I thought Ivermectin would have been vindicated, or at least given a fair chance by now. With people suffering rebound infections and Merck's drug having some concerns, that the floor would open up to other treatments. I guess in for the penny in for the pound. There is no relenting now.
From the get-go, the thing that irked me most about Scotts IVM piece was his seeming infatuation with GidMK. Leaving opinions about IVM aside, it had seemed to abundantly clear to me on so many levels that this was no dispassionate observer with an interest in striving for objective truth; and I had to wonder what goggles Scott was viewing him though, to be copy-pasting his opinions around with such abandon. Im still not sure.
Scotts factual errors are for him to clear up of course; but it does seem to me that outsourcing his thinking to this particular twitter user was one of the prime causes making that article into what it was.
Loved the line about health officials of the world shouting “horse dewormer!”. Ours, in New Zealand, did exactly that. A pivotal moment in the political history of this for me.
The Scott et. al. ongoing depute frankly makes my eyes glaze over but I watched the Prof Schwartz video and his study design seemed excellent, the results clear cut and Prof. Schwartz himself seems highly reasonable and knowledgeable. I still find it weird and possibly criminal that this drug was not used more widely. Thanks for staying on the case!
On one hand, I think it's really great that Alexandros is surfacing all of these inconsistencies around the interpretation of Ivermectin research that just so happen to all go in the same direction. OTOH, this whole substack has felt rather quixotic for a while now.
As far as Scott Alexander goes, I really haven't taken him all that seriously ever since those emails leaked where he admitted to misrepresenting his own views as a matter of political expediency. Granted, nearly everyone does that from time to time but I believe rationalism really only works when one makes a good faith effort to accurately represent one's own views and personal biases. Which probably means rationalism doesn't work at all.
This is important work. This is useful to me. I think it's easy to underestimate how much is riding on these apparently minor skirmishes in the context of the wider war. Thanks for your dedication and humility, Alexandros.
This is all rather interesting. Taking your analysis of Scott as it is presented, it looks like Scott just relied on GidMK's breakdown of the study rather than conduct his own analysis of the study and see if he could either corroborate or refute his findings (which you did here). This is such an egregious flaw, and I'm not sure why there's been a perplexing issue in which people would rather have others tell them what a study says, rather than hear one perspective and check for themselves. Maybe Scott is a very busy man, or maybe he's starting with a biased perspective where he may not find it worth his time to continuously dive into such matters.
I will be candid and say that all of this is coming with me not having read the Israeli study for myself yet, but if Scott did no analysis of his own to parse the information than that by itself is a pretty dangerous thing to do.
The world could absolutely use more of your analyses regarding ivermectin and the world's disinformation campaign against using it for COVID-19. An in-depth analysis on ACTIV-6 would be great, as it seems like the worst high-profile ivermectin study to date: terrible regimen (only 3 days of treatment after a weeklong delay), terrible selection of participants (far too low-risk to benefit from IVM- only 1 death in ~1600 COVID patients!), and some questionable data reported in the preprint (I can specify if you're interested).
But right now, something that deserves even more urgent attention is the supposedly "safer" Novavax. Some of its clinical trial findings are so alarming that they seem to justify a post on their own:
The vaccine group had almost DOUBLE the incidence rate of neoplasms as the placebo group (0.95 vaccine vs. 0.51 placebo).
Ditto for immune system disorders (1.05 vaccine vs. 0.51 placebo).
And reproductive system and breast disorders were also worrisomely elevated (2.00 vaccine vs. 1.25 placebo). That one is notably concerning because the table shows the increase is concentrated in the younger age group. Alarmingly, the FDA briefing document ( https://www.fda.gov/media/158912/download - Page 67) shows 25 miscarriages compared to 41 live births.
We need to pin them down on what a complete failure so-called "high powered" EBM has been, especially since covid. It's produced nothing but hot garbage. Once that is achieved, all the rest of their argument falls apart.
Lead off with post-hoc discussion on remdesivir and molnupiravir
Alexandria is one of the most intellectually satisfying commentators out there. He would wipe the floor with most protagonists. I've learnt more about the foibles of biased commentators, by following his analyses, than anyone else. If only the average physician would read him, the world might be a better place.
I thought Ivermectin would have been vindicated, or at least given a fair chance by now. With people suffering rebound infections and Merck's drug having some concerns, that the floor would open up to other treatments. I guess in for the penny in for the pound. There is no relenting now.
From the get-go, the thing that irked me most about Scotts IVM piece was his seeming infatuation with GidMK. Leaving opinions about IVM aside, it had seemed to abundantly clear to me on so many levels that this was no dispassionate observer with an interest in striving for objective truth; and I had to wonder what goggles Scott was viewing him though, to be copy-pasting his opinions around with such abandon. Im still not sure.
Scotts factual errors are for him to clear up of course; but it does seem to me that outsourcing his thinking to this particular twitter user was one of the prime causes making that article into what it was.
Loved the line about health officials of the world shouting “horse dewormer!”. Ours, in New Zealand, did exactly that. A pivotal moment in the political history of this for me.
The Scott et. al. ongoing depute frankly makes my eyes glaze over but I watched the Prof Schwartz video and his study design seemed excellent, the results clear cut and Prof. Schwartz himself seems highly reasonable and knowledgeable. I still find it weird and possibly criminal that this drug was not used more widely. Thanks for staying on the case!
On one hand, I think it's really great that Alexandros is surfacing all of these inconsistencies around the interpretation of Ivermectin research that just so happen to all go in the same direction. OTOH, this whole substack has felt rather quixotic for a while now.
As far as Scott Alexander goes, I really haven't taken him all that seriously ever since those emails leaked where he admitted to misrepresenting his own views as a matter of political expediency. Granted, nearly everyone does that from time to time but I believe rationalism really only works when one makes a good faith effort to accurately represent one's own views and personal biases. Which probably means rationalism doesn't work at all.
This is important work. This is useful to me. I think it's easy to underestimate how much is riding on these apparently minor skirmishes in the context of the wider war. Thanks for your dedication and humility, Alexandros.
This is all rather interesting. Taking your analysis of Scott as it is presented, it looks like Scott just relied on GidMK's breakdown of the study rather than conduct his own analysis of the study and see if he could either corroborate or refute his findings (which you did here). This is such an egregious flaw, and I'm not sure why there's been a perplexing issue in which people would rather have others tell them what a study says, rather than hear one perspective and check for themselves. Maybe Scott is a very busy man, or maybe he's starting with a biased perspective where he may not find it worth his time to continuously dive into such matters.
I will be candid and say that all of this is coming with me not having read the Israeli study for myself yet, but if Scott did no analysis of his own to parse the information than that by itself is a pretty dangerous thing to do.
The world could absolutely use more of your analyses regarding ivermectin and the world's disinformation campaign against using it for COVID-19. An in-depth analysis on ACTIV-6 would be great, as it seems like the worst high-profile ivermectin study to date: terrible regimen (only 3 days of treatment after a weeklong delay), terrible selection of participants (far too low-risk to benefit from IVM- only 1 death in ~1600 COVID patients!), and some questionable data reported in the preprint (I can specify if you're interested).
But right now, something that deserves even more urgent attention is the supposedly "safer" Novavax. Some of its clinical trial findings are so alarming that they seem to justify a post on their own:
Source- NEJM publication (Supplementary Appendix, Table S14): https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2116185/suppl_file/nejmoa2116185_appendix.pdf - see page 48
The vaccine group had almost DOUBLE the incidence rate of neoplasms as the placebo group (0.95 vaccine vs. 0.51 placebo).
Ditto for immune system disorders (1.05 vaccine vs. 0.51 placebo).
And reproductive system and breast disorders were also worrisomely elevated (2.00 vaccine vs. 1.25 placebo). That one is notably concerning because the table shows the increase is concentrated in the younger age group. Alarmingly, the FDA briefing document ( https://www.fda.gov/media/158912/download - Page 67) shows 25 miscarriages compared to 41 live births.
We need to pin them down on what a complete failure so-called "high powered" EBM has been, especially since covid. It's produced nothing but hot garbage. Once that is achieved, all the rest of their argument falls apart.
Lead off with post-hoc discussion on remdesivir and molnupiravir
Excellent, thank you 😊
This is 🔥🔥🔥. Thank you for putting in the time and effort.
Alexandria is one of the most intellectually satisfying commentators out there. He would wipe the floor with most protagonists. I've learnt more about the foibles of biased commentators, by following his analyses, than anyone else. If only the average physician would read him, the world might be a better place.