The Ivermectin discussion

While it is true that it is an important element in the immune system... that fact alone should not motivate supplementation. There is no reason to think that adding more of it helps the immune system in any way.

As an analogy - A builder might say "The most important thing for me to build this house is bricks". The response to that should be to say "Have you enough bricks to do the job right now then?" not to run off shouting "Get this guy as many bricks as possible!". More bricks will not help him. In fact getting more bricks might positively hinder him.

Another analogy - If I told you how there is arsenic in your body and how and why it is important - would you suddenly feel compelled to add arsenic to your diet? I would hope not :)

Most people - most of the time - have more than enough Vitamin D and supplementation does nothing for them. Vitamin supplementation can in fact be harmful and damaging. If you are pregnant or a doctor finds positive reason to recommend you supplement it then go for it. Other than that though - it's pretty pointless.

It's even worse in the US than here in Ireland though. Over there there is no supplementation regulation. So there is no guarantee when buying a supplement of something like vitamin D that you are getting anywhere near (or even any at all in some cases.) of the vitamin you think you are. I genuinely do not know how this is regulated in Ireland actually. I would hope it is better than the US.

Unfortunately such studies can not even agree what level even qualifies as "deficient". Let alone what levels of "deficiency" actually qualify as having any actual effect. It reminds me a lot of the studies (coincidently financed by bottled water companies, go figure) which suggested the majority of children were dehydrated all the time. To achieve this result they used measures when evaluating urine that no sane person, let alone any actual paediatrician, would use when qualifying a child as dehydrated.

Germany is one of the countries where the doctors push Vitamin D supplementation on parents of young children. There seems to be very little evidence whatsoever that there is any point in them doing this.

I think I already dealt with that video at some length in the thread already. Or one of his like it. And I already dealt with his video on the report about Vitamin D too. The guy makes awful videos and seems to know very little about what he is talking about. And I do not say that as a throw away comment. I evaluated his VitD video at quite a lot of length and the deficiencies in his abilities to evaluate the VitD report he was reading were numerous and massive.

But by all means rather than me merely copy and pasting anything I wrote before - tell me which thing in the video - or which three things if you like - you found most "compelling" and I will go over them again.

It depends what they are using it for? It is a great and wonderful drug! When it is used for the things it has been shown to be useful for that is. I am sure 100s of 1000s of people have used it to great effect.

If you mean those countries are using it for covid however - that is indeed a good question. There is no reason for them to be doing it. Maybe they made a mistake. Maybe they were convinced by bad experts. Maybe it is just optics. Maybe they bent to the demands of the public who themselves where convinced of its efficacy (much like doctors bend to patients demands for anti biotics even when they have a virus and anti biotics would do nothing for them at all, and even harm them).

It is more depressing than that though. A recent study did a review of all medications on the prescription lists in - I think it was the UK - and found a huge % of them (the majority if memory serves) have little or poor evidence for their efficacy. So the question there too is - why the hell are we using them?

We should evaluate with extreme skepticism every drug. The fact some person or even some country is using that drug should never be taken as even a little evidence the drug is useful. Our own government had a truly awful report (which the guy in the video above praised of course) into Vitamin D making it sound like a wonder drug when in fact the evidence it is useful in most cases at all is at best scant and at worst truly awful.

At the end of the day - governments are not medical people. It is simply not what they are qualified for/in most of the time. What they actually are qualified for most of the time is of course another interesting question :)

https://apnews.com/article/business-science-health-coronavirus-pandemic-c2b50063ac65943686a4995a6cf230c3

What about these medical professionals? Like, why are you going out of your way to find any evidence, no matter how ropey, to use to dismiss people who's entire career is built on studying and advising on this kind of thing?

More irony staring everyone in the face. How did we ever get to the stage where people are mistrusting of 'experimental' vaccines yet are happy enough to bang a load of livestock medicine into their system while calling everyone else sheep.

That Kory doctor is an Ivermectin Shill and at this stage at best dubious

He had a paper retracted recently (November 2021) as a hospital which had data cited in the paper corrected the mortality data which was completely incorrect in a manner to make his/FLCCC MATH+ protocol (that includes Ivermectin and which he had testified to Senate about) to appear effective.

Furthermore, less than half of the patients were on the protocol and of those who were, the mortality rate was actually high!

Like that is major data manipulation. The MATH don't add up!

https://retractionwatch.com/2021/11/09/bad-math-covid-treatment-paper-by-pierre-kory-retracted-for-flawed-results/

Here's an interesting article on Kory and Marik and the FLCCC that's worth 10 minutes reading whatever side of the discussion you are on

Covid 19 is not their first rodeo - they have a pre-covid background in giving people false hope in other areas of medicine (Sepsis)

Aside from the fact that they had some initial success (with others) with steroids that does reduce death in some serious cases (needs to be carefully prescribed), which they leveraged off, since then they have been worthy of scepticism

^ To add to that article above - one thing that has been bothering me about vaccination rates in countries - and anti vax people or pro Ivermectin people citing them - is that I have seen very little talk about relative rates and what they mean. In fact I confess my own relative ignorance on this too in that I would prefer people better informed go into it deeper than I would.

What I mean is, let us say you have three countries and their vaccination rates are 69% 72% and 75%. And people are thinking "We are so confused why Japan has such great numbers. It can not be the vaccine alone - sure they are only 3% ahead of one competing country and 6% ahead the next!"

Are such people assuming a linear scale here? Is such an assumption warranted? Should the effect we observe between country A and B - be the same as that between B and C?

Or is it possible that the effects are non-linear and at certain thresholds (such as reaching the threshold for herd immunity in some vaccines) the effect measured is much greater from one 3% jump than another?

One point of vaccination of any disease in general is to close off transmission vectors in a society. That is part of what herd immunity means for example. I would suspect that even a seemingly small % advantage one country has over another in terms of uptake - can have a non linear larger observable end effect on the virus than the average person suspects.

Strangely I do not see the more vocal people mention this however. Including retired nurse John Campbell (though admittedly I have only digested about 10% of his released materials so apologies if he actually has!).

^ Further a statement "allowing people to use it" is irrelevant while evaluating the statistics on the matter. A statement is not medicine. To have any relevance at all one would have to measure actual implementation of such a statement (if any). How was it being used before the statement. How was it being used after. What was the actual transition time between the two in increments? Was uptake instant? Linear? Scalar? What is the period of effect meant to be? What is even the effect meant to be, treatment or prevention? And much more.

Those simply saying "Here is a graph of infections and a statement was made by one guy on this date" are literally saying nothing at all but using as many words as possible in which to say it.

John the retired nurse does not "cover" anything very well at all. He reads things very well - in a very pleasant to listen to voice - but he really does not "Cover" anything well at all. I took apart his video on Vitamin D for example and the plethroa of ways he showed he has no idea how to read a report - let alone an actual scientific study.

And that is not a fault against him - reading studies of that nature is not part of the training he would have had to do the work he did. Expecting him to know how to dissect a study is like expecting a car mechanic to know the physics rules of combustion. It's just not required for his job even if he - just like the mechanic - work with the results of that science every day!

But a lot of people who see the word "Dr." in front of a name of someone like him do not realise that. It's amazing - for example - just how little neurosurgeons have to know about neurology.

That little rant over though - even I have to admit that his Japan video was not his worst. Except for him starting it off with that nudge nudge "I guess it's all a coincidence" lark - he did better than his usual fare here. But again - he did not cover it so much as just read it out. I do like his voice I have to say. I could listen to him read the phone book.