He goes over a long list of studies, evaluates the studies (throws out a lot of them for cause), and looks at the remainder. There's a residual slight preference for ivermectin, but the effect is small--and may be thanks to an unexpected confounding factor.
I may take ivermectin someday--I sometimes travel to parts of the world where it is very useful, and not just for horses.
One of his thoughts was that it was good against parasitic worms, which can make covid symptoms and mortality much worse. It would explain why the positive effect was only noted in small studies where such things are endemic.
ReplyDeleteIt brings up the other things we don't usually think about: there are many things that make covid worse, and treating those is valuable. Obesity, diabetes, etc.
Yes, though the timescale for treating obesity is orders of magnitude larger than for treating ordinary Covid. Anti-helminthics operate on the order of a day or so.
ReplyDeleteThe benefit of this mechanism not slam dunk obvious, though. With a serious systemic infection, all those dead worms apparently can dump a lot of waste into your system and you can feel weak, have an allergic reaction, and so on--which would seem to make you a bit more susceptible to Covid.
Like how (at least according to Sherlock Holmes) a weak heart can make the stings of certain types of jellyfish deadlier?
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