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by roenxi 657 days ago
But surely you'll have to admit that if we do a double-blind study where all the participants have parasites we would probably get a significant difference between the two groups? Then we could also say that ivermectin caused decreased morbidity. We'd probably even say "it caused a decreased morbidity in populations with parasites, as expected". You can't just pretend people without parasites don't exist, they do. There are countries where the base rate is really high. That is where the results that show ivermectin as causing better COVID outcomes are coming from.

You've misunderstood the correlation-causation complaint. We have a pretty clear theory of causation here and the results back it up. Just because causality depends on specific conditions doesn't stop it being causal. Any medical treatment that isn't 100% effective (ie, most of them) depend on specific conditions being present - otherwise they'd be perfectly effective. Of course since the chain of causality is quite clear on this one we can conclude from the base rates of parasite infections there isn't much point taking ivermectin for COVID in the west.
1 comments
kaba0 657 days ago
Okay, why don’t we also waste money on bullshit like proving that tylenol increases intelligence (if you measure IQ tests on people with headaches)? It is just as useless. It was known that dewormers.. deworm.

There are zero new info in studies like that (unless you believe every logical conclusion requires a new study? If A is proved, should we separately prove A or B or what?), and they can’t even shut up all the idiots that still go on about ivermectin, so not even that goal is achieved..

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roenxi 657 days ago
I imagine the study-ers started with something like "hmm, these people have parasites and are getting COVID, we should see how big an effect giving them antiparasite medications has" and then went from there. Or maybe "we're throwing everything at the wall with COVID, this thing was involved in Nobel Prizes, lets try it to". Something like that. Maybe other things I can't think of. Proving up effect sizes is valuable in itself.
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