> The real story (in my opinion) behind Ivermectin are the studies not being conducted. Here you have a ton of studies claiming to have found benefit with a worldwide, massively available drug that has practically zero risks for most people (and it's an extremely well understood drug) and we don't have first world countries conducting RCTs to understand it better.
First world countries are in the process of conducting RCTs testing Ivermectin, for example the activ-6 and covid-out studies in the US.
> So you have to ask yourself - when do we get high quality RCTs, who funds them and why? This to me is a clear cut indicator that we have very maligned incentives for health science. How can we be this far into a global pandemic, with all of this funding and not have multiple high quality RCTs on this drug? It's sad to say the least. Even if Ivermectin ends up being fairly weak or completely ineffective - surely there's something to learn here...
The thing to learn here is that there's no conspiracy, trials are underway, and science is already working properly.
> First world countries are in the process of conducting RCTs testing Ivermectin, for example the activ-6 and covid-out studies in the US.
... "in the process of"?
How long has ivermectin existed? How long has the pandemic been around for? How long has ivermectin been claimed to have huge benefits for, regardless of the source?
Isn't it possible that there are some other reasons why RCT's haven't been conducted yet by "trustworthy" sources in the view of these meta-analyses?
Is it really such a huge conspiracy theory that researchers simply don't want to bite the hand that feeds them? Is it not a fact that literally billions that have flowed into the coffers of Big Pharma for the vaccines and their $700/pill protease inhibitor drug, and the fact that almost all research studies are performed with funding dollars that originate from them or from HHS/CDC/NIH, which also now see a dramatic, multi-fold increase in power, reach, and funding?
When everyone goes and beats the ‘we already have ivermectin’ drum, it’s clearly a pharmaceutical conspiracy’ why doesn’t anyone bring up the massive and significant lifesaving properties of adding steroids to the mix.
This came out of UK research at the start of the pandemic and has easily saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
The ivermectin notes that spurred this on was an Australian in-vitro study that noted that ivermectin had activity against sars-cov-2 in high dose, in-vitro.
It was promptly lost in the noise because basically everything, even high dose H20, can be shown to have in-vitro effectiveness against viral replication, and there were more promising avenues of research.
Then it pops out again after the anti-fact brigade lost the evidence pile-on with both hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and along comes a study that immediately gets trumpeted as revolutionising the treatment of covid but it turns out has horrific methodological and statistical problems, and the scientific world gets to work trying to establish the facts, and so far things don’t look good for ivermectin as a treatment.
Yet there’s still a global conspiracy of top level research scientists and doctors trying to suppress these easy wins and maximise worldwide misery.
You seem like you like to do your own research, how do you process those facts?
In this case, if Ivermectin was so effective against Covid, then Merck would be commercially incentivised to prove that.
When you combine that fact with the facts that complex problems rarely have simple solutions, that such high levels of collaboration are rare, & that the same people promoting Ivermectin are also promoting theories of 2020 election fraud, it's pretty easy to doubt that this conspiracy theory is realistic.
Well this is nonsensical for a myriad of reasons, including that a derivative that was patented and proven to work would just encourage people to take the cheap generic that also works but is more widely available and has better understood risk profile, but it does show potential motive as to why it's taken this long to get real RCTs spun up to study ivermectin.
>How long has the pandemic been around for? How long has ivermectin been claimed to have huge benefits for, regardless of the source?
Science takes time, the pandemic has been around for less than 2 years. Ivermectin has been a suggested for what, a year at most?
>Is it really such a huge conspiracy theory that researchers simply don't want to bite the hand that feeds them?
If a scientist could definitively prove ivermectin was effective they would be world famous. The reason so many shitty papers got published so quickly on ivermectin is because people were trying (and failing) to grab that fame and fortune. The incentives are obvious.
Consider that maybe your need to see conspiracy in the world comes from within, rather than external forces.
First world countries are in the process of conducting RCTs testing Ivermectin, for example the activ-6 and covid-out studies in the US.
> So you have to ask yourself - when do we get high quality RCTs, who funds them and why? This to me is a clear cut indicator that we have very maligned incentives for health science. How can we be this far into a global pandemic, with all of this funding and not have multiple high quality RCTs on this drug? It's sad to say the least. Even if Ivermectin ends up being fairly weak or completely ineffective - surely there's something to learn here...
The thing to learn here is that there's no conspiracy, trials are underway, and science is already working properly.