Science & Technology News

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Thumbs Up

Hardly. Merck is marketing Mulnopiravir at $700. per treatment. This is what you could call a conflict of interest...

Indeed [sort of, partly].


Merck and Ridgeback’s Investigational Oral Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduced the Risk of Hospitalization or Death by Approximately 50 Percent Compared to Placebo for Patients with Mild or Moderate COVID-19 in Positive Interim Analysis of Phase 3 Study
More ➥ https://www.merck.com/news/merck-and...ld-or-moderat/

Merck is set to make billions off a COVID-19 pill that could change the pandemic. Here's why some countries will pay more than others.
Industry analysts expect Merck to make billions off the not-yet-authorized drug. [$22 billion in revenue from the drug, through 2030]
Some countries may be paying $12 per patient, while the US agreed to pay $712 per treatment course.
Merck has reached agreements with eight generic drug companies, allowing each of them to sell molnupiravir in more than 100 low- and middle-income countries. These generic companies will compete on price, with one report [1] saying they are expected to charge about $12 to $15 per treatment course.
More ➥ https://www.businessinsider.com/how-...obally-2021-10

[1] ➥ https://blog.letscollab.in/2021/10/0...gh-covid-drug/

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by newhaul

One thing to consider. Wrt the covid vaccines.
This is the first time in history ( that I am aware of) that a medications lack of effectiveness is blamed on those that haven't taken it

I've not seen [even] any suggestion, let alone proof, that that is true.

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” ~ Christopher Hitchens

"What is asserted without reason (or proof), may be denied without reason (or proof)."
"Proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies."
~ Old Latin proverbs

[jimbunyard]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

If you refer to an Nobel price winnig drug, used safely for over 5 billion patients around the world for treatment of various diseases as "horse dewormer", where horse treatments make a infinitissimal small portion of the use cases, it is a smear campain.

Same applies to Hydroxy chloroquine, and framing it as bleach. It is an very effective anti-viral malaria drug.

'Drugs' don't win Nobel prizes. The people who are instrumental in their development do.

The indications for Ivermectin prescription in humans are primarily associated with treating macrofaunal parasites, not viruses. In non-human animal treatments, their primary usage is for eradication of parasitic worms. As much as you appear to dislike the truth, the fact remains that ivermectin is a horse-dewormer.

https://reference.medscape.com/drug/...rmectin-342657

That public health services worldwide warn against using drugs off-label does not constitute a "smear campain", except in the eyes of those blinded by conspiratorial thinking and a lack of desire to determine the validity of their sources of information.

Originally Posted by newhaul

Both of which were extensively studied by the WHO in 2015 and were shown to be effective against all known coronavirus as well as many bacterial infective at the time . So it can be extrapolated that it should and has been shown to be an effective treatment for the current iteration of man manipulated coronavirus.

As usual, no citations, a logical fallacy, and an unproven assumption.

Home run!

No wait...Three strikes? Yerrr're out!

Originally Posted by jimbunyard
And the dangerous, cherry-picked, pseudoscientific BS continues unabated.
There is no 'smear campaign' against Ivermectin.......blah blah blah....

Originally Posted by Thumbs Up

I don't know what more to say to you Jim. The medpagetoday article that you linked to is from last January and doesn't mention a single negative thing about Ivermectin nor the FLCCC. Since then there have been dozens of studies on ivermectin. The drug was responsible for the incredible delta strain turnaround in the states in India that used it. Your argument:?

There is no 'smear campaign' against Ivermectin.

Is demonstrably false and not even worth my time.

proven sources of disinformation

Such as ??

'conflicts of interest'?

I see plenty of those on the other side but not from those advocating ivermectin.
We've been down this road before Jim. If you want to persist, you need to actually present an argument, in which case I would be happy to spend the time refuting. But of course, you just want to skip to the insults which only serve make you look bad. I did, however, enjoy some of the priceless comments from the article that you posted:

That you wouldn't know an argument if it slapped you in the face is demonstrated by your constant failure to address them when they're presented to you. "...Blah, blah, blah..." is not a response, nor a counterargument, nor a rebuttal. Hence, it is unsurprising that you "don't know what more to say", since you obviously fail to grasp the basic concepts of both logic and science.

Abundant examples of this lack of comprehension follow (as they did [and you ignored] when you made your "smear campaign" allegation)

If there is no apparent "smear campaign", and you claim there is, that claim relies on you to demonstrate it's existance. (them's the rules; you don't follow 'em, you don't get to play with the big boys [i.e. those that deserve respect]) The claim doesn't self-verify. (the 'big boys' call it "burden of proof" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden...of_(philosophy) )

The Elgasser 'study' is a proved source of disinformation. Spurious claims by it's authors alleging 'hacked data' also require validation. But, conveniently left out by the 'hacking' claimants, is the fact that if their data doesn't show the 'success' of ivermectin, the point made in the Guardian article is validated.

"The Desert Review" is a proved source of distorted facts, conspiratorial misinterpretation, and disinformation, as can be easily determined by a perusal of the article you linked to in the defence of your so-far unsupported "smear campaign" claim.

If you see "see plenty of [conflicts of interest] on the other side", then it behooves you to provide them. Again, stating something exists doesn't demonstrate it's existance.

That you apparently consider anecdotes, or, as you put it, "some of the priceless comments', as proof of the efficacy of ivermectin only further demonstrates how far you are from understanding the value and usage of the scientific method. Though the efficacy (or not) isn't the topic of discussion here. Since it appears necessary to state the obvious, the topic is the existance of a "smear campaign" against it's use.

Regarding the article that "doesn't mention a single negative thing about Ivermectin nor the FLCCC"


The second paragraph;

"The group -- led by three physicians with a knack for making headlines -- posted its own review and meta-analysis of the global ivermectin literature on its website."

The fifth paragraph;

Too good to be true? Not in the mind of FLCCC co-leader Paul Marik, MD, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, who co-authored the review and meta-analysis based mainly on studies from outside the U.S.

The seventh pararaph;

"Group members, who are mostly critical care physicians, don't see a need for more data and argue it would be unethical to give placebo to patients given the established safety of ivermectin. But that's raising more than a few eyebrows among others in the field."

The ninth paragraph;


Marik is known in the field for developing the HAT protocol for sepsis, which also hasn't been without controversy. It's a combination of hydrocortisone, ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and thiamine. His group's 2017 observational study of the protocol, published in CHEST, garnered excitement about the combination. But that hasn't been borne out in subsequent trials, including the ADRENAL study (which looked at steroids alone), the CITRIS-ALI study (which looked at vitamin C alone) and the VITAMINS trial, which randomized patients to the full protocol but was open-label. The VICTAS study has completed enrollment but hasn't yet reported data.

The fourteenth paragraph;

"Everyone in medicine will yell and scream that this paper is not a randomized controlled trial," or RCT, said the third FLCCC leader, Pierre Kory, MD, a critical care physician who worked most recently at Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center in Milwaukee (more on that below). "We didn't believe in an RCT. We believe we're supposed to doctor and use our expertise. If you've been doing this for decades, and you trust your assessment of the disease and your knowledge of medicine, it's OK to doctor."

The nineteenth and twentieth paragraphs;

Regarding ivermectin for prophylaxis, they cite four randomized controlled trials and three observational studies. Two of the RCTs were done in Egypt, one in Argentina, and one in Bangladesh, ranging in size from 100 to 300 patients. Marik and colleagues also cite "natural experiments" in Peru, Brazil, and Paraguay where ivermectin was distributed widely, with "large decreases in case counts ... soon after distribution began."

The lone study done in the U.S. was a retrospective study, published in CHEST, of 280 hospitalized patients in Florida by Juliana Rajter, MD, of Broward Health Medical Center, and colleagues, in which 173 patients who got ivermectin were compared with 107 who didn't get the therapy. "Most patients in both groups also received hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, or both," the study states.


The twenty-second through twenty-sixth paragraphs;

"If someone wants to discount those studies ... and says they want to do an RCT with placebo, that's problematic for me," Kory said. "I could not have a patient admitted to my care and give placebo knowing what I know about ivermectin."

Kory emphasized that FLCCC members "are firm believers in evidence-based medicine. But we disagree with how most practice evidence-based medicine. We think they are way too biased toward randomized controlled trials and completely dismiss evidence from anything but RCTs. We think that's harmful and loses a lot of valuable data."

'Lowering Standards'

Steven Joffe, MD, MPH, a medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, said he doesn't believe clinicians "should be lowering our standards of evidence because we're in a pandemic."

"This group should be advocating strongly for a large, generalizable randomized trial if they believe so strongly in the efficacy of ivermectin," Joffe said. "If in fact it is effective, the only way to convince the clinical and scientific community and allow patients all over the world to benefit is to prove the case in such a trial."

"With good data and safety monitoring, if the benefits are as overwhelming as they claim, the trial could be stopped early on the basis of interim data and the treatment rapidly instituted," Joffe added.

The twenty-seventh and twenty-ninth paragraphs;

Andrew Hill, PhD, a senior visiting research fellow in the pharmacology department at Liverpool University in England, recently presented a similar meta-analysis of the data on ivermectin, which was posted on YouTube just last week. It supported the FLCCC's conclusions.

Zain Chagla, MD, an infectious diseases physician at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, reviewed each of the trials in Hill's review in a Twitter thread. He called the overall evidence "very low grade" and was also unhappy that Hill disseminated it as a video.

The article concludes thusly;

Marik and Kory say they're frustrated that their work is now being championed by the political right, and that it's become politicized at all. The group has had to distinguish itself from America's Frontline Doctors, which gained notoriety for its pro-hydroxychloroquine, anti-lockdown rhetoric last summer.

"This is not a political issue and it should never be," Marik said. "We are driven by the science and the data, not by politics or anything else."

"It angers me, when I hear that it's a conspiracy, that this virus doesn't exist, that there aren't that many deaths," he added. "You have to come to the ICU and see that people are dying to realize this is no hoax, this is real."

Marik finds it particularly disappointing that his work has been misinterpreted as potentially undermining vaccination.

"That's complete nonsense," he said. "I was vaccinated yesterday and I believe this is a bridge to vaccination," noting that slow vaccine roll-outs, vaccine hesitancy, and vaccine quality will likely mean the world will be dealing with COVID-19 for a long time to come.

"We need to do something in the meantime," he said.

Much of the rest of medicine believes that "something" should be a randomized trial.

"The time is now to do a good clinical trial," Chagla said. "I don't think the vaccine is going to eliminate COVID-19. It's a disease we're going to be dealing with. The vaccine rollout has been slow, we're not going to see entire populations vaccinated. There are always going to be holes. To prove that this drug works is something that would be warranted."

But, he continued, "the studies have to be done properly."


To synopsize, though this isn't the issue, if a regimen of ivermectin treatment is beneficial, then it will be proven so, "smear campaign' or not. I've no doubt the FLCCC doctors think it is; the proof will be in the demonstration of it's efficacy. So far, I've found no science-based indications that this is the fact, despite your's and the Desert Review's claims to the contrary...

Originally Posted by Eigenvector

Wouldn't Merck's position as the maker of Ivermectin trump all?


https://www.merck.com/news/merck-sta...d-19-pandemic/

Only in the minds of the logical. (AKA 'the sheeple')

Originally Posted by Thumbs Up

.....These three claims about ivermectin are lies:
No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies;
No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and;
A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.

And, yet again, not a single shred of supporting evidence. How surprising...

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

'.



As usual, no citations, a logical fallacy, and an unproven assumption.

Home run!

No wait...Three strikes? Yerrr're out!





...

This statement just proves my point that you don't read anything that I post except to deride .
Go back likely 150 pages I did post the study at the time . I suggest you review the thread before making anymore comments.

[Thumbs Up]

Here we go again!
Re: Science & Technology News
Quote:
Originally Posted by CatNewBee View Post
If you refer to an Nobel price winnig drug, used safely for over 5 billion patients around the world for treatment of various diseases as "horse dewormer", where horse treatments make a infinitissimal small portion of the use cases, it is a smear campain.

Same applies to Hydroxy chloroquine, and framing it as bleach. It is an very effective anti-viral malaria drug.
'Drugs' don't win Nobel prizes. The people who are instrumental in their development do.

The indications for Ivermectin prescription in humans are primarily associated with treating macrofaunal parasites, not viruses. In non-human animal treatments, their primary usage is for eradication of parasitic worms. As much as you appear to dislike the truth, the fact remains that ivermectin is a horse-dewormer. If you bought it from a feed supply store in a big tube that says horse dewormer paste on it then yes, it is.

https://reference.medscape.com/drug/...rmectin-342657

That public health services worldwide warn against using drugs off-label does not constitute a "smear campain", except in the eyes of those blinded by conspiratorial thinking and a lack of desire to determine the validity of their sources of information. I have documented here on CF that there is a smear campaign since a year ago. I am not taking the time on this one, you can go back and read my posts on it over the past year. Even LE gave up that fight.

Quote:
Originally Posted by newhaul
Both of which were extensively studied by the WHO in 2015 and were shown to be effective against all known coronavirus as well as many bacterial infective at the time . So it can be extrapolated that it should and has been shown to be an effective treatment for the current iteration of man manipulated coronavirus.
As usual, no citations, a logical fallacy, and an unproven assumption.

Home run!

No wait...Three strikes? Yerrr're out!

Quote:
Originally Posted by jimbunyard
And the dangerous, cherry-picked, pseudoscientific BS continues unabated.
There is no 'smear campaign' against Ivermectin.......blah blah blah....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thumbs Up
I don't know what more to say to you Jim. The medpagetoday article that you linked to is from last January and doesn't mention a single negative thing about Ivermectin nor the FLCCC. Since then there have been dozens of studies on ivermectin. Ivermectin was responsible for the incredible delta strain turnaround in the states in India that used it. Your argument:?

There is no 'smear campaign' against Ivermectin.

Is demonstrably false and not even worth my time.

proven sources of disinformation

Such as ??

'conflicts of interest'?

I see plenty of those on the other side but not from those advocating ivermectin.
We've been down this road before Jim. If you want to persist, you need to actually present an argument, in which case I would be happy to spend the time refuting. But of course, you just want to skip to the insults which only serve make you look bad. I did, however, enjoy some of the priceless comments from the article that you posted:
That you wouldn't know an argument if it slapped you in the face is demonstrated by your constant failure to address them when they're presented to you. "...Blah, blah, blah..." is not a response, nor a counterargument, nor a rebuttal. Hence, it is unsurprising that you "don't know what more to say", since you obviously fail to grasp the basic concepts of both logic and science.

Abundant examples of this lack of comprehension follow (as they did [and you ignored] when you made your "smear campaign" allegation)

If there is no apparent "smear campaign", and you claim there is, that claim relies on you to demonstrate it's existance. (them's the rules; you don't follow 'em, you don't get to play with the big boys [i.e. those that deserve respect]) The claim doesn't self-verify. (the 'big boys' call it "burden of proof" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden...of_(philosophy) )
The Elgasser 'study' is a proved source of disinformation.
The Elgasser 'study' Was a preprint that was removed due to inconsistencies noted in a hacked version of it's unreleased data. It remains under investigation. Nothing about has been "Proved", and it doesn't weaken the meta analyses as claimed (Actually strengthened it) Spurious claims by it's authors alleging 'hacked data' also require validation. But, conveniently left out by the 'hacking' claimants, is the fact that if their data doesn't show the 'success' of ivermectin, the point made in the Guardian article is validated. That leaves 34 peer reviewed studies and 30 randomized controlled trials for you to discredit

"The Desert Review" is a proved source of distorted facts, conspiratorial misinterpretation, and disinformation, as can be easily determined by a perusal of the article you linked to in the defence of your so-far unsupported "smear campaign" claim. A "proved source of distorted facts"??? It is just what they say "an award winning, locally owned, and independent online news source and weekly printed publication that covers the events, sports, and people of the Imperial Valley in southern California and the stories that matter to the community." How have you "proved" it?

If you see "see plenty of [conflicts of interest] on the other side", then it behooves you to provide them.
How, exactly does it "behoove" me to re provide information that I have provided again and again (especially since you won't look at it?) Again, stating something exists doesn't demonstrate it's existance.

That you apparently consider anecdotes, or, as you put it, "some of the priceless comments', as proof of the efficacy of ivermectin only further demonstrates how far you are from understanding the value and usage of the scientific method. Though the efficacy (or not) isn't the topic of discussion here. Since it appears necessary to state the obvious, the topic is the existance of a "smear campaign" against it's use. You submitted an article from nearly a year ago, I was just pointing out the best part!

Regarding the article that "doesn't mention a single negative thing about Ivermectin nor the FLCCC"


The second paragraph;

"The group -- led by three physicians with a knack for making headlines -- posted its own review and meta-analysis of the global ivermectin literature on its website."

The fifth paragraph;

Too good to be true? Not in the mind of FLCCC co-leader Paul Marik, MD, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, who co-authored the review and meta-analysis based mainly on studies from outside the U.S.

The seventh pararaph;

"Group members, who are mostly critical care physicians, don't see a need for more data and argue it would be unethical to give placebo to patients given the established safety of ivermectin. But that's raising more than a few eyebrows among others in the field."

The ninth paragraph;


Marik is known in the field for developing the HAT protocol for sepsis, which also hasn't been without controversy. It's a combination of hydrocortisone, ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and thiamine. His group's 2017 observational study of the protocol, published in CHEST, garnered excitement about the combination. But that hasn't been borne out in subsequent trials, including the ADRENAL study (which looked at steroids alone), the CITRIS-ALI study (which looked at vitamin C alone) and the VITAMINS trial, which randomized patients to the full protocol but was open-label. The VICTAS study has completed enrollment but hasn't yet reported data.

The fourteenth paragraph;

"Everyone in medicine will yell and scream that this paper is not a randomized controlled trial," or RCT, said the third FLCCC leader, Pierre Kory, MD, a critical care physician who worked most recently at Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center in Milwaukee (more on that below). "We didn't believe in an RCT. We believe we're supposed to doctor and use our expertise. If you've been doing this for decades, and you trust your assessment of the disease and your knowledge of medicine, it's OK to doctor."

The nineteenth and twentieth paragraphs;

Regarding ivermectin for prophylaxis, they cite four randomized controlled trials and three observational studies. Two of the RCTs were done in Egypt, one in Argentina, and one in Bangladesh, ranging in size from 100 to 300 patients. Marik and colleagues also cite "natural experiments" in Peru, Brazil, and Paraguay where ivermectin was distributed widely, with "large decreases in case counts ... soon after distribution began."

The lone study done in the U.S. was a retrospective study, published in CHEST, of 280 hospitalized patients in Florida by Juliana Rajter, MD, of Broward Health Medical Center, and colleagues, in which 173 patients who got ivermectin were compared with 107 who didn't get the therapy. "Most patients in both groups also received hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, or both," the study states.


The twenty-second through twenty-sixth paragraphs;

"If someone wants to discount those studies ... and says they want to do an RCT with placebo, that's problematic for me," Kory said. "I could not have a patient admitted to my care and give placebo knowing what I know about ivermectin."

Kory emphasized that FLCCC members "are firm believers in evidence-based medicine. But we disagree with how most practice evidence-based medicine. We think they are way too biased toward randomized controlled trials and completely dismiss evidence from anything but RCTs. We think that's harmful and loses a lot of valuable data."

'Lowering Standards'

Steven Joffe, MD, MPH, a medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, said he doesn't believe clinicians "should be lowering our standards of evidence because we're in a pandemic."

"This group should be advocating strongly for a large, generalizable randomized trial if they believe so strongly in the efficacy of ivermectin," Joffe said. "If in fact it is effective, the only way to convince the clinical and scientific community and allow patients all over the world to benefit is to prove the case in such a trial."

"With good data and safety monitoring, if the benefits are as overwhelming as they claim, the trial could be stopped early on the basis of interim data and the treatment rapidly instituted," Joffe added.
Is this not exactly what they have done with the so-called vaccines?

The twenty-seventh and twenty-ninth paragraphs;

Andrew Hill, PhD, a senior visiting research fellow in the pharmacology department at Liverpool University in England, recently presented a similar meta-analysis of the data on ivermectin, which was posted on YouTube just last week. It supported the FLCCC's conclusions.

Zain Chagla, MD, an infectious diseases physician at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, reviewed each of the trials in Hill's review in a Twitter thread. He called the overall evidence "very low grade" and was also unhappy that Hill disseminated it as a video.

The article concludes thusly;

Marik and Kory say they're frustrated that their work is now being championed by the political right, and that it's become politicized at all. The group has had to distinguish itself from America's Frontline Doctors, which gained notoriety for its pro-hydroxychloroquine, anti-lockdown rhetoric last summer.

"This is not a political issue and it should never be," Marik said. "We are driven by the science and the data, not by politics or anything else."

"It angers me, when I hear that it's a conspiracy, that this virus doesn't exist, that there aren't that many deaths," he added. "You have to come to the ICU and see that people are dying to realize this is no hoax, this is real."

Marik finds it particularly disappointing that his work has been misinterpreted as potentially undermining vaccination.

"That's complete nonsense," he said. "I was vaccinated yesterday and I believe this is a bridge to vaccination," noting that slow vaccine roll-outs, vaccine hesitancy, and vaccine quality will likely mean the world will be dealing with COVID-19 for a long time to come.

"We need to do something in the meantime," he said.

Much of the rest of medicine believes that "something" should be a randomized trial.

"The time is now to do a good clinical trial," Chagla said. "I don't think the vaccine is going to eliminate COVID-19. It's a disease we're going to be dealing with. The vaccine rollout has been slow, we're not going to see entire populations vaccinated. There are always going to be holes. To prove that this drug works is something that would be warranted."

But, he continued, "the studies have to be done properly."


To synopsize, though this isn't the issue, if a regimen of ivermectin treatment is beneficial, then it will be proven so, "smear campaign' or not. It has, in India I've no doubt the FLCCC doctors think it is; the proof will be in the demonstration of it's efficacy. So far, I've found no science-based indications that this is the fact, despite your's and the Desert Review's claims to the contrary... https://www.thedesertreview.com/site/about.htmlYOU haven't found any, I'd love to see your search history...


Quote:
Originally Posted by Eigenvector View Post
Wouldn't Merck's position as the maker of Ivermectin trump all?


https://www.merck.com/news/merck-sta...d-19-pandemic/
Only in the minds of the logical. (AKA 'the sheeple')

Quote:
Originally Posted by Thumbs Up
.....These three claims about ivermectin are lies:
No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies;
No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and;
A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.
And, yet again, not a single shred of supporting evidence. How surprising... As I clearly stated, without presenting a real argument to refute, you are not worth my time. I have presented all of this info in these threads over the past year. If I dredged it all up would you even read it?
By claiming "no smear campaign", you are grasping at straws. That ship has sailed.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Thumbs Up

Ivermectin was responsible for the incredible delta strain turnaround in the states in India that used it.

Not true. India no longer recommends Ivermectin for COVID.

Even LE gave up that fight.

No... I've given up on you. You and Desert Review are free to wallow in misinformation to your heart's content.

[GordMay]

“mRNA vaccines for Covid and beyond” ~ by Clare Sansom

Vaccines based on messenger RNA (mRNA) were in development long before the SARS-CoV-2 virus began infecting people, but the pandemic has hugely accelerated the process. The success of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — including those made by Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna — offers hints that the same approach could provide protection against other diseases, such as malaria, rabies and influenza. “The COVID-19 pandemic could prove to be the great accelerator of vaccine technology, rather like nuclear power after World War Two,” says infectious-diseases consultant Christopher Green.

More ➥ https://www.chemistryworld.com/featu...014420.article

[Thumbs Up]

Remember this article:

UTTAR PRADESH Going the last mile to stop COVID-19
The Uttar Pradesh state government has initiated house-to-house active case finding of COVID-19 in rural areas to contain transmission by testing people with symptoms for rapid isolation, disease management and contact tracing.
Government teams are moving across 97,941 villages in 75 districts over five days for this activity, which began on 5 May in India’s most populous state with a population of 230 million. Each monitoring team has two members, who visit homes in villages and remote hamlets to test everyone with symptoms of COVID-19 using Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) kits. Those who test positive are quickly isolated and given a medicine kit with advice on disease management.
https://www.who.int/india/news/featu...-stop-covid-19

Guess what was in those "medicine kits"? IVERMECTIN

The Indian Bar Association is suing the WHO chief scientist over "disinformation campaign":

PRESS RELEASE
INDIAN BAR ASSOCIATION SERVES LEGAL NOTICE UPON
DR. SOUMYA SWAMINATHAN, THE CHIEF SCIENTIST,
WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION
A legal notice is served by Indian Bar Association (IBA) upon Dr. Soumya
Swaminathan, the Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO) on
May 25, 2021 for her act of spreading disinformation and misguiding the people
of India, in order to fulfil her agenda.
The notice is based on the research and clinical trials carried out by ‘Front Line
COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’ (FLCCC) and the British Ivermectin
Recommendation Development (BIRD) Panel, who have presented enormous data
that strengthen the case for recommendation of Ivermectin in prevention and
treatment of COVID-19.
Dr. Soumya Swaminathan has ignored these studies/reports and has deliberately
suppressed the data regarding effectiveness of the drug Ivermectin, with an intent
to dissuade the people of India from using Ivermectin.
However, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and All India Institute
of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi have refused to accept her stand and have
retained the recommendation for Ivermectin under ‘May Do’ category, for patients
with mild symptoms and those in home isolation, as stated in ‘The National
Guidelines for COVID-19 management’ last updated on May 17, 2021.
In order to stop Dr. Soumya Swaminathan from causing further damage to the life
of citizens of this country, IBA has decided to initiate legal action against her and
as part of the process, a legal notice has been served upon her.
P.S. IBA has observed that the content of several web links to news articles/reports
included in the notice served upon Dr. Soumya Swaminathan on May 25, 2021,
which was visible before issuing the notice, has either been removed or deleted
now.
IBA had anticipated this and therefore we have downloaded soft copies of these
news articles before issuing the legal notice. It is ludicrous on part of the forces
resorting to such cowardly acts, for they do not know that they are providing very
strong evidence of their desperate attempt at blocking information/news regarding
Ivermectin.

Adv. Nilesh C. Ojha
National President
Indian Bar Association

The second legal notice is here:
https://indianbarassociation.in/wp-c...NE-13-2021.pdf

The fact remains that the states in India using Ivermectin had a remarkable turnaround in Delta cases and the states not using it saw and increase. I have no doubt that you can find Media articles attempting to explain it as coincidence demonstrating that the smear campaign is vast.

For proof that there is a smear campaign:
https://twitter.com/us_fda/status/1429050070243192839

Lake Effect: A year ago I said there was a smear campaign which you immediately and vehemently denied (as you always do when someone implicates the Media). Since then this smear campaign could not be more obvious. Are you still taking up the cause to defend your beloved Media?

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Thumbs Up

Lake Effect: A year ago I said there was a smear campaign which you immediately and vehemently denied (as you always do when someone implicates the Media). Since then this smear campaign could not be more obvious. Are you still taking up the cause to defend your beloved Media?

If a drug isn't effective in treating something, and you tell people about this, it's not a "smear campaign". People who engage in championing an ineffective treatment, and accuse those telling the truth about this of being part of some conspiracy, are the ones engaging in underhanded tactics.

[Thumbs Up]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

If a drug isn't effective in treating something, and you tell people about this, it's not a "smear campaign". People who engage in championing an ineffective treatment, and accuse those telling the truth about this of being part of some conspiracy, are the ones engaging in underhanded tactics.

Ah, but Ivermectin is effective. 30 peer reviewed studies, and 33 randomized trials says that it is. The situation in India proved it as well. Remdesivir, on the other hand is a completely different story. Why no smear on that drug?

Conclusions: As per the evidence from current review, remdesivir has shown no mortality benefit (moderate quality evidence) in the treatment of COVID-19. From a cost–benefit perspective, it is our personal opinion that it should not be recommended for use, especially in low and lower middle income countries.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/6/e048416

Covid-19: Remdesivir has little or no impact on survival, WHO trial shows
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4057

Remdesivir was not associated with improved survival in a large study of U.S. veterans, but length of hospitalization was longer.
https://www.contagionlive.com/view/r...y-at-hospitals

Findings In this cohort study of 2344 US veterans hospitalized with COVID-19, remdesivir therapy was not associated with improved 30-day survival but was associated with a significant increase in median time to hospital discharge.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...tm_term=071521

Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-54566730

"People who engage in championing an ineffective treatment, and accuse those telling the truth about this of being part of some conspiracy, are the ones engaging in underhanded tactics."
As applied to Remdesivir, who has been engaging in these underhanded tactics? Which would you choose, Remdesivir or Ivermectin?

The ‘very, very bad look' of remdesivir, the first FDA-approved COVID-19 drug
The Food and Drug Administration held no advisory meeting on antiviral, and the European Union signed contract without knowing of failed trial
https://www.science.org/content/arti...-covid-19-drug

[GordMay]

Has science solved one of history’s greatest adventure mysteries?

A 62-year-old adventure mystery, that has prompted conspiracy theories around Soviet military experiments, Yetis, and even extraterrestrial contact, may have its best, most sensible explanation yet - one found in a series of avalanche simulations, based, in part, on car crash experiments, and animation, used in the movie Frozen.

In an article [1], published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, researchers present data, pointing to the likelihood that a bizarrely small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the gruesome injuries and deaths of nine experienced hikers, who never returned from a planned 200-mile adventure in Russia’s Ural Mountains, in the winter of 1959.

In what has become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident, ten members of the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg [nine students and one sports instructor] headed into the frigid wilderness, on a skiing and mountaineering expedition, on January 23, 1959.

One student, with joint pain, turned back, but the rest, led by 23-year-old engineering student Igor Dyatlov, continued on. According to camera film and personal diaries, later found on the scene by investigators, the team made camp on February 1, pitching a large tent on the snowy slopes of Kholat Saykhl, whose name can be interpreted as “Dead Mountain”, in the language of the region’s Indigenous Mansi people.

The nine—seven men and two women—were never heard from again.

When a search team arrived at Kholat Saykhl, a few weeks later, the expedition tent was found, just barely sticking out of the snow, and it appeared cut open, from the inside. The next day, the first of the bodies was found, near a cedar tree. Over the next few months, as the snow thawed, search teams gradually uncovered more spine-chilling sights: All nine of the team members’ bodies were scattered around the mountain’s slope, some in a baffling state of undress; some of their skulls and chests had been smashed open; others had eyes missing, and one lacked a tongue.

Each body was a piece in a grim puzzle, but none of the pieces seemed to fit together. A criminal investigation at the time blamed their deaths on an “unknown natural force,” and the Soviet bureaucracy kept the case quiet. The lack of detail about this shocking event, an apparent massacre that transpired in a deeply secretive state, gave rise to dozens of long-lived conspiracy theories, from clandestine military tests to Yeti attacks.

In the wake of renewed media interes,t and pervasive outlandish hypotheses, Russian authorities recently reexamined the case around the Dyatlov Pass incident, and concluded [2], in 2019, that an avalanche was primarily responsible for the nine deaths. Key scientific details were absent from the report, however, including a clear explanation as to how an avalanche could have taken place, with no documented evidence of its occurrence left behind. This led to continued doubts around the seemingly pat explanation, from a government long infamous for its lack of transparency.

Many argued that the avalanche theory, initially proposed in 1959, still didn’t seem to stack up: The team’s tent encampment was cut into the snow on a slope with an incline seemingly too mild to permit an avalanche. There was no snowfall on the night of February 1 that could have increased the weight of the snow burden on the slope and triggered a collapse. Most of the blunt force trauma-like injuries and some of the soft tissue damage were atypical of those caused by avalanches, whose victims usually asphyxiate. And if an avalanche had occurred, why was there a gap of at least nine hours, according to forensic data, between the team members cutting the slope for their encampment and the eventual avalanche? ...

More from National Geographic ➥ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/s...E5FEB378C92DA8

[1] “Mechanisms of slab avalanche release and impact in the Dyatlov Pass incident in 1959" ~ by Johan Gaume & Alexander M. Puzrin
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00081-8/

[2a] “Russia reopens investigation into 60-year-old Dyatlov Pass mystery”
➥ https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/04/europ...ntl/index.html

[2b] “Dyatlov Pass cold case reopened by Russian police, who say nine skiers died of 'natural phenomena'
➥ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-...eaths/10784574

[Eigenvector]

Interest in the unproven treatment is complex: “People often have deeply held beliefs about issues that are improbable, and they are unwilling to alter those beliefs even when provided with incontrovertible evidence. Why they hold these beliefs are multifactorial, and related in part to education, politics, religion, biases, among other factors. In the case of ivermectin, there does appear to be some political basis and a general distrust of scientific evidence,” says Lewis Nelson, M.D., professor and chair of emergency medicine at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.


https://www.prevention.com/health/a3...rks-for-covid/

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Has science solved one of history’s greatest adventure mysteries?

More from National Geographic ➥ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/s...E5FEB378C92DA8

[1] “Mechanisms of slab avalanche release and impact in the Dyatlov Pass incident in 1959" ~ by Johan Gaume & Alexander M. Puzrin
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00081-8/

[2a] “Russia reopens investigation into 60-year-old Dyatlov Pass mystery”
➥ https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/04/europ...ntl/index.html

[2b] “Dyatlov Pass cold case reopened by Russian police, who say nine skiers died of 'natural phenomena'
➥ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-...eaths/10784574

In my view the mundane answer is likely to be correct. But most people prefer the fantastical.

Remember when you hear hooves think horses not unicorns.

[Thumbs Up]

Originally Posted by Eigenvector

Interest in the unproven treatment is complex: “People often have deeply held beliefs about issues that are improbable, and they are unwilling to alter those beliefs even when provided with incontrovertible evidence. Why they hold these beliefs are multifactorial, and related in part to education, politics, religion, biases, among other factors. In the case of ivermectin, there does appear to be some political basis and a general distrust of scientific evidence,” says Lewis Nelson, M.D., professor and chair of emergency medicine at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.https://www.prevention.com/health/a3...rks-for-covid/

There has been a plethora of low quality articles just like this one. They all quote the same two studies and fail to mention the rest. The Lopez-Medina study quoted has several fatal flaws and is rife with conflicts of interest. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2777389

The primary outcome was changed mid-trial....Authors state that "preliminary reports of other randomized trials of ivermectin as treatment for COVID-19 with positive results have not yet been published in peer-reviewed journals", however there were 8 peer-reviewed RCTs with positive effects published prior to this paper....Ivermectin was widely used in the population and available OTC at the time of the study. The study protocol only excluded patients with previous ivermectin use within 5 days, however other trials often monitor effects 10+ days after the last dose ......The study protocol was amended 4 times.....Grants and/or personal fees, including in some cases during the conduct of the study, were provided by Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Merck, and Gilead....Most data was collected via surveys, without physical examination. https://c19ivermectin.com/lopezmedina.html

Open Letter by U.S. Doctors: JAMA Ivermectin Study Is Fatally Flawed:

The study’s flaws span subject population, design, execution and controls. The small sample size (n = 400) had a median age of 37 and a BMI of 26, making them extremely low risk for COVID-19 hard endpoints. Faced with this low-relevance study group, the study authors improperly changed primary endpoint midway, moving the main endpoint to full symptom resolution by day 21. This self-reported subjective endpoint, obtained through telephone survey, is not credible for avoiding nondifferential nullward bias of the results.
We note other major errors in study conduct. The authors incorrectly administered ivermectin on an empty stomach, reducing drug bioavailability in lung tissue, the critical drug target, by a factor of roughly 2.5. Additionally, ivermectin is readily available over-the-counter in Colombia, where sales have been ubiquitous (1.6 doses per COVID-19 case) in Cali during the study period.[2] Lack of serum testing in the study prevented identification of subjects who may have used the drug at intervals longer than the study lookback.
Contrary to the authors’ stated conclusion, the findings suggest lower rates of disease progression, hospitalization, ICU admission, and mortality with ivermectin, which might have been confirmed to be statistically significant with a larger sample and more rigorous study design.
https://jamaletter.com/

The article is an advertisement for the Covid vaccination, nothing more.

Dr. Nelson adds: “There are medications, such as antibody treatment or antivirals such as remdesivir, that may have a marginal impact on the progression of COVID when patients are not very ill, and others that help sick patients, such as corticosteroids. The best way to ‘treat’ COVID is to prevent it with vaccination.”

This is an insult to the readers intelligence. The sad thing is that I can find the same article with a slightly different story line has been published hundreds of times in the last year, yet no one has yet to publish a better argument. The only reason people resort to using horse paste is because of this illogical, illegal, immoral, smear on this extremely safe, extremely effective medication. If you are at all swayed by this article, it speak volumes about your (as well as the target audience's) levels of intelligence. If you would choose remdesivir over ivermectin, or take the vax while sick with covid (as the article recommends), you should get a Darwin award.

[Eigenvector]

I would concur that in general articles are written for the public which doesn't have the qualifications to understand science nor research protocols.


What qualification do you posses over the lay public for understanding these issues.