The Coronavirus Thread

[Scot Dutchy]

My arm is still a little stiff and painful. Half of the IC beds that were used for Covid have been returned to general use or cleared away.

[NineBerry]

More than three hours of actual virologists discussing the possible origins of the virus.

[Hermit]

Is Ivermectin conspiracy-nut hogwash or a solid performer in the modern covid19 era?

https://ivmmeta.com/

Introduction
We analyze all significant studies concerning the use of ivermectin for COVID-19. Search methods, inclusion criteria, effect extraction criteria (more serious outcomes have priority), all individual study data, PRISMA answers, and statistical methods are detailed in Appendix 1. We present random effects meta-analysis results for all studies, for studies within each treatment stage, for mortality results, for COVID-19 case results, for viral clearance results, for peer-reviewed studies, for Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), and after exclusions.
We also perform a simple analysis of the distribution of study effects. If treatment was not effective, the observed effects would be randomly distributed (or more likely to be negative if treatment is harmful). We can compute the probability that the observed percentage of positive results (or higher) could occur due to chance with an ineffective treatment (the probability of >= k heads in n coin tosses, or the one-sided sign test / binomial test). Analysis of publication bias is important and adjustments may be needed if there is a bias toward publishing positive results.

The page looks current, but I don't mind admitting I'm not able to make sense of all of it.

It is the former. First, let's look at these assertions:



Impressive, until you dig a little.

Firstly, perusing the list of publications regarding ivermectin trials, it turns out they are preprints - that is non-peer-reviewed articles - and they are published in "pay for publication" journals or fronts for anti-vaccine organisations.

Secondly, as a meta-analytical aggregator ivmmeta.com fails for not following any methodological or report guidelines and not including protocol registration with methods, search strategies, inclusion criteria, quality assessment of the included studies nor the certainty of the evidence of the pooled estimates. Why does this matter?

Prospective registration of systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis protocols is a key feature for providing transparency in the review process and ensuring protection against reporting biases, by revealing differences between the methods or outcomes reported in the published review and those planned in the registered protocol. These websites show pooled estimates suggesting significant benefits with ivermectin, which has resulted in confusion for clinicians, patients and even decision-makers. This is usually a problem when performing meta-analyses which are not based in rigorous systematic reviews, often leading to spread spurious or fallacious findings.

(Link)
No wonder there is no sign of rigorous studies indicating reproducibility of the cited trials.

Thirdly, Covid-19 is a virus. Ivermectin is not capable of interacting with it or any other virus. It was not designed to interact with viruses. The FDA approved it for the treatment of parasites, among them heartworms, head lice and rosacea, none of which are in any way connected with viruses. Attempting to use Ivermectin to fight the coronavirus is fundamentally misguided.

Fourthly, the team running c19ivermectin.com insist on remaining anonymous. This is the most telling point their website is a front for anti-vaxxers. The pretext is that they want to avoid the repercussions that can be meted out to anyone who advocates alternatives to main stream medicine, and they cite two examples.

One of them is the death threats made against Doctor Didier Raoult, who promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. Um, yes, but Anthony Fauci's life, and the lives of his family, were targeted rather more intensively, persistently and credibly.

the death threats started in mid-March, 2020, and it was the harassment of his wife and particularly his children that upset him more than anything else.

“They knew where my kids work, where they live. The threats would come directly to my children’s phones, directly to my children’s homes,” he told the New York Times in an interview.

Dr Fauci said there “was chatter on the internet, people talking to each other, threatening, saying, ‘Hey, we got to get rid of this guy. What are we going to do about him? He’s hurting the president’s chances.’ You know, that kind of right-wing craziness.”

He revealed that one day he was sent a letter with some sort of a powdered substance in it and when he opened it, he accidentally got it all over his face. That was “very, very disturbing” to him and his wife. “It was a benign nothing. But it was frightening. My wife and my children were more disturbed than I was.”

(Link)
It did not stop Fauci from disseminating his findings and putting his name to them. The refusal of the operators of the c19ivermectin can be regarded as cowardice if one wants to be charitable. I am more inclined to regard it as an underhanded way to hide their identity as anti-vaxxers.

The other example is the the firing of Simone Gold. O dear. She was not fired when she founded the anti-vaccine outfit named America's Frontline Doctors. She was not fired when she advocated the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19. She was not fired when she claimed that the lockdown’s mental health effects were more harmful than the Covid-19 virus. She was fired after she participated in the storming of the Capitol on the 6th of January. Gold claimed she thought she was just legally visiting it. Maybe she had not noticed the tumult when police lines were violently overwhelmed by a throng of thousands of invaders, but I doubt it. She did come prepared with a bullhorn to give a speech inside the capitol. A video of her presence resulted in her arrest on the 16th of January, and that in turn caused the sacking by her employers.

It is of course easy for sites like c19ivermectin.com to successfully mislead people with the use of smoke and mirrors, but anyone who is prepared to spend a bit of time checking out what is actually happening beyond appearances will eventually look right through the fraudulent nature. Of course, in addition to investing whatever time it takes to get to the bottom, one also has to deactivate one's biases first.

[Tero]

Yeah but chloroquine! It would probably make Invermectin work!

[Brian Peacock]

Is Ivermectin conspiracy-nut hogwash or a solid performer in the modern covid19 era?

https://ivmmeta.com/

Introduction
We analyze all significant studies concerning the use of ivermectin for COVID-19. Search methods, inclusion criteria, effect extraction criteria (more serious outcomes have priority), all individual study data, PRISMA answers, and statistical methods are detailed in Appendix 1. We present random effects meta-analysis results for all studies, for studies within each treatment stage, for mortality results, for COVID-19 case results, for viral clearance results, for peer-reviewed studies, for Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), and after exclusions.
We also perform a simple analysis of the distribution of study effects. If treatment was not effective, the observed effects would be randomly distributed (or more likely to be negative if treatment is harmful). We can compute the probability that the observed percentage of positive results (or higher) could occur due to chance with an ineffective treatment (the probability of >= k heads in n coin tosses, or the one-sided sign test / binomial test). Analysis of publication bias is important and adjustments may be needed if there is a bias toward publishing positive results.

The page looks current, but I don't mind admitting I'm not able to make sense of all of it.

It is the former. First, let's look at these assertions:



Impressive, until you dig a little.

Firstly, perusing the list of publications regarding ivermectin trials, it turns out they are preprints - that is non-peer-reviewed articles - and they are published in "pay for publication" journals or fronts for anti-vaccine organisations.

Secondly, as a meta-analytical aggregator ivmmeta.com fails for not following any methodological or report guidelines and not including protocol registration with methods, search strategies, inclusion criteria, quality assessment of the included studies nor the certainty of the evidence of the pooled estimates. Why does this matter?

Prospective registration of systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis protocols is a key feature for providing transparency in the review process and ensuring protection against reporting biases, by revealing differences between the methods or outcomes reported in the published review and those planned in the registered protocol. These websites show pooled estimates suggesting significant benefits with ivermectin, which has resulted in confusion for clinicians, patients and even decision-makers. This is usually a problem when performing meta-analyses which are not based in rigorous systematic reviews, often leading to spread spurious or fallacious findings.

(Link)
No wonder there is no sign of rigorous studies indicating reproducibility of the cited trials.

Thirdly, Covid-19 is a virus. Ivermectin is not capable of interacting with it or any other virus. It was not designed to interact with viruses. The FDA approved it for the treatment of parasites, among them heartworms, head lice and rosacea, none of which are in any way connected with viruses. Attempting to use Ivermectin to fight the coronavirus is fundamentally misguided.

Fourthly, the team running c19ivermectin.com insist on remaining anonymous. This is the most telling point their website is a front for anti-vaxxers. The pretext is that they want to avoid the repercussions that can be meted out to anyone who advocates alternatives to main stream medicine, and they cite two examples.

One of them is the death threats made against Doctor Didier Raoult, who promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. Um, yes, but Anthony Fauci's life, and the lives of his family, were targeted rather more intensively, persistently and credibly.

the death threats started in mid-March, 2020, and it was the harassment of his wife and particularly his children that upset him more than anything else.

“They knew where my kids work, where they live. The threats would come directly to my children’s phones, directly to my children’s homes,” he told the New York Times in an interview.

Dr Fauci said there “was chatter on the internet, people talking to each other, threatening, saying, ‘Hey, we got to get rid of this guy. What are we going to do about him? He’s hurting the president’s chances.’ You know, that kind of right-wing craziness.”

He revealed that one day he was sent a letter with some sort of a powdered substance in it and when he opened it, he accidentally got it all over his face. That was “very, very disturbing” to him and his wife. “It was a benign nothing. But it was frightening. My wife and my children were more disturbed than I was.”

(Link)
It did not stop Fauci from disseminating his findings and putting his name to them. The refusal of the operators of the c19ivermectin can be regarded as cowardice if one wants to be charitable. I am more inclined to regard it as an underhanded way to hide their identity as anti-vaxxers.

The other example is the the firing of Simone Gold. O dear. She was not fired when she founded the anti-vaccine outfit named America's Frontline Doctors. She was not fired when she advocated the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19. She was not fired when she claimed that the lockdown’s mental health effects were more harmful than the Covid-19 virus. She was fired after she participated in the storming of the Capitol on the 6th of January. Gold claimed she thought she was just legally visiting it. Maybe she had not noticed the tumult when police lines were violently overwhelmed by a throng of thousands of invaders, but I doubt it. She did come prepared with a bullhorn to give a speech inside the capitol. A video of her presence resulted in her arrest on the 16th of January, and that in turn caused the sacking by her employers.

It is of course easy for sites like c19ivermectin.com to successfully mislead people with the use of smoke and mirrors, but anyone who is prepared to spend a bit of time checking out what is actually happening beyond appearances will eventually look right through the fraudulent nature. Of course, in addition to investing whatever time it takes to get to the bottom, one also has to deactivate one's biases first.

Your bias for facts and intellectual honesty is showing again.

[Seabass]

More than three hours of actual virologists discussing the possible origins of the virus.

I'm sure Cunt will be very eager to watch these, given his keen interest in learning the truth about the origins of the virus as well as his willingness to hear out arguments from all sides of any given issue.

[Seabass]

Is Ivermectin conspiracy-nut hogwash or a solid performer in the modern covid19 era?

https://ivmmeta.com/

Introduction
We analyze all significant studies concerning the use of ivermectin for COVID-19. Search methods, inclusion criteria, effect extraction criteria (more serious outcomes have priority), all individual study data, PRISMA answers, and statistical methods are detailed in Appendix 1. We present random effects meta-analysis results for all studies, for studies within each treatment stage, for mortality results, for COVID-19 case results, for viral clearance results, for peer-reviewed studies, for Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), and after exclusions.
We also perform a simple analysis of the distribution of study effects. If treatment was not effective, the observed effects would be randomly distributed (or more likely to be negative if treatment is harmful). We can compute the probability that the observed percentage of positive results (or higher) could occur due to chance with an ineffective treatment (the probability of >= k heads in n coin tosses, or the one-sided sign test / binomial test). Analysis of publication bias is important and adjustments may be needed if there is a bias toward publishing positive results.

The page looks current, but I don't mind admitting I'm not able to make sense of all of it.

It is the former. First, let's look at these assertions:



Impressive, until you dig a little.

Firstly, perusing the list of publications regarding ivermectin trials, it turns out they are preprints - that is non-peer-reviewed articles - and they are published in "pay for publication" journals or fronts for anti-vaccine organisations.

Secondly, as a meta-analytical aggregator ivmmeta.com fails for not following any methodological or report guidelines and not including protocol registration with methods, search strategies, inclusion criteria, quality assessment of the included studies nor the certainty of the evidence of the pooled estimates. Why does this matter?

Prospective registration of systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis protocols is a key feature for providing transparency in the review process and ensuring protection against reporting biases, by revealing differences between the methods or outcomes reported in the published review and those planned in the registered protocol. These websites show pooled estimates suggesting significant benefits with ivermectin, which has resulted in confusion for clinicians, patients and even decision-makers. This is usually a problem when performing meta-analyses which are not based in rigorous systematic reviews, often leading to spread spurious or fallacious findings.

(Link)
No wonder there is no sign of rigorous studies indicating reproducibility of the cited trials.

Thirdly, Covid-19 is a virus. Ivermectin is not capable of interacting with it or any other virus. It was not designed to interact with viruses. The FDA approved it for the treatment of parasites, among them heartworms, head lice and rosacea, none of which are in any way connected with viruses. Attempting to use Ivermectin to fight the coronavirus is fundamentally misguided.

Fourthly, the team running c19ivermectin.com insist on remaining anonymous. This is the most telling point their website is a front for anti-vaxxers. The pretext is that they want to avoid the repercussions that can be meted out to anyone who advocates alternatives to main stream medicine, and they cite two examples.

One of them is the death threats made against Doctor Didier Raoult, who promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. Um, yes, but Anthony Fauci's life, and the lives of his family, were targeted rather more intensively, persistently and credibly.

the death threats started in mid-March, 2020, and it was the harassment of his wife and particularly his children that upset him more than anything else.

“They knew where my kids work, where they live. The threats would come directly to my children’s phones, directly to my children’s homes,” he told the New York Times in an interview.

Dr Fauci said there “was chatter on the internet, people talking to each other, threatening, saying, ‘Hey, we got to get rid of this guy. What are we going to do about him? He’s hurting the president’s chances.’ You know, that kind of right-wing craziness.”

He revealed that one day he was sent a letter with some sort of a powdered substance in it and when he opened it, he accidentally got it all over his face. That was “very, very disturbing” to him and his wife. “It was a benign nothing. But it was frightening. My wife and my children were more disturbed than I was.”

(Link)
It did not stop Fauci from disseminating his findings and putting his name to them. The refusal of the operators of the c19ivermectin can be regarded as cowardice if one wants to be charitable. I am more inclined to regard it as an underhanded way to hide their identity as anti-vaxxers.

The other example is the the firing of Simone Gold. O dear. She was not fired when she founded the anti-vaccine outfit named America's Frontline Doctors. She was not fired when she advocated the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19. She was not fired when she claimed that the lockdown’s mental health effects were more harmful than the Covid-19 virus. She was fired after she participated in the storming of the Capitol on the 6th of January. Gold claimed she thought she was just legally visiting it. Maybe she had not noticed the tumult when police lines were violently overwhelmed by a throng of thousands of invaders, but I doubt it. She did come prepared with a bullhorn to give a speech inside the capitol. A video of her presence resulted in her arrest on the 16th of January, and that in turn caused the sacking by her employers.

It is of course easy for sites like c19ivermectin.com to successfully mislead people with the use of smoke and mirrors, but anyone who is prepared to spend a bit of time checking out what is actually happening beyond appearances will eventually look right through the fraudulent nature. Of course, in addition to investing whatever time it takes to get to the bottom, one also has to deactivate one's biases first.

I'm sure Cunt will accept that he just posted some heavy duty anti-science bullshit, take that lesson to heart, and then change his information diet so as to make this mistake less often in the future.

[Cunt]

I already knew both possibilities were under discussion.

The audio stuff I've heard suggests that lab leak is still not dismissed as a possibility. Neither is natural origin. Most difficult to dismiss would be a blend of the two hypothesis's.

Did the FDA remove the restrictions on HCQ? I thought it was back in regular service as a medicine, but the recent jokes upthread make me think it might be still a 'bad drug'.

Sure be awkward if Trump was right about it, after all that teasing...

[Seabass]

I already knew both possibilities were under discussion.

The audio stuff I've heard suggests that lab leak is still not dismissed as a possibility. Neither is natural origin. Most difficult to dismiss would be a blend of the two hypothesis's.

Did the FDA remove the restrictions on HCQ? I thought it was back in regular service as a medicine, but the recent jokes upthread make me think it might be still a 'bad drug'.

Sure be awkward if Trump was right about it, after all that teasing...

It was never a 'bad drug'. Your information is bad, as is your strawman.

[Hermit]

I'm sure Cunt will accept that he just posted some heavy duty anti-science bullshit, take that lesson to heart, and then change his information diet so as to make this mistake less often in the future.

Certainly. Just as he gracefully conceded that Gad Saad indulged in some egregious quote mining when I pointed it out to him, or when he admitted that he was wrong when I provided the Youtube link to Pierre Kory's testimony at the Senate Homeland Security Hearing on Covid-19 Treatments which he claimed Youtube banned.

[Hermit]

Did the FDA remove the restrictions on HCQ? I thought it was back in regular service as a medicine, but the recent jokes upthread make me think it might be still a 'bad drug'.

Sure be awkward if Trump was right about it, after all that teasing...

April 28, 2021

FDA warns website to stop unlawful sale of 'unapproved, misbranded' hydroxychloroquine

FDA-approved hydroxychloroquine is labeled for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria, discoid and systemic lupus erythematosus, and acute and chronic rheumatoid arthritis and is only available by prescription. In addition, hydroxychloroquine has not been approved by FDA for use in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, mitigation, or cure of COVID-19.

So, as with ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine has legitimate, FDA-approved medical uses, but neither are approved for treating the coronavirus.

[Cunt]

Here is a discussion between a 'pro-vax' ( Bret even has his rabies vaccine!) evolutionary biologist, and a medical doctor about ivermectin, and what they call the 'crime of the century'

Just by the by, with Weinstein being a pro-vax, many-times vaccinated field worker who has expressed concerns about some aspects of the current vaccines, his take on it might be nuanced and informed.

Or he could be dismissed as an anti-vaxxor, if one wanted to keep things simple.


ETA - https://covid19criticalcare.com/

This seems to be the site for the doc Bret interviewed. The other one was just one I found.

(looks the same)

[NineBerry]

with Weinstein earning money from having controversial opinions...

[Cunt]

I don't know which of his opinions you think is controversial, but remember, it may be my misunderstanding you have based some of that on.

He's pretty reasonable.

[BarnettNewman]

I already knew both possibilities were under discussion.

The audio stuff I've heard suggests that lab leak is still not dismissed as a possibility. Neither is natural origin. Most difficult to dismiss would be a blend of the two hypothesis's.

Did the FDA remove the restrictions on HCQ? I thought it was back in regular service as a medicine, but the recent jokes upthread make me think it might be still a 'bad drug'.

Sure be awkward if Trump was right about it, after all that teasing...

It was never a 'bad drug'. Your information is bad, as is your strawman.

Indeed, it’s a good drug for some diseases like Lupus. Which was a particular worry for my wife who has it, as some numb nuts thinking it could fight COVID caused a shortage.


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