I’ve been reading a lot of research the past couple of weeks on the drug ivermectin. It seems there is serous study going on regarding its use in both curing and preventing COVID-19.
My primary care doctor has treated several of his already infected patients with it and they all cleared up symptoms in a matter of a few days.
I am not a doctor. The stuff I’ve been reading goes down some very deep rabbit holes, so you’re on your own for this. I took my second dose of ivermectin today, hoping for the prophylactic effect.
The drug is cheap; $3 for the 90 day supply with my prescription plan. I took four pills on Day One, four pills on Day Three, then four pills once every two weeks. The pills are very small, virtually tasteless, and crumble / dissolve very quickly in my mouth (I have trouble swallowing pills, so I chew them). I have had no side-effects.
This is not nut-case stuff; here is a good start if you are interested in doing your own reading. Personally, I have more questions than answers but I thought this might be of interest to some of you.
I had to read pretty far into that second link to find any reference to ivermectin.
A third study authored by Desai, Mehra and others that used Surgisphere data, which claimed to find a large reduction in COVID-19 mortality when patients were given the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, has disappeared from the social-sciences preprint server SSRN, where it was first posted on 6 April; …
The authors says they retracted it because they didn’t feel it was ready for peer review.
Careful observation shows what might be a more compelling reason to pull it, although they’re certainly glossing over it. Desai is the founder of Surgisphere and the data came from them as well. Let me refresh your memory on Surgisphere and their role in alternative treatments.
I have no issue whatsoever with doing trials of things like hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, remdesivir, or even HeadOn. I just think that random doctors throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks is dangerous.
As for the study in the OP, it appears to simply have taken African countries, grouped them into these three buckets:
Countries that include ivermectin in the prophylactic chemotherapy treatments.
Countries that don’t include it in their prophylactic chemotherapy treatments.
Countries that don’t use prophylactic chemotherapy treatments at all.
Then they put them in box plots based on COVID incidence per 100k.
In what is considered shady reporting, they removed outliers for “visual clarification” which probably means that some countries didn’t fit the pattern they were hoping to demonstrate and would muddy the waters. They also set their whiskers to 10% and 90%, even though they are expected to be the min and max, minus outliers. That tells me that there were probably countries that told a different story but weren’t even outliers.
Finally, and to me the most telling statement in the study:
It might be interesting to note that the percentage of the overall population that received PCT using ivermectin mostly ranged from 30–90%, yet there was no significant difference in the resulting incidence of COVID-19.
So, either this shit is so good that it is effectively reaching herd immunity with even 30% of the population getting it, or it has the same effect on COVID incidence no matter how many or few people get ivermectin. Perhaps it’s homeopathy on a population scale.
I’ll wait for better studies before asking my doctor for a prescription.
Quoting the fourth sentence of the page I linked to (from the NIH):
“Here, we show that countries with routine mass drug administration of prophylactic chemotherapy including ivermectin have a significantly lower incidence of COVID-19.”
I’ve read a lot in the past two weeks, enough to decide I am taking it.
A quote from another source:
“When used for the current indications, at the currently approved doses, ivermectin is a very safe drug. To date, more than three billion treatments have been distributed in the context of the Mectizan Donation Program alone with an excellent safety profile. Most adverse reactions are mild, transitory and associated with parasite death rather than with the drug itself.”
In order to avoid doing a ton of work showing the flaws in all of the studies, I’ll just link to someone who has already done so. I’m in about the same place as he is as far as ivermectin. The studies show promise, but none of them were done well. His overall take for anyone who doesn’t want to follow the link:
Evidence for the use of Ivermectin is based on in vitro, prophylaxis, clinical, safety, and large-scale epidemiologic studies (heterogenous populations in multiple different settings) BUT…
Many of the trials thus far are methodologically flawed without enough information about baseline demographics, multiple primary outcomes, soft/subjective outcomes, convenience samples, and unclear definitions, just to name a few
Additionally, a valid concern in evaluating the literature is that many of the trials have not yet passed the peer review process and are in pre-print format
Although Ivermectin is cheap, readily available, with a fairly safe side effect profile, based on the evaluation of the literature above, at this time, Ivermectin should not be recommended outside of a clinical trial to ensure we get a true answer of effect
Ivermectin is interesting, there is certainly signal to evaluate further, but in our desire to want a treatment option, let’s not continue to do the same thing over and over again, as we saw play out with Hydroxychloroquine
Early last year, invermectim was shown to be an effective treatment for COVID in test tubes, in massive doses equivalent to taking ~ 100 of those pills. Since it’s known to be safe in normal doses, some countries said - meh - go ahead and take it if you want to.
So yes, serious research has continued. Are there any recent publications suggesting meaningful outcomes?
In every country around the world, doctors have noticed that most people with observable COVID symptoms get better in a few days, and when the doctor has been using odd off-label drugs to ‘treat’ COVID, they’ve attributed that symptom progression to the drugs.
Most of the doctors I know lean the other way: they think active substances are generally bad for you, and should be avoided unless there is a clear indication backed by science.