'There is no relationship at all between the two drugs, said Dr. William A Petri, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Virginia.
“The only way they are alike is that they are both pills,” Petri said.
Dr. Kevin J. Downes, assistant professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, agreed, “They are dramatically different molecules. The drugs are different in their structure and their molecular size.”
[...]
Ivermectin binds to glutamate-gated chloride channels and is used to treat parasite infections, said Joseph Glajch, a consultant in pharmaceutical and analytical chemistry.
“These two are so far apart,” he said. “If you look at how they interact with the body..., they don’t even go to the same pathways or receptors.”'
To the user who keeps getting comments deleted for bringing up this guy's funding: please look up "ad hominem fallacy". Attacking someone making a statement says nothing about the truth of their statement
Many adults in USA have refused the vaccine due to anti-vax propaganda. It’s far from a safe assumption, without something like a vaccine passport scheme in place, that every or even most adults a sick child meets would be vaccinated.
Perhaps some ethical systems would argue that anti vax adults have made their choice and should be exposed to the virus without care though. Personally if I was sick with covid I wouldn’t take that approach and would stay home though…
> Plus hospitals have monetary incentives to record these covid deaths
Hospitals have been deferring elective procedures, which are big revenue and profit drivers, due to COVID. I doubt this has been a huge moneymaker for them
I call bullshit. Antibodies wane but the memory cell response is robust and holds up over what looks to be a pretty long period (studied intensively for 6 months but with no sign of decline). Here's a new paper that shows that in detail (paper itself is dense but Twitter thread is fairly accessible):
Great link, summarizing recent research showing strong post-vaccination long-term B cell response.
Then Twitter surfaces a recent breakthrough infection study among 620k US veterans in the "More Tweets" section: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1448815262522773520 After six months from initial vaccination (Mar-Aug) the J&J vaccine appears to have zero (!) VE against infection. Pfizer is holding at a modest 53% against infection. Worse, the curve has the same shape as J&J, merely 2 months delayed.
In spite of very promising cellular and molecular studies, I am left scratching my head: are the vaccines any good at preventing infection in the long term, where we define long term as a few years down the road? The question is somewhat rhetorical, as we don't have epi studies from 2025 yet.
PS. I am more than happy to make a distinction between infection and severe infection. The main reason I pay attention to VE against infection are vaccine mandates and the whole stigma buildup against unvaccinated people.
PS2. > the flu vaccine, which for some reason doesn't attract the same sort of criticism.
People are free to get or not get a flu vaccine. Not getting a covid vaccine means loss of livelihood, loss of basic liberties and social ostracism.
COVID-19 vaccines aren't sterilizing to any meaningful extent. They provide only limited and temporary protection against infection. The real benefit is in protection against severe symptoms.
> People are free to get or not get a flu vaccine. Not getting a covid vaccine means loss of livelihood, loss of basic liberties and social ostracism.
Gee, I wonder if something happened recently that made stopping Covid more pressing than making everyone get a flu shot? Sure seems like there’s some reason, maybe a few hundred thousand reasons, why as a society we’re taking Covid and vaccination against it more seriously than the flu.
It’s weird to be so focused on infection, when efficacy against severe disease is more practically relevant. And the latter remains high, around 92% or higher, even against Delta.
Vaccine protection isn’t binary. Even if you end up infected your disease will be less severe AND you will be less contagious.
I call bullshit. Your source doesn’t address the efficacy decrease at all.
Yes, there are lasting changes from the vaccine, no that doesn’t indicate much about level of protection.
I definitely would never get a flu shot with its ridiculous efficacy numbers. If you forced me to get it to remain a part of society it would require my resistance by any means.
If you didn’t respond like an asshole id give you a couple sources. But, bullshit and all.
I don't know enough about vaccines to dispute what you're saying (though I feel like I have heard contrary data on this), but even if it's only fully effective for 8-9 months, isn't the fact that we had a vaccine that accomplished at least some of its goals safely designed and tested in record time a really cool thing?
Even if it's only effective for 6 months, that's still 6 months of slowing the spread, and conceivably we can extend the efficacy by administering booster shots.
My understanding is that all vaccines have similar "effectiveness curves", in that they are highly effective in the first weeks, and effectiveness degrades over time down to some low base level of immunity, where your body is no longer actively producing antibodies, but it has the ability to restart production quickly if necessary.
It's not as though the concept of a vaccine booster is new, after all we get annual flu shots. It's also a question of efficacy of the vaccine versus the new predominate variant. Delta didn't exist when the vaccines were finalized.
Why not give a flat earther a huge prime time platform? I mean that in of itself proves nothing.
There have been many attempts and even in my own circles and in the end the it has nothing to do with the facts and all about fear and badly calculating risk.
I can understand the mentality if you're hesitant of the vaccines being new and want to wait, but just understand that the current data shows you're taking a higher risk by not taking it. Your choice in the end, though.
People who are full anti-vax are a different thing altogether.
> Why not give a flat earther a huge prime time platform?
They did. It happened, and the dude died in the rocket as it crashed to Earth. And following that, I stopped hearing so many murmurs about if a lake surface was flat or convex.
He died last year. He also had successful launches previously. And those didn't halt anything.
The world, collectively, has been a bit busy with other stuff since last year. If anything COVID conspiracy stuff has pushed out all other conspiracies.
It's not possible to embarrass someone with no shame. It's easy to lie and debate dishonestly[1]. Engaging in such a debate would only legitimize a position that may have no legitimacy to begin with.
> If the science is so clear, why not give an anti vaxxer a huge prime time platform and embarrass them in debate?
Neonazis clamor that they need a platform all the time. Now that we can see what that's like (the US, in case it is not clear) we can see that this is a terrible idea.
Pro tip: if you declare any and all "serious attempts to address the concerns" as "disinformation", then the only thing left is ostracism and censorship.
With these specific therapies:
1) Myocarditis (long term heart damage)
2) general inflammation and clot risk
3) long term risks of brand new mRNA technology
For myself and other young athletes, my research leads me to understand that the vaccine is higher risk than the infection.
My greatest concern is the totalitarianism behind vaccine passports. At this point even if the shot cured cancer I wouldn't take it because of how it's pushed.
There's a lot of misleading information out there about myocarditis that makes the risk sound much worse than it is.
Yes adverse myocarditis reaction is a risk. But it's something like 1 in 17,000. 1 in 500 Americans have died from covid.
Even if you're young and healthy, we have no idea the long term risks of contracting a serious case of covid. You have to factor that into the risk equation.
> But it's something like 1 in 17,000. 1 in 500 Americans have died from covid.
This is true but misleading. You need to account for age as the primary factor that determines the risk exposure.
Edit: Surprised that someone downvoted this. Care you explain what you disagree here? I am simply pointing out that it is not straight forward to compare risk levels because they are highly dependent on age.
Then again, those 1/500 are old age or with existing debilitating health conditions. The rest of the people have a close to zero chance of dying from Covid. It is not a great idea to expose them to that 1/17000 chance of getting an unnecessary heart condition that will affect them for life. And remember, myocarditis and blood clot issues are secondary effects we know about now. The vaccine was invented and released very recently and there is no way to know the long term effects. And don't forget, this vaccine works with a brand-new genetic technology never before released to the public.
The thing is that death is not the only strongly negative outcome of CV19. It's not uncommon for young and formerly healthy individuals to experience long term effects, sometimes with debilitating severity. That is just as much worth avoiding as death is and needs to be factored into risk calculations.
"Notably, a recent survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 29 % of healthcare providers themselves expressed hesitancy about receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. The same survey found that among the general public, the group that reported that they “definitely will not get vaccinated” may be the hardest to reach via most traditional public health means. Only two emissaries were reported as trustworthy sources by at least half the people in this group: their personal health care provider (59 %) and former President Trump (56 %). These findings suggest that individual health care provider endorsement and support may be one of the sole avenues for reaching this group with reliable and timely vaccine information [60]."
> At this point even if the shot cured cancer I wouldn't take it because of how it's pushed.
And there it is. For you at least, this has nothing to do with evidence, or facts, or information, or patience or empathy or reasoning or sound medical judgment or anything else, it's just plain stubbornness that's so out of control you're willing to die rather than do something someone else told you to do.
Look, I get it. I hate being told what to do. But at least be honest with yourself that that's what's going on, and that all your talk of side effects and whatnot is a smokescreen.
Refusing to do something purely because somebody is trying to make you do it still means you're letting other people control your actions. That's not liberty either.
You are not alone. The authoritarian threat and government overreach problems are IMO orders of magnitude more important and concerning than the virus. I will almost certainly be taking a stand and be terminated by my employer over this within the next few weeks.
Problem: An ongoing pandemic, requiring greater or lesser levels of isolation.
Solution: A vaccine. Vaccinated individuals are much less likely to suffer the ill effects of the disease and to transmit the disease. Isolation is no longer necessary.
Problem: Large portions of the population refuse to take the vaccine. Isolation is still required for this portion.
Solution: Allow those who have been vaccinated freedom from isolation.
You assume the policy of pushing vaccination is sound, so the methods of its implementation are not totalitarian or it isn't a concern. But even if it was a sound policy from the standpoint of the state, the methods employed (censorship of communications on COVID and vaccines, restricting freedoms of unvaccinated) is still a totalitarian method.
Dozens of books have been written documenting the absolute, unmitigated travesty of the Trump administration. 70 million people still voted for him, and a majority of those did so as a positive review of his performance!
I'm not sure what to do, but I know now that "mountains of evidence" does not stop alluring stupidity.
> “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”
Not to defend Biden, but the vaccine decreases the probabilities of getting COVID. You still get infected with sars-cov-2, and you are probably still contagious, but it's unlikely you get COVID (as in COronaVIrus Disease, the disease produced by sars-cov-2 virus (or coronavirus), that is the thing that eventually kills you and/or jeopardizes the public health system).
I might suggest we avoid using superlatives. I have seen disinformation about vaccines both from mainstream media presumptions that breakthrough infections won't happen at all, and also from other mainstream media publishing entire segments that the vaccine might cause infertility in women or somehow affect the fetus (a spreading of FUD basically).
> A study shows the vaccine accumulating in the ovaries - False
> This theory comes from a misreading of a study submitted to the Japanese regulator. The study involved giving rats a much higher dose of vaccine than that given to humans (1,333 times higher).
> Only 0.1% of the total dose ended up in the animals' ovaries, 48 hours after injection. Far more - 53% after one hour and 25% after 48 hours - was found at the injection site (in humans, usually the arm). The next most common place was the liver (16% after 48 hours), which helps get rid of waste products from the blood.
> And those promoting this claim cherry-picked a figure which actually referred to the concentration of fat found in the ovaries.
"Anecdotally I've heard many pregnancies ended from the shot."
No you haven't. You've heard of pregnancies ending in people that happen to also have been vaccinated but you have no proof connecting the two. The reality is that a lot more pregnancies fail than anyone cares to admit in public because couples tend to be private it about it. This is nothing new. It's heartbreaking for everyone that experiences it and anti-vaxxers latching onto it to serve their agenda is incredibly sad.
I might be wrong but maybe the point is that it's not proven safe long term.
While a good majority(like me) had it and it worked out well for us (risk vs reward wise), some might not be so lucky and it pissed me off that some people are like frogs in a well with a very narrow viewpoint.
It's now proven that it can cause death. 1 death is more than enough to justify not having it. Neither you or anyone have the right to force people to take that risk for the benefit of others. I only took it because I covered all most my bases and my chances of survival in case of Covid were pretty bad.
It wouldn't be the first time that problems appear after a long time and take ages to be proven. The most extreme example of that that I think is thalidomide.
EDIT: If you are going to reduce it to a game of numbers. Some risk side effects so that the majority goes on with their lives, then... when communists were leveling a church and the houses of 500 people could use the same justification since they were building blocks of flats for 10000 people on that area it was justified?
I've seen videos where drivers peacefully waiting at red lights were crushed by careening tractor trailers in freak accidents. Waiting at the red light literally got them killed. By your standards, we shouldn't force people to obey traffic signals since it"s proven that doing so can in rare cases lead to death.
There’s a lot of video evidence to the contrary on your beach claim.
Personally I was nearly run over by a police suv and tackled off my skateboard at noon by an officer in a major American city for violating park closure.
It depends on the city. In LA people still played pickup basketball and soccer despite whatever the mayor was saying and the police only got serious about the beaches a few times. Surfers never stopped going out naturally.
