Honest questions:
How does a study like this guarantee all participants are given the drug during the "early stage window" which is hypothesized when Ivermectin's viral disrupting mechanism is effective?
Was the dosage consistent across all these studies? I have read where the dosages were suboptimal in certain cases.
Do you put any validity into real world evidence provide by doctors who treated thousands of patients successfully utilizing ivermectin and other methods - steroids, etc?
Ivermectin has one the best safety profiles in terms of risk. Why were pharmacies not filling scripts for it even before all these studies were done? It's a "free shot", and doctors are supposed to try off label uses when other remedies are failing.
So this study isn't really a study, its a meta analysis which is a pooling of all the relevant studies, so basically everything that has been properly researched.
the type of studies were using the same methodology which found ivermectin to be effective as an anti-parasite medication amongst some other applications. The same method used to show its efficacy vs parasites has been found to show it's inefficacy against viruses. This would make sense of course as these invaders have different replication, agency, replication etc just like an antibiotic doesn't really help virus's.. you can't take penicillin for hiv.
This review is a special type thogh, its the pinnacle of meta analysis for several reasons, one being its very stringent on inclusion criteria and statistical methods used, its more thorough.
The dosage changes, as they do in all studies.
I do put validity into real world application, however, I am very aware of bias and placebo. Placebo can cause massive changes, it's that strong. It can alter stress hormones, immunological function, subjective wellness etc.. it appears when they control for this stuff in the studies, the real benefit of ivermectin is no better than placebo. That's the real benefit of studies like this, if you aren't a science guy, they control independent variables (like placebo by blinding etc), age, dosage to make sure the dependent variable (the actual efficacy of ivermectin) is clear. Even the best of studies can't completely control for things. That's where stats come in. Using statistical analysis studies usually have an alpha level of .01 or .05. What this means is using this mathematical formula the chance of getting the result you got, say ivermectin does work, would be a false positive at a 1 percent or 5 percent rate.
So you can say its highly likely this result, ivermectin works is true and it wasn't something we didnt control like the weather etc. Then you do 25 more studies and if you get the same result consistently your odds go up until its pretty much certain you measured what you think you measured. So in a field where suggestion causes monstrous changes on outcome, in fact like no other field (as we have a mind-body connection) real world results are actually less reliable then science. Vs a craft like carpentry- no amount of belief that wall is level will make it so.
To your last point. There are risks with using off label things in people. Say that person has covid, you give him ivermectin (which I agree is quite safe) he dies (because covid not ivermectin) you just opened yourself up to a malpractice lawsuit and loss of license. So in the absence of evidence even if its safe it's not standard care. That would be the pragmatic answer.
I wish it did work, it would be easy, way fucking cheaper then way pfizer has and a long history to bank on.
