Ivermectin is a very good dewormer! Most 2020 crap studies were easy to make because ivermectin was already distributed to big populations as a dewormer.
I'm the guy that every time someone calls it a good horse dewormer I reply: "And a good human dewormer too!"
> Ivermectin is a very good dewormer!
And that may be responsible for some false positives in ivermectin studies for COVID - if a patient has a parasitic infection as well as COVID, treating the parasites will improve their outcome.
Wasn't the ivermectin hypothesis based on it blocking NS3 helicase preventing double-stranded viral RNA from being unwound after replication? Paxlovid targets a few steps earlier by blocking 3CL protease that chops viral RNA into functional parts of a virus.
That may have been the theory, but it seems more likely that, inasmuch as it appeared to improve outcomes in some trials, it did so by treating parasitic infections which were concurrently present. (Which makes sense! That's its primary application, after all.)
What happens if you take Ivermectin but turns out you didn't have a parasitic infection?
Is it dangerous?
Very low risk. Ld50 is incredibly high. Side effects minimal. Adverse reactions very rare
Dangerous only to your career and only if you posted about it on social media
True. But you can't get a prescription for the human version unless you actually have worms. So if you're taking it for some other reason, you're probably getting the version for horses, which you can buy by the bucket.
Ivermectin is also prescribed for scabies and may sometimes be prescribed for bedbugs. It can be taken orally or in a topical version.
The media knowingly repeated “horse dewormer” because it made people they don’t like look dumb.
People were literally buying horse dewormer when their doctors wouldn't prescribe it for them. "Influencers" were selling it. So the media were being accurate. To the extent that this made people look dumb, the intent was mostly to shame them into trying something more effective.
> the intent was mostly to shame them
Yeah I don’t like news that does that, as opposed to giving the best information.
You dropped my words "into trying something more effective". Steering people into treatments found to be more effective is, precisely, giving people the best available information. Ivermectin is great if you have a parasitic infection. It doesn't help against viral infections.
Telling them which treatment is more effective is different than shaming, and also different than making up a misleading name like “horse dewormer”.