I hope my questions on ivermectin can be answered without a lot of political attacks and going off the rails.

I understand ivermectin has a very low incidence of adverse reactions and headache and dizziness are the chief ones. They also go away upon discontinuance of the drug.

Why is there such a weird reaction by some in the medical community? You'd think a doctor would at least "try" it if there's really no negative consequences. The only answers I can imagine are:

1. Pressure from on top.
2. Fear that it doesn't work and will reduce vaccinations
3. Fear that it actually works and will take the money out of covid 19 - of course, this doesn't answer why a doctor wouldn't prescribe it.

I really would like some guidance on the "why don't you try" angle.

I have the exact same question and asked it of my doc who refuses to prescribe ivermectin. He works for a very, very large monopolistic hospital chain. And he is otherwise an outstandingly good doctor.

His answer was that he relies on the experts in his company to make those calls for him, and they have rejected ivermectin.

However, I note that if I have a condition with multiple possible causes, he is not shy about prescribing medicine for that condition even if he's not 100% sure that the problem that the medicine treats is the problem causing the condition.

Isn't that essentially the same thing?

That is so weird. You're right..how many times do doctors irresponsibly prescribe antibiotics for a virus just to keep their patients happy? Doing so is very irresponsible. But if you ask for a common drug, they act like you are nuts.

I just want a simple answer.

There have been a good number of doctors who have, in my opinion, violated their Hippocratic oath in the last year by refusing to treat patients.

Check this website out. If you get covid, it would be criminal not to try using the ivermecitn or hcq cocktails.

https://worldivermectinday.org/

My doctor isn't big on medication in general. Rather than put you on cholesterol or blood pressure medicine he recommends changes in lifestyle and monitors you. When I got covid in December he gave my hydroxychloroquin, a Z-pak, and cough suppressant without even seeing me. Of course he doesn't work for some large hospital and is in a private practice so that may contribute to it.

I'm going in for my yearly physical this week. I may ask for an ivermectin script for the hell of it to see if he will give me one.

Ive had long haul covid symptoms for 14 months. Ive tried every medication imaginable and the only thing that helped treat my symptoms was ivermectin. I immediately felt better after taking it.

My PCP wouldn't prescribe it to me so I went to push health and found an online doctor that would prescribe it. She told me that ivermectin is a very clean drug with little to no side effects. I'm the type that if I take antibiotics or steroid paks then I will get a huge stomach ache and feel horrible the entire day. But with ivermectin I felt fine. Not one side effect.

Every drug has side effects, even a very safe drug like ivermectin. It is entirely possible that ivermectin provides no benefit at all as treatment to covid19 vs placebo.

The studies that kicked off the investigation of ivermectin were lab studies in a test tube (not in humans) that showed it can inhibit viral replication. But, those studies were done at concentrations way higher than what you get out of normal dosing. None of the normally prescribed doses would accomplish this... like orders of magnitude lower. There doesn't seem to be a practical way to get that concentration of the drug in your body.

As that paper notes, "It has to be emphasized that general public communication of drugs as potential COVID-19 therapeutics, based solely on in vitro data, is neither scientifically nor ethically appropriate. Ivermectin has been previously shown to exert antiviral activity in vitro against Dengue fever virus, influenza virus, West Nile Virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and heralded as a possible antiviral drug, but so far there has not been any clinical translation of these data. Noteworthy, a clinical trial for the treatment of Dengue fever in Thailand failed to show clinical benefits."

Community scale distribution of ivermectin has been linked to neurological adverse events. Higher than typical dosing levels make the risk of normal side effects higher. In other words, there is a known and quantifiable downside to using the drug.

In it's normal use as an antiparasitic the upside vastly outweighs the downside. It's a freaking miracle drug. But in this case? We don't have good evidence outside of an in vitro study that it works. And in fact those in vitro results may be confounded by a separate mechanism called phospholipidosis.

Clinical evidence is spotty, and generally the stronger the trial design (blinded, placebo controlled, randomized) the more it looks like the drug doesn't work (an indicator of publication bias).

Because all drugs are presumed to not work until they prove out, a doctor who takes seriously the idea of "first, do no harm" is reasonable in refusing to prescribe ivermectin to treat covid19.

But we're ok with a nonFDA approved vaccine.

See, it's inconsistency that is so troubling

Yes, we are. Because each vaccine was tested in multiple randomized, placebo controlled clinical trials where they showed huge benefit with very little downside. The phase 3 trials for Pfizer and Moderna each had over 30,000 participants. No ivermectin study can come close to something like that in terms of replicated, large sample size, gold standard evidence.

Even further since then we've distributed hundreds of millions of doses with very little in terms of safety signals. And those safety signals - like myocarditis or blood clots - have been picked up by the monitoring systems. And the cost:benefit including those is off the charts.

You should be skeptical before you put anything in your body. If the people who are skeptical of the vaccines with the evidence they have held ivermectin to the same standard not a single one would use it.

Why do most doctors not prescribe it for COVID?

Because COVID is not a helminthic infection. It makes absolutely no sense why it would work biochemically, and to put it more plainly, it doesn't work for COVID, period.

Why don't I personally prescribe ivermectin? Well the same reason I don't give out antibiotics for the common cold (or COVID), or diabetes meds to acutely treat a heart attack or stroke, or chemotherapy for a broken arm, because it makes absolutely no sense. It would be unethical for me to knowingly prescribe someone a medication I know to be ineffective.

The better question you should be asking yourself is why a certain segment of the population with no medical knowledge has become so obsessed with two separate medications that don't work against COVID, when the large majority of physicians won't prescribe them due to said lack of efficacy? Many in this segment of the population have even gone to the point of buying ivermectin paste from feed stores or getting physicians to lie about the indications so pharmacies will fill these prescriptions.

Like these docs?

https://covid19criticalcare.com/about/the-flccc-physicians/

Zobel said:

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Yes, we are. Because each vaccine was tested in multiple randomized, placebo controlled clinical trials where they showed huge benefit with very little downside. The phase 3 trials for Pfizer and Moderna each had over 30,000 participants. No ivermectin study can come close to something like that in terms of replicated, large sample size, gold standard evidence.

Even further since then we've distributed hundreds of millions of doses with very little in terms of safety signals. And those safety signals - like myocarditis or blood clots - have been picked up by the monitoring systems. And the cost:benefit including those is off the charts.

You should be skeptical before you put anything in your body. If the people who are skeptical of the vaccines with the evidence they have held ivermectin to the same standard not a single one would use it.

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This is a great point. The level of hypocrisy is off the charts.

This is a fantastic time to remember that this is exactly why we rely on randomized, placebo-controlled, blinded studies to determine whether or not drugs work. No matter what issue there will always be an expert opinion on both sides. Expert opinion is worth pretty much zero when compared to a randomized controlled trial.

If the drug works, it works, and the evidence will show it. So far that hasn't happened. You should be asking why they are promoting something for mass use without a corresponding record of demonstrated safety and efficacy.

Dr. Not Yet Dr. Ag said:

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Why do most doctors not prescribe it for COVID?

Because COVID is not a helminthic infection. It makes absolutely no sense why it would work biochemically, and to put it more plainly, it doesn't work for COVID, period.

Why don't I personally prescribe ivermectin? Well the same reason I don't give out antibiotics for the common cold (or COVID), or diabetes meds to acutely treat a heart attack or stroke, or chemotherapy for a broken arm, because it makes absolutely no sense. It would be unethical for me to knowingly prescribe someone a medication I know to be ineffective.

The better question you should be asking yourself is why a certain segment of the population with no medical knowledge has become so obsessed with two separate medications that don't work against COVID, when the large majority of physicians won't prescribe them due to said lack of efficacy? Many in this segment of the population have even gone to the point of buying ivermectin paste from feed stores or getting physicians to lie about the indications so pharmacies will fill these prescriptions.

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Ther are many doctors who are prescribing Ivermectin including at least one that posts here. I've also heard several doctors talking about how it works on various podcasts including the Joe Rogan podcast which is the most listened to podcast in the world.

I am not a medical professional so I can't say who is right or wrong or what to believe. But I think people believe because they have heard medical experts and doctors say it works.

Dr. Not Yet Dr. Ag said:

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Why do most doctors not prescribe it for COVID?

Because COVID is not a helminthic infection. It makes absolutely no sense why it would work biochemically, and to put it more plainly, it doesn't work for COVID, period.

Why don't I personally prescribe ivermectin? Well the same reason I don't give out antibiotics for the common cold (or COVID), or diabetes meds to acutely treat a heart attack or stroke, or chemotherapy for a broken arm, because it makes absolutely no sense. It would be unethical for me to knowingly prescribe someone a medication I know to be ineffective.

The better question you should be asking yourself is why a certain segment of the population with no medical knowledge has become so obsessed with two separate medications that don't work against COVID, when the large majority of physicians won't prescribe them due to said lack of efficacy? Many in this segment of the population have even gone to the point of buying ivermectin paste from feed stores or getting physicians to lie about the indications so pharmacies will fill these prescriptions.

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All the examples you list have a potential for major side effects or long term problems if not properly prescribed. What are the long term problems or side effects for taking ivermectin even if it doesn't work or you don't need it?

There aren't any. Science has become a religion. They're very much like the old Catholic Church: "nah...we'll just leave this Bible in Latin...we don't want you uneducated rubes getting any ideas. After all, we went to Med school for 4 years."

This is not true. There are approved therapies for COVID19.

HCQ is "demonized" because it doesn't work. What's more in some studies it actually seemed to hurt.

I linked to a study that connected ivermectin to severe neurological adverse events. Ivermectin has side effects. All drugs have side effects. If you give doses to millions and millions of people, and it has zero upside, all of those side effects are borne by people for no reason.

I've seen people on this forum who self-administered ivermectin talking about lightheadedness. There's a real chance that was from ivermectin, and not from COVID.

Quote:

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There aren't any. Science has become a religion. They're very much like the old Catholic Church: "nah...we'll just leave this Bible in Latin...we don't want you uneducated rubes getting any ideas. After all, we went to Med school for 4 years."

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The irony of this statement is incredible seeing as every single major publisher has opened their content during this pandemic to the public. You can literally go read every study published on COVID19, therapies, research, etc. The amount of access to information is unprecedented.

Proposed mechanism of action:

Quote:

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Reports from in vitro studies suggest that ivermectin acts by inhibiting the host importin alpha/beta-1 nuclear transport proteins, which are part of a key intracellular transport process that viruses hijack to enhance infection by suppressing the host's antiviral response.4,5 In addition, ivermectin docking may interfere with the attachment of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein to the human cell membrane.6 Ivermectin is thought to be a host-directed agent, which may be the basis for its broad-spectrum activity in vitro against the viruses that cause dengue, Zika, HIV, and yellow fever.4,7-9 Despite this in vitro activity, no clinical trials have reported a clinical benefit for ivermectin in patients with these viruses. Some studies of ivermectin have also reported potential anti-inflammatory properties, which have been postulated to be beneficial in people with COVID-19.10-12

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https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antiviral-therapy/ivermectin/

Every drug that proceeds toward clinical trial either has some proposed method of action or some in vitro effect that's "promising." No one is dosing humans without some reason to think it is going to work. The problem is that something like 95% of drugs fail either for safety or efficacy after that point.

This is a case of pre-test probability. We should expect that the vast majority of promising treatments won't work, and be skeptical of them until they prove that they do.

WorthAg95 said:

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If there's a cure/treatment for COVID, then the vaccines don't get approved. Once you realize that, the demonization of ivermectin/HCQ makes sense.

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WorthAg95 said:

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If there's a cure/treatment for COVID, then the vaccines don't get approved. Once you realize that, the demonization of ivermectin/HCQ makes sense.

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Why would a "treatment" ever be a preferred alternative to an amazing vaccine. You know that many things we can vaccinate for have treatments as well, but not getting sick is always better than a potential treatment. The concerning thing is that many of these "cures" were never intended to treat COVID, so even if they had some benefit, they are far from ideal solutions at best (Ivermectin maybe fits here, at least one study suggested some benefit). At worst, they give people a false sense of security so that they don't seek out the far superior option - the vaccine (HCQ fits here for sure).

I agree 100% with what you say as very much a pro-vaccine supporter. The problem goes back to messaging. We created this current distrust by pushing things that didn't work (masks, lockdowns, etc) and dishonesty (not being upfront about covid basically only being dangerous for the old and fat) that when the time came that we had the vaccines people had already been burned too many times.

Dr. Not Yet Dr. Ag said:

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Why do most doctors not prescribe it for COVID?

Because COVID is not a helminthic infection. It makes absolutely no sense why it would work biochemically, and to put it more plainly, it doesn't work for COVID, period.

Why don't I personally prescribe ivermectin? Well the same reason I don't give out antibiotics for the common cold (or COVID), or diabetes meds to acutely treat a heart attack or stroke, or chemotherapy for a broken arm, because it makes absolutely no sense. It would be unethical for me to knowingly prescribe someone a medication I know to be ineffective.

The better question you should be asking yourself is why a certain segment of the population with no medical knowledge has become so obsessed with two separate medications that don't work against COVID, when the large majority of physicians won't prescribe them due to said lack of efficacy? Many in this segment of the population have even gone to the point of buying ivermectin paste from feed stores or getting physicians to lie about the indications so pharmacies will fill these prescriptions.

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I don't know if you read my post above, but ivermectin was the only medicine that made me feel 100% better after taking it (I have 14 months of long haul covid symptoms). I've tried taking azithromycin, steroid pak, doxycycline, zinc, famotidine, vitamin C/d, and none of that worked except for ivermectin.

In fact it was like an on/off switch whenever I took the ivermectin. I was having horrible covid symptoms for a day or two, took ivermectin, and instantly felt better. I took it for 4 days straight, not one covid symptom, then when I ran out of ivermectin and stopped taking it is when The covid symptoms came back again.

I have taken ivermectin on two separate occasions and both times I instantly felt better. I have no rhyme or reason why it works for me, but it does. There have been others on here with the same results.

Maybe you should try prescribing it to your covid patients and see if it helps them? What's the downside of having them take it?

ea1060 said:

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Dr. Not Yet Dr. Ag said:

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Why do most doctors not prescribe it for COVID?

Because COVID is not a helminthic infection. It makes absolutely no sense why it would work biochemically, and to put it more plainly, it doesn't work for COVID, period.

Why don't I personally prescribe ivermectin? Well the same reason I don't give out antibiotics for the common cold (or COVID), or diabetes meds to acutely treat a heart attack or stroke, or chemotherapy for a broken arm, because it makes absolutely no sense. It would be unethical for me to knowingly prescribe someone a medication I know to be ineffective.

The better question you should be asking yourself is why a certain segment of the population with no medical knowledge has become so obsessed with two separate medications that don't work against COVID, when the large majority of physicians won't prescribe them due to said lack of efficacy? Many in this segment of the population have even gone to the point of buying ivermectin paste from feed stores or getting physicians to lie about the indications so pharmacies will fill these prescriptions.

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I don't know if you read my post above, but ivermectin was the only medicine that made me feel 100% better after taking it (I have 14 months of long haul covid symptoms). I've tried taking azithromycin, steroid pak, doxycycline, zinc, vitamin C/d, and none of that worked except for ivermectin.

In fact it was like an on/off switch whenever I took the ivermectin. I was having horrible covid symptoms for a day or two, took ivermectin, and instantly felt better. I took it for 4 days straight, not one covid symptom, then when I ran out of ivermectin and stopped taking it is when The covid symptoms came back again.

I have taken ivermectin on two separate occasions and both times I instantly felt better. I have no rhyme or reason why it works for me, but it does. There have been others on here with the same results.

Maybe you should try prescribing it to your covid patients and see if it helps them? What's the downside of having them take it?

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Placebo?

Ghost of Andrew Eaton said:

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ea1060 said:

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Dr. Not Yet Dr. Ag said:

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Why do most doctors not prescribe it for COVID?

Because COVID is not a helminthic infection. It makes absolutely no sense why it would work biochemically, and to put it more plainly, it doesn't work for COVID, period.

Why don't I personally prescribe ivermectin? Well the same reason I don't give out antibiotics for the common cold (or COVID), or diabetes meds to acutely treat a heart attack or stroke, or chemotherapy for a broken arm, because it makes absolutely no sense. It would be unethical for me to knowingly prescribe someone a medication I know to be ineffective.

The better question you should be asking yourself is why a certain segment of the population with no medical knowledge has become so obsessed with two separate medications that don't work against COVID, when the large majority of physicians won't prescribe them due to said lack of efficacy? Many in this segment of the population have even gone to the point of buying ivermectin paste from feed stores or getting physicians to lie about the indications so pharmacies will fill these prescriptions.

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I don't know if you read my post above, but ivermectin was the only medicine that made me feel 100% better after taking it (I have 14 months of long haul covid symptoms). I've tried taking azithromycin, steroid pak, doxycycline, zinc, vitamin C/d, and none of that worked except for ivermectin.

In fact it was like an on/off switch whenever I took the ivermectin. I was having horrible covid symptoms for a day or two, took ivermectin, and instantly felt better. I took it for 4 days straight, not one covid symptom, then when I ran out of ivermectin and stopped taking it is when The covid symptoms came back again.

I have taken ivermectin on two separate occasions and both times I instantly felt better. I have no rhyme or reason why it works for me, but it does. There have been others on here with the same results.

Maybe you should try prescribing it to your covid patients and see if it helps them? What's the downside of having them take it?

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Placebo?

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Why didn't any of the other drugs he took have the placebo effect? Does Ivermectin have a superior placebo effect to the other dozen things he tried?

Gumby said:

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Ghost of Andrew Eaton said:

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ea1060 said:

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Dr. Not Yet Dr. Ag said:

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Why do most doctors not prescribe it for COVID?

Because COVID is not a helminthic infection. It makes absolutely no sense why it would work biochemically, and to put it more plainly, it doesn't work for COVID, period.

Why don't I personally prescribe ivermectin? Well the same reason I don't give out antibiotics for the common cold (or COVID), or diabetes meds to acutely treat a heart attack or stroke, or chemotherapy for a broken arm, because it makes absolutely no sense. It would be unethical for me to knowingly prescribe someone a medication I know to be ineffective.

The better question you should be asking yourself is why a certain segment of the population with no medical knowledge has become so obsessed with two separate medications that don't work against COVID, when the large majority of physicians won't prescribe them due to said lack of efficacy? Many in this segment of the population have even gone to the point of buying ivermectin paste from feed stores or getting physicians to lie about the indications so pharmacies will fill these prescriptions.

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I don't know if you read my post above, but ivermectin was the only medicine that made me feel 100% better after taking it (I have 14 months of long haul covid symptoms). I've tried taking azithromycin, steroid pak, doxycycline, zinc, vitamin C/d, and none of that worked except for ivermectin.

In fact it was like an on/off switch whenever I took the ivermectin. I was having horrible covid symptoms for a day or two, took ivermectin, and instantly felt better. I took it for 4 days straight, not one covid symptom, then when I ran out of ivermectin and stopped taking it is when The covid symptoms came back again.

I have taken ivermectin on two separate occasions and both times I instantly felt better. I have no rhyme or reason why it works for me, but it does. There have been others on here with the same results.

Maybe you should try prescribing it to your covid patients and see if it helps them? What's the downside of having them take it?

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Placebo?

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Why didn't any of the other drugs he took have the placebo effect? Does Ivermectin have a superior placebo effect to the other dozen things he tried?

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It would be very hard to have a placebo effect with these long haul covid symptoms. When I get them, they take over my entire body and I feel horrible for hours, sometimes all day: feverish feeling, warm, fatigue, muscle pain, dizziness, ear ache, brain fog. Hard to get out of bed some days.

Trust me, I don't think any drug would give me a placebo effect of not feeling the symptoms. The symptoms are too strong.

Forgive me, but what you're describing is exactly the kind of thing that placebo will do. The placebo effect will help with almost everything that is about perception... pain, nausea, insomnia, fatigue, and so on. That is not to say that what you're experiencing is not real at all.

Dr. Not Yet Dr. Ag said:

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The better question you should be asking yourself is why a certain segment of the population with no medical knowledge has become so obsessed with two separate medications that don't work against COVID, when the large majority of physicians won't prescribe them due to said lack of efficacy? Many in this segment of the population have even gone to the point of buying ivermectin paste from feed stores or getting physicians to lie about the indications so pharmacies will fill these prescriptions.

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I'll answer because you don't have to be a doctor to see what happened.

The moment Trump said anything about any kind of possible treatment (never said it worked), democrats, the media, and social media giants went crazy and started censoring anything about it. Then they trot out doctors who are obvious political hacks to confirm that Trump was a moron and what he said doesn't work. Instead of taking the reasonable approach and allowing dissenting opinions to be out there and then debunking them with actual facts, they decided to go full draconian, which immediately calls into question their motives and credibility.

All that had to be done from the start, regardless of political affiliation, was to be truthful with information that was provided to the public. But instead, people on both sides (one more than the other), decided to turn it political from the start. Couple that with "experts" blatantly lying to the public by making absurd claims like "This face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine," or Fauci and the CDC's reluctance on acknowledging what Rand Paul had been saying for months, and credibility is shot. Now, Houston's own quack, Dr. Hotez, is going national since the media companies need new partisan hacks to push their message. Sorry, Doc, but your own profession has killed any kind of credibility it had with COVID and it won't recover in many of our lifetimes.

Zobel said:

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Forgive me, but what you're describing is exactly the kind of thing that placebo will do. The placebo effect will help with almost everything that is about perception... pain, nausea, insomnia, fatigue, and so on. That is not to say that what you're experiencing is not real at all.

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Placebo effect or not, every single time I've taken ivermectin it has eliminated my covid symptoms. Thats enough evidence for me to keep taking it!