Aside but my favorite ivermectin study was the meta study that found that there was a relationship between whether or not ivermectin improved Covid outcomes and the rates of endemic parasites that could be treated with ivermectin.
So, people who got the dewormer did better - but only in those places where people had a lot of parasitic worms. The obvious implication being they did better because they had a parasitic worm infection which was incidentally treated with ivermectin.
There was also an in vitro study that showed ivermectin killed SARS-CoV-2 viral particles. Of course the conspiracy theorists left out dose information, which would be so high that it would just kill you outright.
So the truth behind the two halves of the ivermectin conspiracy were basically: if you have parasites, getting rid of them will help your COVID prognosis; and if you don't mind being dead first, we can prevent COVID from killing you.
The study did not show that Ivermectin killed SARS-CoV-2 viral particles. Prior to the pandemic, Ivermectin was known to act as an broad anti-viral. This is due to Ivermectin being a protease inhibitor, i.e. it blocks an enzyme from acting. It's important to note that this is the mechanism through which approved anti-virals for SARS-CoV-2, such as Paxlovid, operate.
There are also some studies indicating that it can shrink certain tumors. My assumption was that it just stirred up the immune system in general, un thevsame way that a flu shot can decrease the severity of a cold.
It would be nice if every comment was fully cited, but would probably be counter-productive since most people don’t have the time to find citations.
Until everyone’s knowledge is represented in some kind of knowledge graph, simply finding a citation “of that paper I read last year” can be a lot of work. So for now, it’s more effective to talk generally and cite a paper when it is relevant (when discussing methods etc).
I don’t know if you’ve done an in vitro study before, but I have. I can make anything kill anything in Petri dish. Heck I can make anything kill anything even in a mouse. If ANYONE can figure out how to reliably correlate preclinical studies (that’s the technical term for any study not done in humans) to human outcomes, they’d be a literal trillionaire in a decade. But that’s not possible yet.
Ivermectin did not work. It never did. People in the initial waves off were dying of Covid because their own immune system killed their lung. Ivermectin did jackshit about it. Multiple clinical trials proved that. So it’s time to hang that hat and find the next favorite conspiracy theory.
During covid you would often read that medicine X or Y would work on some people or in some country.
I always wonder if those didnt work because people often have more than one infection ongoing. And obviously two or more infections are more deadly, since your organism is fighting not only coronavirus but something else as well. So I wondered if the medicines didnt defend against that something else.
Dewormer in USA, some anti flu medicine in Italy and other in Poland...
So, people who got the dewormer did better - but only in those places where people had a lot of parasitic worms. The obvious implication being they did better because they had a parasitic worm infection which was incidentally treated with ivermectin.