Oldsouljer said:
It would appear that Ivermectin as a Covid treatment is proving very successful in Japan. Interestingly, all the "fact checking" sites and the usual suspects such as USA Today are rushing to push a counter narrative.
https://freewestmedia.com/2021/11/03/japan-sees-huge-drop-in-cases-after-it-switches-to-ivermectin/
I've always held out hope for ivermectin. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's great evidence yet that it makes a difference. More info to come on it tho, so I'm not losing hope yet. This article doesn't provide enough info to help me decide if ivermectin made the difference or if it was natural decline in cases everyone sees after these spikes. How did they use ivermectin? As a therapeutic or a prophylactic? How many people received it? At what dose and for how long? Was there a non treatment arm to compare cohorts? Does correlation finally mean causation? All of this is known, just not by me. So i hope the evidence is in favor of ivermectin. It would be nice to have another option. Or is this going to prove, when the next wave hits, to be another potential option that is said to be over promised only to under perform like so many things we have tried that didn't make much difference.
We recently stopped giving remdesivir routinely to inpts because of inconsistent efficacy. It's now just an option. And it was routine, like O2 and steroids. We still give mAbs to outpts, but the guys doing the treatment say it's pretty meh.
It's just a beeotch of a disease with inconsistent clinical presentations and outcomes, often unpredictable outcomes, and unpredictable, inconsistent, and changing responses to management options. My friend was a less than one percenter... Young, healthy and happy to be unvaxxed, and gone way before his time from a very very rare complication of the disease 3 wks after onset of a milder form of the disease requiring only outpatient treatment. His unvaxxed wife had the same disease, and she's totally fine except for the complete devastation of losing her husband. Would vaccination have made a difference? Maybe not. He never had severe dz or hospitalization. Would ivermectin made a difference? Molnupiravir? Decadron did not make a difference, and in fact likely contributed to his death. ALL OF THESE OPTIONS HAVE DOWN SIDES, SIDE EFFECTS THAT CANNOT BE DISCOUNTED. I cannot say that enough. It's very easy to be a cheerleader for everything not called a vaccine, but people in Japan that received ivermectin had side effects too. And they were likely more significant than the sore arm and fever (which lasts maybe 12 hrs) mentioned in the article in relation to the vaccine. Luckily, ivermectin tends to be safe, but so does dexamethasone at the doses given for covid.
A very long winded statement to say I'll take a wait and see approach before using that data to recommend ivermectin, but i remain hopeful because a cheap, effective, safe, and efficacious therapeutic is badly needed.