2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic (Vaccination 2021 Edition)

[Phoenixmgs]

Yes, that would be the article that points out that physicians randomly chucking drugs at patients with risk of anecdotal bias meant people had HCQ shoved down their throats for no reason for months, and slowed down the ability of many to properly find out what worked. As it so neatly contained:

Should Kory and his colleagues have been administering steroids when they did? Were they right? Kory thinks so. But Eric Rubin, the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, thinks it’s not so clear-cut. “You could also say he was lucky,” Rubin said.

But it's funny how you took precisely zero of that away from it, eh?

They weren't randomly chucking drugs at patients, they were using drugs that worked against similar diseases. Really? You're going to say shoving HCQ down people's throats (when you have no proof it doesn't do anything or at least there's no evidence that it's more harmful) is so bad and the system working poorly? While OVER A YEAR into this disease we are still giving people remdesivir that has no chance of working, has more side effects, and is super expensive is an example of the system working?

BTW, Kory and his group are at least 3 for 3 because they said use steroids, use anti-coagulants (WHO recommendation now), and said the virus is airborne. It stops being luck at some point, right?

Okay, so why bother with clinical trials, if doctors should just be able to decide at whim? If a pharmacist checks a prescription and notices it is the wrong dose or wrong drug for the patient, should the pharmacist be compelled to just hand it over anyway? Why even train pharmacists - let's just replace them with vending machines, because they're obviously useless. Why should we bother to oversee junior doctors with consultants, and consultants with heads of medicine? What's the point in a multidisciplinary meeting or clinic, if the doctor should have absolute power to do as they please?

When there's no clinical trial for something, you use your experience and past science to figure it out. A new disease means no clinical trials, are you supposed to do nothing as a doctor then? A pharmacist denying a prescription because they don't agree with drug being prescribed and them denying it because there was a possible typo with the dosage or missed drug interaction are two different things. This is getting pretty ridiculous that people need to go to court to get treatments. Outside of medical center or institution like a private practice doctor, the doctor has final say. Do you have some data showing private practice doctors are killing people?

Right, and later meta-analyses after trials demonstrate that HCQ increased all-cause mortality from covid-19. You are literally advocating killing more people with improper drugs, and calling them "safe". Because you really are that clueless about what you are talking about.

Everyone knew HCQ doesn't work and is harmful for ICU patients over a year back now, that's old news. Giving HCQ at any other time at worst does nothing. It's literally handed out like candy in many countries, it's prescribed to pregnant women even. Same thing with ivermectin, we've given out over 3 billion doses of the drug in the last 30 years.

And if 20 other doctors recommend against that doctor...?

What's wrong with disagreements? Do you just stop doing anything until every single doctor is in agreement? There's a disagreement with how to vaccine people right now, get people first dose vaccinated as fast as possible or get people fully vaccinated as fast as possible. Top experts have different opinions on that. Should we just completely stop vaccinations until we have complete consensus? No, because that is asinine. With 2 countries each doing one of those strats, we'll then have data for the next time to see which of these strats worked better. That's how you do science and figure out what is best, you kinda have to do what isn't best to show it isn't best. More than 1 recommendation can be right at the time with the knowledge available at the time.

What about everyone else's ivermectin meta-analyses? It's very interesting you can only name the people who wrote supportive ones. Is this what you call "just want to know about the truth", that you don't bother properly researching evidence?

What ivermectin analysis shows no difference or worse outcomes? I can only find 2 studies total that showed worse outcomes and one only had 32 patients and the other had only 69 patients. Also, over 20 countries have approved ivermectin for covid and you can look at all their graphs where infections and deaths go down after approval.

'“You could also say he was lucky,” Rubin said.'
Given he looks likely to be wrong on plenty else like vitamin C and ivermectin, Rubin may well have a point.

He's 3 for 3.

Actually, all of the expert "panels" I think are important to listen to say remdesivir has minimal or no efficacy, and is not worth using.

This is your hypocrisy, even if you do not understand the fact: you want doctors to be able to doctor with the drugs according to their best wisdom, and then you complain when the FDA attempts to enable them to do so.[

The why is remdesivir still used as treatment?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Your attempts at tearing down the experts only make you look more and more desperate in your bullshit. It's not enough to wear the mantle of Galileo, you have to be right.

What expert would ever even think there is impending doom coming from covid when a large chunk of the population already got infected and we are doing millions of vaccine doses a day. It made no sense to predict impending doom. You don't even need an expert for that, it's basic math at this point. Guess what, covid cases are never going to (greatly) spike up ever again in the US, it's basic common sense and math.

Remember that time the CDC director pointed out a reasonable risk based on evidence, and then Phoenixmgs made fun of it much later with zero insight but the benefit of hindsight?

What and when was this?

Some things that doctors have recommended throughout the ages:
* Regular imbibing of radioactive water to improve overall health.
* Induced Insulin coma for several days or weeks to calm the nerves.
* Smoking to improve respiratory function.
* Regular use of heroin to calm the nerves.
* Regular use of cocaine to maintain mental acuity.
* Regular use of (meth)amphetamine for women to lose weight and keep slim.
* Bloodletting to reduce bad humors and become healthier overall.
* Plombage (blocking a lung to induce a lung collapse, creating a cavity underneath the ribs and filling it with gauze to prevent the lung from recovering) to speed up recovery from tuberculosis.
* Lobotomy.

We should be careful with accepting something just because a doctor recommends it, particularly if said doctor is controversial and doesn't have the support of the rest of the medical community.

What the perceived medical concensus is vs actual medical concensus are 2 different things. Many doctors are scared to speak up; if you haven't noticed, science has become political (Youtube removes videos from doctors that are considered experts for misinformation). Giving someone something that has a track record of being safe after billions of doses that at worst won't do anything vs meth for weight lose is TOTALLY in the same ballpark.

 

[Agema]

They weren't randomly chucking drugs at patients, they were using drugs that worked against similar diseases. Really? You're going to say shoving HCQ down people's throats (when you have no proof it doesn't do anything or at least there's no evidence that it's more harmful) is so bad and the system working poorly? While OVER A YEAR into this disease we are still giving people remdesivir that has no chance of working, has more side effects, and is super expensive is an example of the system working?

"But... but... remdesivir!"

BTW, Kory and his group are at least 3 for 3...

...conveniently omitting all the stuff they claim works and there's insufficient evidence on.

When there's no clinical trial for something, you use your experience and past science to figure it out. A new disease means no clinical trials, are you supposed to do nothing as a doctor then?
...
What's wrong with disagreements?

The problem here is that on the one hand you want to argue that doctors can use rational processes to determine the best course of action, and then on the other that doctors can ignore rational processes as it suits them.

Everyone knew HCQ doesn't work and is harmful for ICU patients over a year back now, that's old news. Giving HCQ at any other time at worst does nothing.

Aside from all the side effects of hydroxychloroquine, possibly exacerbated in some cases by comorbidities and drug-drug interactions. Now check the principle of non-maleficence. Never mind that with more, higher quality studies now available, it suggests people treated with HCQ have higher all-cause mortality than those who aren't.

What ivermectin analysis shows no difference or worse outcomes? I can only find 2 studies total that showed worse outcomes and one only had 32 patients and the other had only 69 patients. Also, over 20 countries have approved ivermectin for covid and...

Oh, let me guess: did you go to that same shitty website that you based your HCQ claims from?

you can look at all their graphs where infections and deaths go down after approval.

So which ivermectin propaganda website did you get that from?

The why is remdesivir still used as treatment?

For much the same reason that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are.

 

[Agema]

What expert would ever even think there is impending doom coming from covid when a large chunk of the population already got infected and we are doing millions of vaccine doses a day. It made no sense to predict impending doom. You don't even need an expert for that, it's basic math at this point. Guess what, covid cases are never going to (greatly) spike up ever again in the US, it's basic common sense and math.

By "common sense" and "math" I think you mean "hindsight".

The CDC director was noting that several European countries, with death rates (and thus implicitly infection rates) similar to the USA were undergoing a significant covid-19 surge, and thus there was a very substantial risk that the USA might observe the same. I mean, this is the funny thing about claims like "common sense" and "math" that it would never happen, because the evidence really was right there in numerous places that this was a possibility.

And arguably, it sort of is happening. The USA is in a position where it has about a third of the population vaccinated, and people are still dying at ~700 a day. In the UK, with similar vaccination rates, covid-19 deaths are down to ~10 a day, which means, proportional to population, Americans are currently dying of covid-19 at well over ten times the rate of the British. That's literally tens of thousands more deaths over the timeframe. But we all know by now that, well, fuck them and their grieving relatives because you want to go to the pub more easily.

I mean, you were coming out with this sort of shit back around the start of the year, that it was somehow mathematically impossible for Americans to carry on getting infected and dying, and yet here they are still dying in substantial quantities, even though a ton of them are vaccinated.

What and when was this?

Friday 7th May, 4.45am (UK time), right here.

 

[Buyetyen]

Guess what, covid cases are never going to (greatly) spike up ever again in the US, it's basic common sense and math.

Common sense is neither.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

"But... but... remdesivir!"

Why should I have faith in this process when we are still giving people something that literally has no chance of working? Remdesivir has no scientific reason to even theoretically work even if we had no trials showing it didn't work. What doctors actually thought remdesivir was something that would actually work?

...conveniently omitting all the stuff they claim works and there's insufficient evidence on.

Like what?

The problem here is that on the one hand you want to argue that doctors can use rational processes to determine the best course of action, and then on the other that doctors can ignore rational processes as it suits them.

I never said ignoring rational processes. Both waiting for more data is rational and using past experiences on similar diseases is rational. I don't get why you jump to these statements that don't make any sense.

Aside from all the side effects of hydroxychloroquine, possibly exacerbated in some cases by comorbidities and drug-drug interactions. Now check the principle of non-maleficence. Never mind that with more, higher quality studies now available, it suggests people treated with HCQ have higher all-cause mortality than those who aren't.

And all that higher all-cause mortality is from giving ICU patients HCQ. Nobody gives those patients HCQ for like a year now. Giving HCQ at other times does not have higher all-cause mortality. Just like any other drug, you don't give it to people on drugs that would have interactions or conditions that would have higher likelihood bad interactions, it's the basic thing you do with any drug. Whereas a new drug like remdesivir, we don't have decades of info on who to give it to or not to. But remdesivir is recommended, that makes no sense.

Oh, let me guess: did you go to that same shitty website that you based your HCQ claims from?

And your linkage to such meta-analyses/studies you say exist are completely absent.

So which ivermectin propaganda website did you get that from?

It's pretty easy to look up this stuff. Literally just google "[country name] coronavirus" and you get a curve of their infections and deaths.

By "common sense" and "math" I think you mean "hindsight".

The CDC director was noting that several European countries, with death rates (and thus implicitly infection rates) similar to the USA were undergoing a significant covid-19 surge, and thus there was a very substantial risk that the USA might observe the same. I mean, this is the funny thing about claims like "common sense" and "math" that it would never happen, because the evidence really was right there in numerous places that this was a possibility.

And arguably, it sort of is happening. The USA is in a position where it has about a third of the population vaccinated, and people are still dying at ~700 a day. In the UK, with similar vaccination rates, covid-19 deaths are down to ~10 a day, which means, proportional to population, Americans are currently dying of covid-19 at well over ten times the rate of the British. That's literally tens of thousands more deaths over the timeframe. But we all know by now that, well, fuck them and their grieving relatives because you want to go to the pub more easily.

I mean, you were coming out with this sort of shit back around the start of the year, that it was somehow mathematically impossible for Americans to carry on getting infected and dying, and yet here they are still dying in substantial quantities, even though a ton of them are vaccinated.

And the countries she was comparing the US to almost certainly had different infection rates and vaccination rates. Looking at the UK, they had no spike around March while they are more similar to the US in vaccination rates and infection rates. Just looking at Germany and France, who are both quite a bit behind the US and UK in vaccinations, had a spike during that time. Also, both countries started showing a decoupling of new cases and deaths during that time as well. So, why would you think there's an IMPENDING DOOM coming? That literally made no sense.

Friday 7th May, 4.45am (UK time), right here.

That's the when, what's the "what"?

Common sense is neither.

???

Yet my prediction for restrictions going away in the US is spot-on 7 months ago when I said as much in October. Basic common sense, you don't need fancy statistical models when the US infections were so many and the fact that vaccines were right around the corner, the writing was on the walls.

 

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[Seanchaidh]

That's the when, what's the "what"?

Remember that time the CDC director said there was "IMPENDING DOOM!!!"?

CDC director Rochelle Walensky warns of "impending doom" amid COVID-19 spikes

The number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. has surpassed 30.2 million, according to Johns Hopkins University.

www.cbsnews.com

And just about a month later, no impending doom at all!!!

CDC projects a 'sharp decline' in Covid cases in the U.S. by July

The projection depends on high rates of vaccination, as well as continued wearing of masks and physical distancing when appropriate.

www.nbcnews.com

That was a pretty damn easy call (and raise all-in) on that bullshit from the CDC director though.

That.

 

[Agema]

Why should I have faith in this process when we are still giving people something that literally has no chance of working? Remdesivir has no scientific reason to even theoretically work even if we had no trials showing it didn't work. What doctors actually thought remdesivir was something that would actually work?

Look, you are a total fucking mess on this.

On the one hand, you say you believe in science and rational decision-making, and you want to argue the toss on scientific papers and meta-analyses. You think it's good doctors discuss cases with each other to work out best practice. Then, the minute they come back and say stuff you don't like, you start protesting, and say "doctor knows best"! However, when "doctor knows best" applies to a drug you don't approve of, suddenly you're back to wanting clinical trial gold standards.

It's no problem to you that you were touting a mechanism of action for HCQ that was garbage for months and months, and now you suddenly think a theoretical mechanism of action for remdesivir guarantees it can't be any use. Double standards, much?

All of this is bullshit. The bottom line is that for some inexplicable reason, you've developed an obsession with HCQ, ivermectin, and the witterings of random YouTube doctors. All your arguments are really nothing but inconsistent gibberish to support conclusions.

And all that higher all-cause mortality is from giving ICU patients HCQ.

But HCQ does "nothing", according to you. There is evidence that, in fact, it does not do nothing. It makes people worse, both in terms of varied adverse effects and potentially even in covid-19 clinical outcomes.

And your linkage to such meta-analyses/studies you say exist are completely absent.

You haven't even looked, have you?

This sums up what a fraud you are when you say you're only interested in the truth. You watched a YouTube video of someone touting ivermectin and you signed up to the cult.

It's pretty easy to look up this stuff. Literally just google "[country name] coronavirus" and you get a curve of their infections and deaths.

So, random unproven claim, then.

 

[Silvanus]

They weren't randomly chucking drugs at patients, they were using drugs that worked against similar diseases. Really? You're going to say shoving HCQ down people's throats (when you have no proof it doesn't do anything [...]

Underlining mine.

THATS. NOT. HOW. THIS. WORKS.

 

[CaitSeith]

Remember that time the CDC director said there was "IMPENDING DOOM!!!"?

CDC director Rochelle Walensky warns of "impending doom" amid COVID-19 spikes

The number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. has surpassed 30.2 million, according to Johns Hopkins University.

www.cbsnews.com

And just about a month later, no impending doom at all!!!

CDC projects a 'sharp decline' in Covid cases in the U.S. by July

The projection depends on high rates of vaccination, as well as continued wearing of masks and physical distancing when appropriate.

www.nbcnews.com

That was a pretty damn easy call (and raise all-in) on that bullshit from the CDC director though.

This is bad faith argument; it ignores all the preventive measures created between the two dates. Sorry, I'm calling it: the only BS here are your posts!

 

[Phoenixmgs]

It really isn't. Cocaine, methamphetamine and radium water were also prescribed in massive quantities over really long periods of time (decades). In the US alone 50,000 lobotomies were performed and it was widely considered a safe, ethical procedure. My entire point is that just because a Doctor tells you something, especially when there's not a lot of, or contradictory, research on the subject, that doesn't make it true. When a big organization like the HHS or CDC puts their weight behind it you can safely assume there's consensus and that there's best practice. As a nurse I've met a lot of doctors and they all tend to have opinions about medical treatments that aren't based in science but is based in their own experiences and biases. Sometimes they are harmless. In others, like in the significant minority of psychiatrists that wants to massively exceed the daily dose of dexamphetamine despite there being no trials suggesting increased efficacy, it can be potentially very harmful for the patient. But if you as a layman asked them why they do it you can bet your ass that they'll let out a spiel that will sound really convincing to anyone that isn't a medical professional. Much like your youtube celebrity doctors.

Comparing giving an extremely safe drug to people that has known mechanisms that in theory should work to some degree vs giving people lobotomies is not at all a fair comparison. You can use that argument for nearly anything a doctor says. There's very known data of the safety of said drugs.

Look, you are a total fucking mess on this.

On the one hand, you say you believe in science and rational decision-making, and you want to argue the toss on scientific papers and meta-analyses. You think it's good doctors discuss cases with each other to work out best practice. Then, the minute they come back and say stuff you don't like, you start protesting, and say "doctor knows best"! However, when "doctor knows best" applies to a drug you don't approve of, suddenly you're back to wanting clinical trial gold standards.

It's no problem to you that you were touting a mechanism of action for HCQ that was garbage for months and months, and now you suddenly think a theoretical mechanism of action for remdesivir guarantees it can't be any use. Double standards, much?

All of this is bullshit. The bottom line is that for some inexplicable reason, you've developed an obsession with HCQ, ivermectin, and the witterings of random YouTube doctors. All your arguments are really nothing but inconsistent gibberish to support conclusions.

What are you talking about? I don't protest anything that has been definitively proven. You literally can't prove HCQ has no effect early in infection because there's nothing definitive saying it doesn't do anything or does harm. When you or whoever has that, post it and tag me like 100 times. HCQ does have mechanisms that may have, it's been shown in vitro to work, which I know doesn't guarantee it'll work in the real world.

I keep asking you this question and you keep tip-toeing around it.

WHY WOULD ANY DOCTOR THINK REMDESIVIR WOULD WORK (AKA WHAT MECHANISMS DOES IT HAVE THAT WOULD), IN THEORY, AFTER THE BODY HAS CLEARED THE VIRUS?

But HCQ does "nothing", according to you. There is evidence that, in fact, it does not do nothing. It makes people worse, both in terms of varied adverse effects and potentially even in covid-19 clinical outcomes.

If we do find a "miracle drug" that say cures covid but does harm people if they already got so sick they're in the ICU (100% safe outside of an ICU setting), would you not give it to people that aren't in the ICU?

Do we ban tylenol because some people are allergic to it? Do we ban drugs because they have bad interactions with other drugs? No, we just don't give it in known bad situations.

You haven't even looked, have you?

This sums up what a fraud you are when you say you're only interested in the truth. You watched a YouTube video of someone touting ivermectin and you signed up to the cult.

Again, show me a study that says ivermectin doesn't do anything. The only things I can literally find comes down to basically "we don't have enough data" vs we have data that says it doesn't work. Why can't you just post the data/proof?

So, random unproven claim, then.

Nope, google date when said country approved ivermectin, then look at infection curve.

This is bad faith argument; it ignores all the preventive measures created between the two dates. Sorry, I'm calling it: the only BS here are your posts!

Seriously? What measures were created between the 2 dates? There's been less and less restrictions all over, not more. The only measure that we've been doing is vaccinating more and that was known at the time of the CDC director's "impending doom" claim, that's why it was a bullshit claim.

Look at the crowd from the Astros game on Mother's Day. What restrictions?

And here's what I posted when the CDC director made the claim and another doctor basically mocking it.

The CDC director's intuition of "impending doom" is bullshit, shocker!!!

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Fauci is saying you can do something like everyone has known and already been doing for months, Breaking News!!!

 

[deleted20220709]

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[CaitSeith]

Seriously? What measures were created between the 2 dates?

The ones that you keep ignoring. Where is your evidence that no new measures were created between the 2 dates? You can't wiggle out an accusation of ignoring evidence by keep ignoring the evidence.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

And lobotomies worked exactly as intended, they gave people with chronic manic episodes, vivid hallucinations and severe long term anxiety peace of mind. Cocaine and amphetamine as drugs intended to keep you awake and clear of mind worked exactly as intended. My point is not about the drugs or treatments themselves, but about the pattern of doctors saying something is safe, good or reliable only for it to be withdrawn (or re-purposed) when it turns out that it isn't. This as a counter-point to your argument that "A doctor said so" is good enough evidence for efficacy and safety, something history has shown is evidently not so.

I never said these drugs are safe because a doctor said so, I said they're safe because we have decades of data showing that they are safe and extremely safe at that.

The ones that you keep ignoring. Where is your evidence that no new measures were created between the 2 dates? You can't wiggle out an accusation of ignoring evidence by keep ignoring the evidence.

Like what? American on the whole has loosened restrictions between those dates. Please tell me what NEW and ADDED restrictions have caused us to avoid the IMPENDING DOOM predicted by the CDC director based on literally no evidence? The fact is that herd immunity is working as well over half the population have either gotten infected at some point or been vaccinated.

Please tell me what restrictions Texas added after they removed all restrictions March 10? Remember when everyone here said that was basically incredibly stupid and I said nothing's gonna change. I keep getting mocked as being wrong, having confirmation bias, dunning kruger, and I don't even know how much more. Yet, my predictions always seem to be ending up correct. I actually do do the research.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[McElroy]

While I neglect my thread and can't be bothered to read all comments back-to-back, our national Health Administration has proved a couple of times that experts on biostatistics, epidemiology and infectious diseases doesn't make one an expert on good communication. Imagine calculating a "worst possible outcome" (a statistical model for the epidemic spiraling out of control in March) but releasing it to the press as "this is the way we're heading". That time the mistake was clear enough that it was clarified in a couple of days, but more subtle miscommunication could spread free for weeks. And unlike covid-19 it's the sort of spread that gets going just by looking at it from afar.

 

[Agema]

I keep asking you this question and you keep tip-toeing around it.

WHY WOULD ANY DOCTOR THINK REMDESIVIR WOULD WORK (AKA WHAT MECHANISMS DOES IT HAVE THAT WOULD), IN THEORY, AFTER THE BODY HAS CLEARED THE VIRUS?

Okay. Think your way through this.

Hydroxychloroquine has been around since the 1950s. It's first and principal proposed mechanism of action as an antimalarial and antirheumatic drug was discovered only in ~1980-1990s. You spent months touting a novel potential mechanism of action for it that was only discovered about ten years ago. Let's take some other example. Barbiturates date from around 1900 and benzodiazepines from the late 1950s. The main molecular target of these drugs was only discovered in the 1980s.

What does this tell you about our knowledge of drugs, and how much we need to know about their mechanism of action for clinical application?

The simple answer is that we don't know a lot of things that drugs do. We prescribe some drugs for conditions where we pretty much don't know what they do at a molecular level at all. If we're still finding out things that HCQ might do sixty years after it was first approved, what are the chances we know everything that remdesivir does when it was approved last year?

So what happened is that there was a plausible theory that remdesivir (along with a lot of other drugs) might work. They hustled it through approval on the back of some weak studies to make sure that if it did do any good, it would be available. Just because - like you surely want - society should prepare availability of potentially useful drugs when we need novel treatments. Then later, more evidence rolls in, crushing hopes by suggesting it's probably little or no use for covid-19, therefore it gradually gets dropped. I'm sure there are still some physicians out there prescribing it for covid-19. But you keep saying doctors should be able to doctor. Therefore they can dose people up on remdesivir much like they can dose people up on HCQ and ivermectin: in my opinion, ill-advisedly.

Bottom line, there's not a problem here.

But let's imagine a scenario where remdesivir was effective, but this made no sense in terms of the currently established mechanism of action. An obvious answer is that it does something else, another interaction, it's just we haven't identified what that is yet. Drugs can do lots of things we haven't yet identified, and the newer they are they less we tend to know.

If we do find a "miracle drug" that say cures covid but does harm people if they already got so sick they're in the ICU (100% safe outside of an ICU setting), would you not give it to people that aren't in the ICU?

Giving people drugs that make them ill with no superior benefit is unethical. It's as simple as that.

Do we ban tylenol because some people are allergic to it? Do we ban drugs because they have bad interactions with other drugs? No, we just don't give it in known bad situations.

Waffle.

Again, show me a study that says ivermectin doesn't do anything. The only things I can literally find comes down to basically "we don't have enough data" vs we have data that says it doesn't work. Why can't you just post the data/proof?

Why are you declaring something to be true when you're also saying you're unable to research it effectively? Wouldn't it be better to have some humility and accept you don't actually know? Do you really think that "turned up on a YouTube channel I watch so I drank the Kool-aid" is a good rationale to decide who's right and wrong?

Again, I've said before and I've said again, indulging your demands for citations is supremely pointless because, fearless seeker for truth that you are, you're just going to argue they're bullshit. Don't bother posturing to us about having an open mind and following the science. You are literally telling us you have not read the science, and yet are still advocating.

Nope, google date when said country approved ivermectin, then look at infection curve.

Why would I waste my time analysing vague bullshit from a propaganda article that obviously has no hard data or analysis, and clearly does not understand the difference between correlation and causation?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Now you are just shifting the goalposts. What I initially replied to was you telling Agema that a doctor's recommendation (via inofficial channels like media) is a doctor's recommendation when he pointed out that people like Kory are telling people that drugs without any proven effectiveness actually work. The discussion was never about safety but the fact that doctors have recommended a lot of ineffective treatments through the years.

That you still, some three posts in, haven't addressed my actual point about the relative merit (or lack thereof) of a doctor's recommendation in favor of trying to wriggle into other arguments says loads about how poor your initial position was.

I haven't been moving goalposts, one of my arguments for pages/months has been that because these drugs are so safe (especially when taking for a few days only), why not try them because, at worst, they do nothing. It's really the same argument for masks (I am pro-mask BTW), we have no data that they actually do anything, but why not because better safe than sorry. Why does everyone go along with the mask recommendations with no data backing them up? According to Kory and Lawrie and quite a few other doctors (that are very well respected doctors), the data has convinced them that ivermectin works along with their actual experience treating covid patients. Many other countries have approved the drug for covid and India just has as well. In a pandemic with tons of people dying, you just don't have the luxury to keep waiting on trials, trying something that has basically 0 risk of harm that, in theory, tracks that it could work is something to try.

While I neglect my thread and can't be bothered to read all comments back-to-back, our national Health Administration has proved a couple of times that experts on biostatistics, epidemiology and infectious diseases doesn't make one an expert on good communication. Imagine calculating a "worst possible outcome" (a statistical model for the epidemic spiraling out of control in March) but releasing it to the press as "this is the way we're heading". That time the mistake was clear enough that it was clarified in a couple of days, but more subtle miscommunication could spread free for weeks. And unlike covid-19 it's the sort of spread that gets going just by looking at it from afar.

Communication has been so very bad. Health officials have done more for the anti-vax argument than anti-vaxxers themselves could've ever done on their own; if you're vaccinated, you still can't see people (even though the science doesn't track + people are like then what's the point). And it's like these people can't "read a room" if their life depended on it. Only a month or so back there was a CNN video where a doctor was saying that if you're vaccinated, you can see other people indoors in very small groups and that you need to "vet" your friends to make sure they aren't lying about getting vaccinated. If people were actually following such strict precautions like that, you think we would've had the numbers we did in the Fall/Holiday seasons? Give them legit advice that someone might actually follow like meet outdoors because outdoors is safe (but we have videos of reporters chastising people outside on beaches) or say recommend people only meet with family locally for the holidays so there's less transmission vs telling people Christmas is cancelled. Give people goals that are actually (realistically) attainable.