One of the communities I’m more active in is Jack Marshall’s Ethics Alarms, I like the forum because it includes a whole lot of professional, intelligent people willing to get into issues and debate them in a kind of rough and dirty format. Every now and again Jack takes comments that are particularly well thought out, or at least provocative, and highlights them for a new round of direct commenting. I made such a comment and he highlighted it here. As a side note: I’ve apologized to Jack multiple times, because the comment itself was a little rude on top of being rough, and I was assertive to the point of aggressive in the comments defending it. It’s his livingroom, and while I regret tracking mud into it while getting ready to kick some asses, I don’t regret that the asses were kicked.
My point, which some of the commentors tried very hard to ignore, was said close to the top:
The reason why I feel on this one discrete topic, mocking anti-vaxxers, particularly American anti-vaxxers is appropriate is because there was no convincing you. On this topic, more than any other in recent history, you are completely information resistant.
I went into more details in the comments, but my general point is that we’ve had 18 months of pandemic discussions, we have an amazing amount of access to information, and this is some pretty serious stuff. We have a duty as thinking, rational beings to be intellectually curious enough to seek out information and mature enough to digest that information in a way that at least allows for the possibility that your previous position might not be right. And an amazing amount of people are failing to do that. If you are still tracking out tired talking points about how the vaccines are experimental, or unsafe, or have horrible side effects… Then that’s on you. The information is out there, it’s readily available, and no one is responsible to spoon feed the truth to you, especially when you treat it like sour Pablum. I don’t owe you a dialogue, I don’t need to interact with your narrative, I’m not going to pretend that you’re being reasonable. You have selectively sought out information that led you here, because the truth isn’t hidden in a vault at the bottom of the ocean, and yet… here you stand.
I can think of no better example than the Ivermectin discussion. And because updates are breaking, and because I don’t mind telling people that I told them so, I’m going to rehash this.
The first comment to me on the topic was this;
For those without the time/inclination to watch the podcast that Steve links to, the most alarming topic covered concerns the efforts by the FDA and Merck to suppress information regarding the possible effectiveness of ivermectin as a prophylaxis against and treatment for Covid-19.
The evidence is strong enough that Dr. Weinstein is currently using ivermectin as a prophylactic (instead of a vaccine) and claims that we could potentially eliminate the virus that causes Covid-19 with its widespread use.
Never underestimate the power of regulatory capture and the profit motive.
This started a thread, by all means, slog through it, but this immediately failed the sniff test for me, and I explained why;
I actually dealt with Ivermectin back in my farm days, it’s most common use is cattle delousing, you mix it with oil and apply it to the backs of cows to keep biting flies off. I’m not entirely sure what the reason is that it would be effective against Covid if taken orally, but that’s not really important…. Ivermectin is middle of the road for price, Brett said he was taking two 50 mg doses daily, and would have to for the duration of the Pandemic. Those doses are about $5 each. If Pharmaceutical companies were in this for a profit motive, being able to sell an already developed, relatively expensive, $10/day drug regimen in perpetuity would be orders of magnitude more effective than a two dose vaccine even if you factor in boosters.
Basically, at this point I didn’t know whether or not Ivermectin would be effective against Covid, I found the idea interesting, because the world is an amazing place, and all kinds of things have unintended uses…. But the idea that dosing yourself with Ivermectin on a daily basis was the cost effective alternative to a Covid vaccine, and the only reason it was being ignored was regulatory capture was and is insane. Sure, the patents on Ivermectin lapsed decades ago, but taking two 50mg doses daily, as Brett said he was, regardless of who makes the doses, it per se going to be orders of magnitude more lucrative than two vaccine doses, and the vaccines already have significant competition in the market.
So armed with knowledge sponged over a childhood on a farm, and in a career that included the management of six pharmacies, I started to dig.
I said [above] that I wasn’t sure why an anti-parasitic agent would be effective as an antiviral, but medicine has all kinds of unintended connections, so I dug. Because NONE of this made sense.
The idea that Ivermectin is effective against Covid seems to stem from a single Australian study. Their methodology is, frankly, insane. They didn’t do clinical trials, they used cultured dishes, and they found that exceptionally high doses of Ivermectin was effective in killing Covid. But that’s like saying heat is effective at killing Covid after lighting a petri dish of it on fire and finding a lower prevalence of live Covid in the ashes. It’s why Brett was taking 100mg daily when the normal dose for people is 3mg and the normal dose for cows is 12mg. He is almost certainly axe-murdering his liver.
I have no conception under God whether or not that level of Ivermectin might or might not be effective at fighting Covid, but no one seriously concerned about the possible toxicity of Covid vaccines should get within a country mile of 33x the normal dose of anti-parasitic.[***]
And that’s really as far as I had to go. The science is still out on whether or not Ivermectin functions as a prophylactic against Covid. I accept that it might. But that’s not really the point…. We’re talking about Ivermectin because there is a very vocal, very excited lobby against vaccines in general, but this vaccine in particular. The talking points tend to center around issues like the lack of FDA approval (at least at the time), the experimentality of the vaccine, and the “toxicity” of the vaccine, all of which is downright cute, coming from the same people taking 900 times the normal dosage of a drug.[***]
***Note: I was wrong in the comment quoted above, the normal dose is determined by weight, 150 micrograms per KG, not a flat 3mg.
For the record; a 150 pound adult the math is: 150lbs/2.2lbs per kg = 68.18kgs of weight. 68.18KGs * 150mcg = 10,227mcg. Now I saw that and I said: “Drat, that 100mg dose is probably right, how does that convert?” No no, I was still closer to right than not. 1000mcg = 1mg, which means the proper dose for a 150lb person is 10mg. But it gets better from there, that’s the treatment dose for river blindness, but because it’s meant as an anti-parasitic, not a prophylactic, the dose is only administered once, with a top up every three months as needed, not daily. So the normal, prescribed dose is 10mg, at most every 90 days. Unless Brett weighs 1,500 pounds, he’s taking 10 times the prescribed dose 90 times more frequently than he should. Maths!
And the reason I’m bringing this up, my comments about “Retards For Freedom” and “Anti-Vaxxers” and how people are purposefully avoiding information contrary to their biases and how the information is out there is because the FDA, driven by a slew of Retards asserting their Freedom by chugging cattle Ivermectin, tweeted this:
So let’s all bask in this gloriousness for a second; These brave, intelligent, erudite souls that are merely skeptical of the government or progressive narrative, searching for answers, seeking wisdom, wanting to err on the side of caution, beyond reasonable doubts… Those intellectual souls that called people like me sheep for conforming to the narrative, chugged veterinary medicine that literally has a picture of a sheep on the packaging!
ProTip: I guess if you’re going to do this, don’t get the flavorless jugs, you fools! Treat yourself! Pick up the horse de-wormer instead, because at least that’s apple flavored.
I’m just saying, the FDA felt the need to send out something that says, in part;
Ivermectin Products for Animals Are Different from Ivermectin Products for People
For one thing, animal drugs are often highly concentrated because they are used for large animals like horses and cows, which can weigh a lot more than we do—a ton or more. Such high doses can be highly toxic in humans.
You all know the joke: What kind of moron made that warning label necessary?
Well…. Anyone?