[kwlug-disc] [OT] Ivermectin

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 2:07 PM Steve Izma <sizma at golden.net> wrote:

> They could not have made any profit off of it because ivermectin
> is off-patent and produced for pennies a shot in many different
> parts of the world.


They could still make money with the "brand name", just not as much
as if there is no generic version, and not in generics-first countries
(e.g.
Canada). Brand names are huge in the USA, and even in less developed
countries (e.g. Egypt where "give me the brand name" is a common phrase
every pharmacist hears). The money will not be as huge as if there were no
competing generic versions, but still significant.

And I have seen doctors here in Canada prescribing the brand name, for
people
who have supplemental health coverage, and then they decide with the
pharmacist
whether they get the generic one, or the brand name one.


> Their reason for this statement, given their
> need for profits, is to discredit a drug in wide use in order to
> make room for the replacement drug they were working on
> (monupiravir), for which patents and profits apply in spades.
>

This is an assumption on your part and delves into conspiracy land, because
you
are ascribing motive while there are simpler explanations. No one stopped
those
who  researched Ivermectin and HCQ from conducting that research (see more
below on this).

> > Gee, that sounds a lot like the current debates about the
> > > approval of vaccines: they are currently only approved under
> > > an emergency-use authorization because the usual safety
> > > studies have not been completed.
> >
> > Interesting that you bring up EUA as a strike against Covid
> > vaccines, but not HCQ, when HCQ was used as a Covid treatment
> > under an EUA only from April to June 2020.
>
> I'm not defending the use of HCQ, I'm challenging the politics
> behind the policy making, especially when politicians and public
> health officials ban *discussion* of alternatives to the products
> of Big Pharma.


Where is the ban on discussion? Something was claimed, it was investigated
and found to be not effective, and it remains so until we get proper
research
that proves otherwise.

By proper research, I mean double blinded randomized trials. Anything else
is just unsubstantiated claims or outright fraud.

In any case, regardless of attempts by U.S.
> government agencies to exclude all treatments other than
> vaccines, it's pretty hard to compare the safety record of HCQ
> (across decades) and that of the mRNA vaccines, which won't even
> finish safety trials for another few years.


Vaccine complications are usually seen within six week to a couple of
months.
If we don't see that, then the vaccine is considered safe, or at least
worth to
trade the risk vs. the risk of the pathogen it is against.

Billions of people got the mRNA vaccine, and we don't see adverse effects
beyond
the normal allergies and such.

We know they can cause mycarditis (heart muscle inflammation) specially in
younger
males. We also know that they recover in two weeks and don't need
treatment.
I personally know two such cases that fully recovered. One is a guy whose
job is manual,
and he was in bed for a week. After 12 days he was up and running and back
to his job.

Compare that to the Adenovirus vaccines (Astra Zeneca and Johnson &
Johnson) where
we found out within a month or so that they cause rare blood clots.

Politicians including Trudeau, Doug Ford, and the health ministers and
officials talked
the talk and got the first one available to them (Astra Zeneca, and they
did not get
clots). Some people died of clots, but given the pre-Omicron risk, it was a
fair trade
off. What about now? I think the two adeno vaccines should not be
administered
because a) the risk of acute disease is far less with Omicron, and b) there
are better
alternatives (mRNA vaccines)

Regardless, Canada stopped both Adenovirus vaccines early on. So they did
the right
thing since there are alternatives ...

We need to try many alternatives, especially those based on
> substances and procedures that health workers have become
> familiar with, in order to do the right kind of testing of new
> stuff.
>

And they are being tried.

See the two papers that I linked to originally. No one stopped them being
published
in NEJM and BMJ, both of them top tier medical publications.

And there is more: there are at least 550 papers on PubMed (a repository of
medical
research papers) matching the search on "ivermectin" and "COVID-19".

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=ivermectin+covid-19

No one muzzled these teams of researchers ...

I even have a relative who works in computational biology and genetics, and
worked
on screening available drugs that block SARS-CoV-2. This is basically
seeing what will
block attachment of the virus to the receptor and so on. They started with
a database
available for researchers listing all drugs that are approved, and then
using protein
folding programs and such, what could work to narrow down what should be
clinically
tested (again double blind and randomized).

What he did was the first step in the pipeline: identify a hundred or so
drugs from
many thousands, and listing the ones that could be further investigated.
Then other
researchers pick up the baton and run with it, provided they have the
funding for
such clinical studies.

What the proponents of HCQ, Ivermectin (and whatever the next fad will be),
are doing
is very different. They latch on a kernel of truth, and from that make up a
whole conspiracy
and keep pushing for it AGAINST the available evidence. This wastes
everybody's time,
and takes up significant bandwidth.

We try to solve computer problems through discussions and
> experimentation in test environments, not in production
> environments, or among the general population.
>

And all the proper testing was done, including phase 2, 3 and 4. Funding
was unlimited
in the USA, and that allowed these phases to be done back to back, so the
elapsed time
was much less than the usual "do phase 1" then beg for funding for a few
years, then do
"phase 2" then beg for funding for a few years, and so on ...

> > On 24 April 2020, citing the risk of "serious heart rhythm
> > > problems", the FDA posted a caution against using the drug
> > > for COVID-19 "outside of the hospital setting or a clinical
> > > trial".[62]
> >
> > > On 15 June 2020, the FDA revoked its emergency use
> > > authorization, stating that it was "no longer reasonable to
> > > believe" that the drug was effective against COVID-19 or that
> > > its benefits outweighed "known and potential
> > > risks".[65][66][67] In fall of 2020, the National Institutes
> > > of Health issued treatment guidelines recommending against
> > > the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 except as part of
> > > a clinical trial.[50]
>
> These are all FDA or NIH public statements. Given the
> revolving-door hiring policies between such government agencies
> and the big pharmaceutical companies, we need to ask who's
> buttering whose bread?
>

The above is too wide a brush to dismiss everything that comes out of
the very government institutions whose job are to review safety and
efficacy data.

That is the same FDA where Frances Oldham Kelsey worked to prevent
any cases of deformed children from thalidomide.

And that is the same FDA that switched polio vaccination from the oral
vaccine (attenuated) that the rest of the world uses, to the injected
vaccine (killed virus) because of very rare cases of paralysis from the
former (I think 1 in a million, but can't remember the exact incidence
rate).

I will stick with what the evidence shows, not claims that are unfounded.

As Carl Sagan said: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
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