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| Dark Horse #61. Click screenshot to go to video |
About an existing drug — ivermectin— that could help prevent or reduce Covid-19.
There’s more to it. Including AP fact-checking claims that this is “False”.
I want to get to this a bit later when I’ve returned from the seaside here in Hong Kong.
ADDED (5 January): turns out it’s very interesting!
First, a link at the show notes at the above podcast, Dark Horse, by two folks I highly respect, Heather and Bret Weinstein. Takes me to an article on use of preexisting generics for treatment of Covid: “In far-flung places Covid is being treated early and well”.
Reading that article critically, I thought I’d better go to the fact-checking site which says it’s all nonsense. Here is the AP fact-checker, “No evidence ivermectin is a miracle drug against Covid-19”. The money shot:
CLAIM: The antiparasitic drug ivermectin “has a miraculous effectiveness that obliterates” the transmission of COVID-19 and will prevent people from getting sick.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.
THE FACTS: During a Senate hearing Tuesday, a group of doctors touted alternative COVID-19 treatments, including ivermectin and the anti-malaria medication hydroxychloroquine. Medical experts have cautioned against using either of those drugs to treat COVID-19. Studies have shown that hydroxychloroquine has no benefit against the coronavirus and can have serious side effects. No evidence has been shown to prove that ivermectin works against COVID-19. [my emphasis]
In turn, that led me to watch the actual evidence given to the Senate committee by said group of doctors, in this case represented by Dr Pierre Kory.
Dr Kory is clearly impassioned, but he does not “tout” ivermectin. He specifically and clearly says that the group of doctors he represents — the FLCCC — wants the US department of Health to review the extensive data they have collected -- including repeatable, controlled tests done around the world, collected in meta-studies -- and to come to their own judgment as to its efficacy. Clearly these doctors believe the data are persuasive and hope the government will too.
They provide links to the data, all of which is open and transparent.
So what are we to make of this? On the one hand a group of doctors with nearly 2,000 peer-reviewed articles and 100 man-years of clinical experience to their name. Or the AP fact checkers? Who are the AP fact-checkers, then? Answer: one Beatrice Dupuy. Ms Dupuy has 1,000-odd followers on Twitter. Before heading up the AP’s fact-checking team on the internationally critical issue of what we know about Covid and its treatments, an area where expert epidemiologists and virologists labour to enlighten us, young Beatrice was a journalist at Young Vogue.
Now, I don’t t know about you, but when I go looking for information on Covid treatments I’m going to go for the young fashion reporter over a professional group of intensive care doctors, any day....
ADDED (4 June 2021): Given the huge MSM fail on the lab-leak theory and Facebook's embarrassing climb down from its censorship of it, they can't afford to cancel this news on Ivermectin any more. And there's a new Bret talk with Dr Pierre Kory, on 2 June, here, on YouTube (which used to ban talk of it).
