Many ivermectin proponents online also advocate against the vaccine.
If someone does accept the validity of the scientific studies of vaccine effectiveness, they probably aren’t so jazzed about promoting ivermectin because they’d realize vaccines are even more effective and a permanent or semi permanent solution, rather than having everyone in the country have to regularly take a new medication.
In any case ivermectin appears to be the new hydroxychloquine. A medicine that was randomly seized on as theoretically being effective against viruses and has failed in every properly conducted RCT.
Therapeutic efforts would be far better focused on making mAb treatments cheaper and more available, since they’ve been proven about 80% effective both as prophylaxis and a therapeutic.
> In any case ivermectin appears to be the new hydroxychloquine. A medicine that was randomly seized on as theoretically being effective against viruses and has failed in every properly conducted RCT.
Vaccines are part of the solution, but they are not a panacea.
Not everyone is willing to take them and there aren't enough of them to vaccinate the entire world.
If the disease is still raging in any part of the world, that will lead to variants which will eventually escape the vaccine, thus restarting the cycle again.
As far as I know it’s a subject of some debate whether full immune escape from the mRNA vaccines is probable even given new variants. The spike protein can only be reconfigured in so many ways, it’s not like the flu.
Only a small percent of the world is vaccinated with mRNA vaccines, thus it's not a global solution.
Some vaccines are already ineffective with the variants, e.g. Chile has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, but doesn't have the disease under control.
There are different ways to get COVID under control:
* Vaccination
* Get naturally infected - natural infection offers broad and long lasting immunity
* Prophylaxis
* Early treatment
The data is showing that Ivermectin is almost 100% effective as a prophylaxis, and that early treatment on first symptoms, it's on par with a flu.
Currently we're only pursuing vaccination as the only solution, resulting in millions of unnecessary deaths and trillions of economic damage.
Some people are hesitant to use a vaccine without long term safety data, and using Ivermectin is a safe alternative that also contributes to herd immunity.
> Get naturally infected - natural infection offers broad and long lasting immunity
Baffling to see this listed as a way to get covid “under control”. If people getting naturally infected is fine, what is there to control? The whole reason people are concerned about getting covid under control is that natural infection would kill around 0.5% of a population in a developed country, or more if the hospital system becomes overwhelmed and oxygen or other standard of care treatment isn’t available.
> The data is showing that Ivermectin is almost 100% effective as a prophylaxis
No placebo controlled RCT has shown this that I’m aware of for ivermectin (as discussed in the parent article). The evidence for the vaccines, steriod, or mAb treatments working is backed by placebo controlled RCT. The article states: “ All in all, though, the most compelling reports of ivermectin’s effects seem to come from the smallest and least controlled samples (all the way down to anecdotal results) while the larger and more well-controlled trials tend to produce equivocal evidence at best.”
> and using Ivermectin is a safe alternative that also contributes to herd immunity.
How would it create herd immunity? Would people have to take ivermectin for the rest of their lives as an alternative to the vaccine?
> The whole reason people are concerned about getting covid under control is that natural infection would kill around 0.5% of a population in a developed country
This number is way, way off. It's not even close to the actual number of officially tallied deaths divided by confirmed cases so far, which would itself overstate the real IFR for a number of reasons.
> or more if the hospital system becomes overwhelmed and oxygen or other standard of care treatment isn’t available.
To the extent this is even a real phenomenon, it correlates better with places which have underfunded and straining hospital systems as opposed to those which eschew lockdowns and other NPIs.
> It's not even close to the actual number of officially tallied deaths divided by confirmed cases so far
It's much lower than the number of officially tallied deaths divided by confirmed cases so far. That number is around 1.8% in the USA. If you divide officially tallied deaths by the CDC's best estimate of total infections, including unreported and asymptomatic cases, you get an IFR of 0.52%.
> How would it create herd immunity? Would people have to take ivermectin for the rest of their lives as an alternative to the vaccine?
Let's say you need 75% for herd immunity. If you have 25% vaccinated, 25% who have already got the infection, and 25% who are taking Ivermectin once a week, you've reached herd immunity. When the R0 is below 1, it will exponentially reduce infections towards zero within months.
With effective early treatments, it doesn't even matter how many people get infected as long as they don't get severely ill.
> Nobody in their right minds thinks that this is the ideal way to get it under control, but it's one of the ways that can contribute to herd immunity.
If someone does accept the validity of the scientific studies of vaccine effectiveness, they probably aren’t so jazzed about promoting ivermectin because they’d realize vaccines are even more effective and a permanent or semi permanent solution, rather than having everyone in the country have to regularly take a new medication.
In any case ivermectin appears to be the new hydroxychloquine. A medicine that was randomly seized on as theoretically being effective against viruses and has failed in every properly conducted RCT.
Therapeutic efforts would be far better focused on making mAb treatments cheaper and more available, since they’ve been proven about 80% effective both as prophylaxis and a therapeutic.