[roenxi]

> He also pushed ivermectin which studies show has no statistically significant effect on COVID.

Studies showed that it had a statistically significant effect on COVID. The problem is that with hindsight it is obvious any sufficiently powerful study will show it has a statistically significant effect so the existence of that effect isn't particularly interesting evidence.

There will be people who have both COVID and parasites. If you give them Ivermectin around the time they catch COVID, they will get better outcomes. Statistics will pick that up, it is a real effect. AND it has real world policy implications, there are a lot of people in the world who should immediately be given Ivermectin if they catch COVID (or, indeed, any disease). The more important political issue was when people noticed that (very real) effect without understanding the cause they were attacked rather than someone explaining what was happening.

It is a good case study of evidence being misleading, but the statistical significance of that evidence is indisputable. Any study that doesn't find that effect is just underpowered - it is there. In fact as a baseline it turns out we would expect any effective drug will have a statistically significant positive effect on COVID outcomes.

[cogman10]

> Studies showed that it had a statistically significant effect on COVID. The problem is that with hindsight it is obvious any sufficiently powerful study will show it has a statistically significant effect so the existence of that effect isn't particularly interesting evidence.

Preliminary studies with small n showed a statistically significant effect. Follow up studies with larger n showed no such effect. Meta studies also concluded no effect.

> Any study that doesn't find that effect is just underpowered

I'm sorry, but no, in fact the opposite is true. The underpowered studies are the only ones showing an effect. [1].

What has happened with Ivermectin is the "anchoring effect". [2] Early studies showed promise which has caused people to think there is promise there. After that, grifters and conspiracy peddlers started out publishing the actual research on the benefits.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9308124/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_effect

[roenxi]

If you believe that, it implies you believe someone infested with parasites expects the same COVID outcomes as someone who is mostly healthy. That is a pretty extreme claim, to the point where 1 study (or review, in this case) isn't really an argument. It is much more likely that that they just aren't picking up the statistical signal that is obviously going to be there somewhere.

There isn't a shortage of studies showing an ivermectin-COVID relationship. https://c19ivm.org/meta.html makes for interesting reading, although it is quite misleading because it is probably measuring parasite prevalence rather than anything new.

[cogman10]

> If you believe that, it implies you believe someone infested with parasites expects the same COVID outcomes as someone who is mostly healthy.

No, it doesn't.

The crux of your argument is that there is an invisible parasitic pandemic which is, frankly, absurd. Parasites by their nature are far less transmissible than an airborn virus is. They are primarily regionally locked and locked out of most developed countries. The US, for example, does not have a major internal parasite problem because public waters are treated against most parasites and filtered before general consumption.

As for the site, it's got a lot of pretty numbers that are like "Yeah look, 100% this ivermectin is great!" which is pretty fishy. You would not expect to see something like that. But, scroll to the bottom and all the sudden you see why that is, they purposefully find reasons to omit all studies that counter that claim.

Like, I'm sorry, I'm just not going to trust a website that is pushing for vitamin D supplements to treat covid. It's not a serious website and it has a very clear agenda.

[defrost]

Yourself (cogman10) and roenxi might both be in furious agreement from my PoV.

There are no good studies showing a useful relationship between ivermectin and COVID outcomes in low parasite G20 countries ( UK, AU, US, etc ).

The early studies most quoted had high N, good procedures, and showed ivermectin having a very positive effect across the board wrt many diseases ( flu, COVID, etc. ). These studies were in countries and regions with high parasite prevelance and demonstrated pretty conclusively that people with no worms were healthier, had better functioning immune systems, and both resisted and recovered from infections noticably better than untreated populations with parasites.

The supplement pushing website is being disingenous and obfuscating the context of the studies quoted in order to flog crap to rubes.

[boredtofears]

Best thing I've read that's summarized this well is the Scott Alexander piece incase anyone wants to do further reading from a somewhat reputable source: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-y...

[defrost]

Fun read; I knew of the "good studies" that Scott ended up with, I'd never bothered to look much at the site in question as it screamed (to myself at least) of marketing driven bias .. and lo and behold many of the quoted papers are low N, sketchy, or outright fraudulent.

I suspect the best most concise summary is simply "If you have or even suspect you have worms, take ivermectin. Your general health and well being will most probably improve".

[roenxi]

> No, it doesn't.

Alright, lets go through this slowly. Run me through the point which you think is unreasonable:

1. We do a study. Some % of the participants have parasites, in line with the base rate for the area.

2. Split the group into experiment and control. The experiment group gets Ivermectin.

3. Wait until everyone gets COVID. The people with parasites in the control group get terrible outcomes because their immune system is way overloaded, but the people who used to have parasites in the Ivermectin group do a bit better because they just took an anti-parasitic.

4. A sufficiently powerful statistical analysis correctly detects that the two groups got different COVID outcomes.

What part of that do you think won't happen in the real world?