Spreadnecks: COVIDIOTS, Anti-Maskers, Anti-Vaxxers, Etc.

[bob]

[northland10]

Florida birther. That's a double whammy of stupidity.

[Lani]

I'm so angry about antivaxers screeching about nazis.

I grew up next to a family with kids my age. Their parents scared me because they were tiny, white haired, with winkled gray skin. They were younger than my parents, but they looked much older and strange which scared me. I later learned that they were European Jews and all of their families had died in the Holocaust. Some how they survived a death camp as children. They waited in a refugee camp to find relatives, but none survived. So they pledged themselves to each other and then were sponsored to come to the US.

As a young adult, I had coworkers with similar stories about their families and also reconnected with my early childhood playmates. They were heavily involved in civil rights in honor of their families.

Every time I hear the asshole antivaxers screech about nazis, I want to smack them so hard. Oh, and the proud boys nazis too.

[Sam the Centipede]

Yes, Lani, but they hate them not just because they're nazis, but they are communist, islamic, jewish atheist nazis! It's just a melange of uncomprehending insults.

I like your story about the Holocaust survivor neighbors. As a very young kid, I saw adults as fixed points, and it was interesting and transformative when I began to appreciate that mild, quiet elderly folk all had life stories, and some of those would be fascinating, scary, intriguing, etc.

That said, most of the adults in my young life only hid more ordinariness under their mundane exteriors.

[Lani]

I should add that I continued being involved with the family's children. Years later I protested against the Vietnam war with them. And then we moved on to work on the ERA.

[Sam the Centipede]

I should add that I continued being involved with the family's children. Years later I protested against the Vietnam war with them. And then we moved on to work on the ERA.

Good for you all! I guess it's difficult to be politically indifferent with those parents and their histories, and war against distant peoples must seem particularly abhorrent.

[Suranis]

Interesting Idea is doing the rounds. People are starting to think that the Apparent anecdotal successes of Ivermectin are because they are in areas where people had high rates of worms and didn't know it. Having Parasites weakens your immune system, so igf you use Ivermectin that will kill those off, making you feel better and better able to resist Covid

The article is a serious analysis of the studies that showed some benefit to Ivermectin. Its a long blog post, but well worth reading

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/i ... you-wanted

The Synthesis

Hopefully you learned something interesting about yourself there. But my answer is: worms!

As several doctors and researchers have pointed out (h/t especially Avi Bitterman and David Boulware), the most impressive studies come from places that are teeming with worms. Mahmud from Bangladesh, Ravakirti from East India, Lopez-Medina from Colombia, etc.

Here’s the prevalence of roundworm infections by country (source). But alongside roundworms, there are threadworms, hookworms, blood flukes, liver flukes, nematodes, trematodes, all sorts of worms. Add them all up and somewhere between half and a quarter of people in the developing world have at least one parasitic worm in their body.

prevalence.jpg (65.74 KiB) Viewed 1237 times

Being full of worms may impact your ability to fight coronavirus. Gluchowska et al write:

Helminth [ie worm] infections are among the most common infectious diseases. Bradbury et al. highlight the possible negative interactions between helminth infection and COVID-19 severity in helminth-endemic regions and note that alterations in the gut microbiome associated with helminth infection appear to have systemic immunomodulatory effects. It has also been proposed that helminth co-infection may increase the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19, because the immune system cannot efficiently respond to the virus; in addition, vaccines will be less effective for these patients, but treatment and prevention of helminth infections might reduce the negative effect of COVID-19. During millennia of parasite-host coevolution helminths evolved mechanisms suppressing the host immune responses, which may mitigate vaccine efficacy and increase severity of other infectious diseases.

Treatment of worm infections might reduce the negative effect of COVID-19! And ivermectin is a deworming drug! You can see where this is going…

The most relevant species of worm here is the roundworm Strongyloides stercoralis. Among the commonest treatments for COVID-19 is corticosteroids, a type of immunosuppresant drug. The types of immune responses it suppresses do more harm than good in coronavirus, so turning them off limits collateral damage and makes patients better on net. But these are also the types of immune responses that control Strongyloides. If you turn them off even very briefly, the worms multiply out of control, you get what’s called “Strongyloides hyperinfection”, and pretty often you die. According to the WHO:

The current COVID-19 pandemic serves to highlight the risk of using systemic corticosteroids and, to a lesser extent, other immunosuppressive therapy, in populations with significant risk of underlying strongyloidiasis. Cases of strongyloidiasis hyperinfection in the setting of corticosteroid use as COVID-19 therapy have been described and draw attention to the necessity of addressing the risk of iatrogenic strongyloidiasis hyperinfection syndrome in infected individuals prior to corticosteroid administration.

Although this has gained importance in the midst of a pandemic where corticosteroids are one of few therapies shown to improve mortality, its relevance is much broader given that corticosteroids and other immunosuppressive therapies have become increasingly common in treatment of chronic diseases (e.g. asthma or certain rheumatologic conditions).

[RTH10260]

Just to repeat the obvious - there is a difference in the recipe for human and horse variant of Ivermectin. There is also a difference between application under doctors supervision at a hospital when conditions are proper versus ignorant use frm over the counter purchase.

[LM K]

Interesting Idea is doing the rounds. People are starting to think that the Apparent anecdotal successes of Ivermectin are because they are in areas where people had high rates of worms and didn't know it. Having Parasites weakens your immune system, so igf you use Ivermectin that will kill those off, making you feel better and better able to resist Covid.

The article is a serious analysis of the studies that showed some benefit to Ivermectin. Its a long blog post, but well worth reading

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/i ... you-wanted

Thanks, Suranis!

The issue of legit science v manipulated science fascinates me. There is no data to support the use of Ivermectin prophylactically or as a treatment.

Disclaimer: For the reasons below, I didn't read the entire article. I did follow a bunch of the linked sources. I spent 3 hours on this very basic review of the original study.

I haven't looked at the 66 studies used in this meta study to evaluate for the plethora of research issues that could alter the accuracy of these results. Based on the below comments about being silenced by big pharma and big science and the dismissal of randomized studies, I am left to question how this meta study selected data, sorted data, etc.

The article begins with a faulty premise; that the data included for analysis is from well done, peer reviewed research. This study uses data from 66 studies, 21 of which are not peer reviewed.

There is absolutely a place for including data from research awaiting peer review. But ivmmeta doesn't clarify if these 21 studies are awaiting peer review, have been submitted for peer review, or have been rejected by peer review journals. The group does sort metadata with and without peer review.

Some of the data used is from doctors with
Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. This group is dangerous and predatory, and has been discussed in this thread repeatedly. Their big deal journal article was retracted while still in readily available prepublication.

A fascinating quote from an FLCCC publication. I don't think this is the retracted paper. (Link opens a PDF file.)

THE VACCUM OF TRUTH.
“The first step is to give up the illusion that the primary purpose of modern medical research is to improve Americans’ health most effectively and efficiently. In our opinion, the primary purpose of commercially funded clinical research is to maximize financial return on investment, not health.”
—John Abramson, M.D., Harvard Medical School

We are living through a period of time characterized by a Vacuum of truth, with misinformation, disinformation, blatant lies, censorship, and nefarious intentions being the order of the day. It is difficult to dissect out the actual truth and discern who to trust. Furthermore, it is no longer controversial to
acknowledge that drug makers rigorously control medical publishing and that The Lancet, NEJM, and JAMA are utterly corrupted instruments of Pharma. The Lancet editor, Richard Horton, confirms, “Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.” Dr. Marcia Angell, who served as an NEJM editor for 20 years, says journals are “primarily a marketing machine.” [1] Pharma, she says, has co-opted “every institution that might stand in its way. Complex scientific and moral problems are not resolved through censorship of dissenting opinions, deleting content from the Internet, or defaming scientists and authors who present information challenging to those in power. Censorship leads instead to greater distrust of both government institutions and large corporations. [2]

FLCCC forgets that Ivermectin was created by Merck Pharmaceuticals. Merck has stated that there is no benefit from Ivermectin in the treatment of covid.

The claims in those 2 paragraphs demonstrate that the rest of their article can't be trusted.

The source for the data discussed in the blog post is ivmmeta.com.


Interesting quotes about data in the current study:

Although the data from this study is reported to be available, a researcher has been unable to obtain the data for verification [twitter.com (C)].

The Twitter data is from Juan Chamie. His data can't be found on Twitter because his acct has been suspended. Chamie is with FLCCC. For some reason, Juan J Chamie typically goes by Juan J Chamie-Quintero professionally.


Randomized trials are bad!!

Alas, randomized trials are the gold standard in this type of research. Unfortunately for those trying to support the use of Ivermectin, the randomized studies contradict the grifters.*

Results restricted to Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are shown in Figure 15, 16, 17, and 18, and Table 2. The supplementary data contains RCT results after exclusions.
RCTs have a bias against finding an effect for interventions that are widely available — patients that believe they need the intervention are more likely to decline participation and take the intervention. This is illustrated with the extreme example of an RCT showing no significant differences for use of a parachute when jumping from a plane. [Yeh] RCTs for ivermectin are more likely to enroll low-risk participants that do not need treatment to recover, making the results less applicable to clinical practice. This bias is likely to be greater for widely known treatments such as ivermectin. The bias may also be greater in locations where ivermectin is more easily obtained. Note that this bias does not apply to the typical pharmaceutical trial of a new drug that is otherwise unavailable.**

Evidence shows that non-RCT trials can also provide reliable results.*** [Concato] find that well-designed observational studies**** do not systematically overestimate the magnitude of the effects of treatment compared to RCTs. ***** [Anglemyer] summarized reviews comparing RCTs to observational studies and found little evidence for significant differences in effect estimates. [Lee] shows that only 14% of the guidelines of the Infectious Diseases Society of America were based on RCTs. Evaluation of studies relies on an understanding of the study and potential biases. Limitations in an RCT can outweigh the benefits, for example excessive dosages, excessive treatment delays, or Internet survey bias****** could have a greater effect on results. Ethical issues may also prevent running RCTs for known effective treatments.******* For more on issues with RCTs see [Deaton, Nichol].

The above is stunning. This group actively rejects gold standard studies. Why? Those studies seriously altered ivmmeta's findings, which contradicted ivmmeta's desired outcome.

*FLCCC are grifters and manipulate patients and their families to sue hospitals.

**Not for this type of research.

***It's a conspiracy!

****Ok scientists. Use proper terms please. Observational studies are:
-Case studies ... Or
-Correlational studies.

*****That's just bizarre.

******Randomized control studies don't us "internet surveys". What the hell??

*******Damn ethical issues! They block us from killing and maiming people!! How can we possibly obtain objective research if ethics and patient safety get in our way!!!

Just some of my thoughts......

ETA: highlighting.

[Dave from down under]

Thank you for taking the hit for the team…

[Luke]

That's tragic about the couple in Tennessee. That lady was trying to save people's lives and idiots like the guy who didn't even have kids in the school system (and hired Zsa Zsa Gabor's publicist) are literally getting people to kill themselves. It said 1 on 475 Tennesseans have died of COVID. Guess the upside is those folks won't be around to keep making trouble. But it sucks.

[AndyinPA]

That's tragic about the couple in Tennessee. That lady was trying to save people's lives and idiots like the guy who didn't even have kids in the school system (and hired Zsa Zsa Gabor's publicist) are literally getting people to kill themselves. It said 1 on 475 Tennesseans have died of COVID. Guess the upside is those folks won't be around to keep making trouble. But it sucks.

Or vote.

[sugar magnolia]

Some of the data used is from doctors with
Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. This group is dangerous and predatory, and has been discussed in this thread repeatedly. Their big deal journal article was retracted while still in readily available prepublication.

A small nit amongst your beautifully written post. The Front Line Critical Care Alliance and the America's Frontline Doctor's groups are two different, but equally dangerous and predatory, groups.

[Sam the Centipede]

Thanks LM K, it's good to read a take-down of the ivermectin nonsense. I have not read much about it, relying instead on the principles that (1) there is no a priori reason to expect it to be a helpful remedy; (2) if there was any validity fo its effectiveness, reputable sources would have taken an interest and investigated properly, including Merck of course; and (3) the popularity amongst RWNJ anti-science and sometimes anti-vaccine folks is explicable by their herd stupidity and contrarianism.

The point about interactions affecting perceived or measured effectiveness is valid, and was possibly an issue with the apparent lower effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine compared with the mRNA vaccines. The mRNA vaccine trials used an inactive placebo, but the AZ trials used a different vaccine, one against meningococcus (or something like that, my memory is not too good). So patients on AZ trials could not interpret a presence or absense of pain or mild side-effects as being an indication of having received the coronavirus vaccine, which is clearly good for blinding. However, it was suggested that the fact of the AZ patients being vaccinated with something could have kicked their immune systems into a higher state of readiness which was coincidentally mildly protective if they were exposed soon afterwards to the coronavirus itself. So the placebo group might have received some mild protection, making the trial group's protection look less effective, as it was measured against the placebo group as if they were a wholly untreated group.

[Dave from down under]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-21/ ... /100637666

Tens of thousands of protesters, many from far-right groups, have marched through Vienna following the Austrian government announcing a nationwide lockdown to contain skyrocketing coronavirus infections.

Key points:
The Austrian lockdown will start on Monday and last at least 10 days
The government also will make vaccinations mandatory starting February 1
Protests also took place in Switzerland, Northern Ireland, Italy, Croatia and Guadeloupe
Demonstrations against virus restrictions also took place in Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia, Italy, Northern Ireland and the Netherlands on Saturday and Sunday.

It followed Dutch police opened fire on protesters and seven people were injured in rioting that erupted in Rotterdam on Friday.

Protesters rallied against coronavirus restrictions and mandatory COVID-19 passes needed in many European countries to enter restaurants, Christmas markets or sports events, as well as mandatory vaccinations.

The Austrian lockdown will start on Monday and comes after average daily deaths tripled in recent weeks, with hospitals in heavily hit states warning that intensive care units were reaching capacity.



link to Dutch police incident:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-20/ ... /100636636

[Suranis]

Thanks, Suranis!

The issue of legit science v manipulated science fascinates me. There is no data to support the use of Ivermectin prophylactically or as a treatment.

YW LMK

[Dave from down under]

https://theconversation.com/why-the-vic ... 20us%20all

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of people gathered in Melbourne to protest vaccine mandates and the Victorian government’s proposed pandemic bill.

While the latest protests were relatively peaceful, they have followed a week of similar gatherings whose language and symbolism were at times violent. The protesters are a mix of groups, but the movement is riddled with far-right and alt-right extremists who, with their growing reach through social media and in the context of developments in the United States and Europe, pose one of the more significant challenges to Australian democracy in recent memory.

[Foggy]

I hate to think that we exported that crap to you folks down there.

[AndyinPA]

The former guy did. I blame him for this whole mess.

[Dave from down under]

I hate to think that we exported that crap to you folks down there.

And sov cits

and

freeman of the land

and

the NRA

and

Lite beer

the horrors that you send never end!

[keith]

I hate to think that we exported that crap to you folks down there.

Well it is being fomented by a a guy that claims to be a bazillionaire, doesn't pay his employees their legal entitlements, blows bluster about anything and everything just to be opposite, had captured the fealty of a weak minded politician do do his bidding, has been 'consulting' with various subpoenaed former Presidential advisors, wants to be Prime Minister, and is basically running a playbook that is trivially recognizable to a certain twice impeached Cheezil headed barrage balloon we all know and pity.

[Uninformed]

Public Service Announcement:

THE National Rifle Association was founded in 1859 in the UK and received a royal charter of incorporation in 1890.

Another NRA was founded in 1871 in the USA.

THE NRA has added “of the UK” to it’s title to differentiate it from the malignant association in the USA.

Couldn’t think up their own name, eh? How about the National Firearms Group, or NFG.

[Suranis]

Well, you have to admit Australia has experience in the Wankerous moron with a face like an ass department

[LM K]

Some of the data used is from doctors with
Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. This group is dangerous and predatory, and has been discussed in this thread repeatedly. Their big deal journal article was retracted while still in readily available prepublication.

A small nit amongst your beautifully written post. The Front Line Critical Care Alliance and the America's Frontline Doctor's groups are two different, but equally dangerous and predatory, groups.

Thank you! I'm glad you shared that!!

[pipistrelle]

It’s populism on the rise.

Populism is dangerous.