Reply To: Conspiracy Theorists, Why is Westminster Lifting All COVID Restrictions?


Latest News Forums Discussion Forum Conspiracy Theorists, Why is Westminster Lifting All COVID Restrictions? Reply To: Conspiracy Theorists, Why is Westminster Lifting All COVID Restrictions?

#79378
Clark
Guest

I’ll take the most sciency-looking one first:

Misleading clinical evidence and systematic reviews on ivermectin for COVID-19 – BMJ

Different websites (such as ivmmeta.com,  c19ivermectin.com, tratamientotemprano.org/estudios-ivermectina/, among others) have conducted meta-analyses with ivermectin studies, showing unpublished colourful forest plots which rapidly gained public acknowledgement and were disseminated via social media, without following any methodological or report guidelines. These websites do not include protocol registration with methods, search strategies, inclusion criteria, quality assessment of the included studies nor the certainty of the evidence of the pooled estimates. Prospective registration of systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis protocols is a key feature for providing transparency in the review process and ensuring protection against reporting biases, by revealing differences between the methods or outcomes reported in the published review and those planned in the registered protocol. These websites show pooled estimates suggesting significant benefits with ivermectin, which has resulted in confusion for clinicians, patients and even decision-makers. This is usually a problem when performing meta-analyses which are not based in rigorous systematic reviews, often leading to spread spurious or fallacious findings.

– Concluding, research related to ivermectin in COVID-19 has serious methodological limitations resulting in very low certainty of the evidence, and continues to grow.37–39 The use of ivermectin, among others repurposed drugs for prophylaxis or treatment for COVID-19, should be done based on trustable evidence, without conflicts of interest, with proven safety and efficacy in patient-consented, ethically approved, randomised clinical trials.

We also have this:

“The recovery rate, meanwhile, has improved to 98.7 per cent.”

Well, those who didn’t recover presumably died, so 100% – 98.7% = 1.3% death rate – that is absolutely nothing to be proud of; it’s around two and a half times worse than commonly expected figures!

And then this. From the opinion of Vikssendu Agrawal, Uttar Pradesh State Surveillance Officer as reported in the Indian Express in March 2020 (aeons ago in terms of the pandemic, before Delta had evolved and when India suffered a rather small wave):

He said that apart from aggressive contact tracing and surveillance, the lower positivity and fatality rates may be attributed to the large-scale use of Ivermectin use in the state…

Yes, we already knew that contact tracing with testing and quarantine was highly successful. And isn’t that craze for ivermectin the one that was later found to be ineffective, as Dawg reported earlier? And why are you resorting to such old news? Knowledge improves; that’s the whole point of science.
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J, I have no particular stance on ivermectin, except that the most trusted authorities worldwide say that so far it doesn’t seem to help but they’re continuing to look into it. But you have only reported one side of a story, apparently without checking. Again. Why? And what about all the other points you were wrong about? Are you starting to learn yet?