Surprise! Study shows Ivermectin makes suffering from COVID worse

Can we just skip all that and encourage them to go straight to barbiturate laced uncarbonated soft drinks?

4 Likes

Not sure why you have posted this link, unless it is as an example of some of the highly misleading information out there on ivermectin.I randomly selected a couple of the studies that ivmmeta;com offers as supporting ivermectin. In the meta analysis of the first study there was this gem:

Small RCT with 32 ivermectin patients and 30 control patients. The mean recovery time after enrolment in the intervention arm was 5.31 ± 2.48 days vs. 6.33 ± 4.23 days in the control arm, p > 0.05. Negative PCR results were not significantly different between control and intervention arms, p>0.05. We are not sure what the results were because the abstract and Table 5 have switched the results.

(emphasis mine)

The second study I looked at was represented as showing a 99% improvement in COVID-19 outcomes. This turned out to be a records based case review of 1000 patients, not a study of ivermectin treatment. 3.8% of the patients received ivermectin and recovered, leading the study authors to conclude:

For ivermectin, the sample size is too small to arrive at any conclusion regarding the efficacy despite 100% recovery in the 34 patients. The mortality rate in steroid group was 47.1%, which was higher compared to that of the study population (10.55%). This high rate can be attributed to steroids being given to more severe cases at that time. However, in subsequent patients we incorporated steroids much earlier for patient care and they have shown significant mortality benefit.

Look - I’m not a physician or an epidemiologist, but the information being presented on ivmmeta looks really shoddy. So what’s the deal? Do you see this as a rebuttal to Jama? Or are you just reminding us that there’s no shortage of willing dupes out there who don’t even bother to click through for some rough is-their-ass-hanging-out diligence?

33 Likes

I guess what @mindfu meant was that he isn’t just plain stupid, but rather ignorant. Meaning he is able to understand reasonably complex concepts, but habitually ignores the scientific validity of what’s presented to him.

Similar to the many cases of academics holding unscientific opinions, although Rogan isn’t even that as far as I know.

4 Likes

It’s the Sagan Standard.

Exceptional duplicity requires exceptional mockery.

22 Likes

Symptoms of antivaxism include: defending Joe Rogan; whining about CNN; disagreeing with epidemiologists when you have no credentials; using the words “triggered, cancelled, cancel culture, ‘Rona, and echo chamber”; general whinginess; being flagged incessantly.

If you experience these symptoms, take a clue pill and seek professional help immediately.

39 Likes

The reason I think it is relevant to make a distinction regarding his motivation is that, in my opinion, if his business model was to spread Covid misinformation and bigotry, he would be actually less dangerous, because that would not be palatable for as large of an audience as he has.

If he only talked to fascists and nutcases all day to help further their agenda he would be like, let’s say, Alex Jones. But since he, in what he considers a liberal spirit, gives a platform to politically liberal and leftist guests and some actual scientists, sprinkled with random celebrities, as well as right extremists and nutcases, he effectively normalises their views.

7 Likes

The outcome is the same. Does it matter to the person who lost a loved one that the person spread misinformation had other motivations? Their loved one is no less dead.

He does have them on his show…

Exactly. It’s harder to dismiss him.

But either way, his actions have been highly damaging to the lives of real people. His motivation hardly matters, at the end of the day.

And honestly, when you bring up something like this when people are pointing to real world destructive outcomes but you’re still insisting treating it as an intellectual exercise, you come off as not giving a shit about those who are hurt by people like Rogan. It’s not that the conservation can’t be had, but when you inject it into discussions focused on the outcomes, it seems like you’re saying that the intellectual discourse matters more than the lives on the line. :woman_shrugging: There is a time and a place for this kind of thing, but someone talking about dangerous misinformation and what it means for real human beings specifically is probably not the time for that discussion, I’d argue.

23 Likes

Stephen Colbert GIF by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert

14 Likes

I’m confused by this article. It says (emphasis mine):

There was no difference in outcomes between the groups. In fact, slightly more patients in the ivermectin group went on to need extra oxygen compared with those who took a placebo, though the difference was not statistically significant.

It also says:

In addition to the fact that ivermectin didn’t work, people who took it had more side effects than those who didn’t, and sometimes those side effects were severe, including heart attacks, anemia and diarrhea that led to shock.

Which is it? No significant difference in outcomes, or more side-effects? They seem to contradict each other, unless I’m reading it wrong.

Like being an insufferable asshole?

8 Likes

I think that’s overly generous to Rogan. He gives away his own opinion enough to make it clear he’s in agreement, to some degree, with the right-wingers and nutcases. (He may also be in agreement, to some degree, with some of his left-leaning guests; the two aren’t contradictory. But he expresses racist views and has white supremacists guests on to spew racist pseudo-science.) His whole “free enquiry” shtick is as much cover for him as it is for his right-wing listeners.

12 Likes

I think he believes in his own „free enquiry“ shtick. Otherwise, why would he invite leftists at all? I don’t consider him the kind of evil genius who would do that just to create a convincing cover.

Seems self-explanatory; needing extra oxygen and having more side effects are two separate things :person_shrugging:

11 Likes

Grifters usually do. But really he just took the knucklehead conspiracist character from his standup and sitcom days and started playing it straight once he saw the business opportunity.

There’s no real “inquiry”, just him nodding along to whatever his guests say. A lot of those guests are fascists and charlatans and anti-vaxxers, people who shouldn’t be given a platform to spread their thoroughly discredited ideas by someone with a $100-million deal on Spotify. Their opinions, when distributed like this, have life-threatening effects on real people.

I see people portraying Rogan as some modern version of Dick Cavett or Ted Koppel when he’s not even as good an interviewer as Larry “Softball” King (who, to his credit, didn’t accept Nazis as guests on his show). Heck, even Morton Downey Jr. only brought fascists onto his circus to tear them down.

14 Likes
6 Likes

Read the JAMA I.M. paper (free if you sign up), NOT what Jason Weisberger says CNN says about this Malaysian randomized trial.
The paper does NOT claim “Ivermectin makes outcomes worse”, merely that “ivermectin treatment during early illness did not prevent progression to severe disease”. Even with 490 patients in both arms of the trial, the statistical strength of the study results barely differed from random noise.
I’m an integrated circuit engineer who uses “huge trial statistics” (800 thousand samples) to find rare flaws in chip design, and pairwise comparison to precisely characterize those flaws. I believe Ivermectin is a distraction from proper pandemic hygiene, which is vastly simpler than class 1 chip fab “wafer hygiene”.
The “airborne fomite” hypothesis of early 2020 was physics-ignorant hooey, so I rebuilt our house air system with MERV15 filters, and UV germicidal lamps in light-shielded ducts. I built an airlock for entry; overkill for now, perhaps essential if Doomicron emerges. Next, anti-Qzombie auto-guns :slight_smile:
My wife is an MD, diagnostic genius, great with N-of-one cures, not as skilled in statistics. She studies many COVID treatments, and keeps Ivermectin and other meds handy (if civilization collapses, she can still treat parasitic disease).
We are vigilant in different ways. Hopefully our disjoint paranoias protect us from a wider range of threats, and create an effective defense against those threats.

2 Likes

Basically you can’t bring neo nazis and charlatans on a talk show and act uncritically or you have tacitly endorsed them. Those idiots want to be taken at face value as “reasonable alternatives” to reality. Jerry Springer, Morton Downey Jr. and even Howard Stern, brought those kind of fools on to fire a broadsides at them.

11 Likes

This is my reading as well. True-True, unrelated.

11 Likes

I don’t consider that grift to be genius level. It’s the same grift tens of thousands are pulling at the same time.

And after something like how many years of playing this game he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter if he’s stupid or evil though. If he’s stupid and doesn’t correct himself after years of this he’s evil anyway.

13 Likes

all science should be public. pdf of JAMA article:
jamainternal_lim_2022_oi_220006_1644957301.61931.pdf (346.7 KB)

The findings are pretty straightforward. Ivermectin and placebo have no difference in treating covid, but ivermectin produced >3x as many side-effects, particularly gastro-intestinal problems.

20 Likes