinical trials, but i don't expect proper trials to happen because pfizer will fight them by any means necessary, legal or illegal.

My bet is that the outcome will be similar to the series of trials that showed that glucosamine was within a few % efficacy of pfizer's celecoxib. In that case, it turned out that pfizer had yet again twisted the FDA 's arm into approving a trial designed around making their drug look good. It involved an intentionally unfair trial design against glucosamine. They made a hell of a lot of money on celecoxib. Took a decade for proper trials to be done, which pfizer fought with multiple counter trails.

The trick: glucosamine takes weeks to produce an effect whereas celecoxib works instantly. Pfizer repeatedly produced short trials where glucosamine wouldn't take effect - or they used the type with the lowest absorption rate - to ensure that their drug would

Pfizer's celecoxib produced very serious GI and heart issues whereas glucosamine has no serious side effects at all. Both provided roughly equal relief. What's shocking is that celecoxib is not pulled from the market still given the fact that it still does not meet a proper risk vs reward evaluation.

If i am correct about how this will play out then you can expect a decade of back and forth on research and also some eventual lawsuits. This is usually how it plays out for pfizer in the long run, they've been dinged for this by the FDA dozens of times. Yet the FDA continues to turn a blind eye until people find out the truth on their own.

Here's a recent drug Pfizer tried the old FDA arm twist on, and it didn't work out for them; it turns out that the FDA is not insane enough to approve a drug for arthritis pain that causes very rapid loss of cartilage. The FDA wasn't willing to rewrite how arthritis trials are done, despite years of back and forth and every possible angle attacked by Pfizer, who is the most zero morals corporation i can think of.

Here's more info on that recent Pfizer drug, Tanezumab:

https://www.biospace.com/article/el...-osteoarthritis-pain-drug-out-of-its-misery-/