If I understand correctly, "P= .09" means there is a 91% chance that the effect was not by chance. And if there's a 91% probability that by taking a harmless drug for a few days I can reduce my chance of death by 70%, then how stupid would I be to refuse? The P=.05 cutoff is arbitrary and doesn't take into account risk vs. benefit, right?
I saw that - he's falling into the same trap as the people he criticizes. He's said that IVM doesn't work and that Malone's an idiot for saying it does - and now all he cares about is proving he was right, truth be damned.
The system that's attempting to preserve itself relies on a mosaic of lies. These lies are so huge and brazen that most people will only ever doubt one or two of them.
It is not conceivable for most people to doubt that the official messaging is purposeful disinformation about EVERYTHING. Not just vaccines, not just climate change, not just the election, not just 9/11, not just the wars in the Middle East, not just ivermectin.
People will doubt one or two of these lies. People like Alex serve to corral the doubters by agreeing "Yes, these one or two lies are suspicious, but the rest are definitely true!"
Betenson is a shill that was playing the field looking for credibility amongst the healthy skeptics. Now looking to leverage his position to be the biggest hero that can claim they were in the thick of it with “those” people and can stand for truth , which happens to be the biggest money narrative . It’s pretty easy to see his strategy
Why do you think they chose 0.05 ... I think it is on purpose. I mean starting with ~200 persons meant that the study was going to be almost certainly statistically troubling as Igor also mentions. So either way, this would be affected strongly by noise/coincidence and hence likely not to reach a high P-value. They knew, or should know this from the start. So this sounds like a hobby study from a doctor, who then uses the 'right' P value to not get dinged by his bosses and co-workers by reaching the wrong conclusion.
Also with this P value they were going to get way more citations from the powerful than with a other P value, so yet another reason to use 0.05.
They chose 0.05 because that's what RA Fisher said people like them should use. Sure, he said it in 1925, but he was quite a bright chap and is probably correct in this matter.
The problem here is that they've actually undertaken a pilot study -- this has given sufficient evidence to strongly support a full study with (far) more participants. It absolutely doesn't say that ivermectin doesn't work.
Given that ivermectin is very safe and doesn't interact negatively with too many drugs, this study actually suggests that medics tentatively use ivermectin to treat Covid, but with monitoring of outcomes to check that it is going okay (ie, the 'tentative use' becomes the clinical trial).
Fisher only said it should be used for an initial reality check. Fisher never propose people validate scientific hypotheses with NHST at all and certainly not that p value. For a messy population study it is reasonable to set p higher, for a physics paper it should be effectively zero.
Even if the results were similar, the benefit of the prophylactic use on a population that we have seen in places such as Uttar Pradesh is still cause enough to ditch the jabs and distribute Ivermectin
The separate question is what are the permanent harm the vaccines are producing in a particular age group and are the numbers and cost way to high. Everything I’ve read is that those numbers are way too high and are on the way to becoming higher. We’ll see. I only know that when my 38 year old son by protocol let the virus cook in him for @ 8 days and could barely breath, went to the ER and was screamed at as in “how dare you come here” and was sent home. He called his primary who was appalled at his treatment by the ER, so then prescribed dexamethasone and other meds. He started to recover after the first dose. There was significant reversal after the first dose. Look at how mega hospitals are run today, at decision protocols that doctors are made to comply from on high. Haven’t the doctors there become nothing but employees who will lose their job if they breach those protocols, aka think and read for themselves, actually be advocates for patients? Aren’t those hospitals being run by the federal government?
My understand is different. It means the chance it is a random result is about 1 in 10. The 0.05 result is 1/20 and the reason that is the threshold is to avoid p-hacking.
That being said, this is a pretty solid endpoint that doesn't look like it's likely to be p-hacked. The obvious thing to do is say "we need a bigger cohort".
100% on the mark? Surely you understand that this is explicitly NOT what a p-value means? Are you a mathematician? What do you think a p-value means, and what do you think 100% means?
You are correct, sometimes p is set to .10, depending on the test. Since IVM is not dangerous, or rather the cost in taking it is extremely minimal, p could even be set higher!
"If I understand correctly, 'P= .09' means there is a 91% chance that the effect was not by chance."
Despite Igor's claim that "Your interpretation is 100% on the mark," this is not accurate. P gives the probability that we'd see the results were the "null hypothesis" -- in this case, that the medicine had no effect -- accurate. A low P value (commonly <= 0.05) suggests that maybe we should reject the null hypothesis, but it doesn't imply any particular probabilities for alternative hypotheses. To determine such probabilities one would have to go the Bayesian route and find some way to define and estimate the prior probabilities.
Let's not lose the big picture. In an experiment involving a reasonable hypothesis, the lower is the P value, the more likely it is that the outcome is not due to random chance.
No, Dean's comment is indeed on the mark. A null hypothesis is comparable to a random number generator and we are looking for the probability that such a generator would have produced the results we see. Go check out Andrew Gelman's blog he supports such an interpretation.
can you provide link to Andrew Gelman's blog article? I'm interested in reading it. I have the same question. "the probability that such a generator would have produced the results we see" => yes, but this is not equal to "the probability that what we see is generated by a random generator". The former is P(Data|Hypothesis), while the later is P(Hypothesis|Data). The difference is fundamental in math. P value by definition is the former and cannot be directly translated to the later without introducing priors regarding hypothesises.
I haven't checked out Andrew Gelman's blog, but your phrasing is accurate. However, that's not the same as saying that "there is a 91% chance that the effect was not by chance." By Bayes' theorem we have:
P(it was chance | data) = [P(data | it was chance) * P(it was chance)] / P(data)
= [P(data | it was chance) * P(it was chance)] / [P(data | it was chance) * P(it was chance) + P(data | it wasn't chance) * P(it wasn't chance)]
The P value estimates P(data | it was chance). It doesn't tell us anything about the other factors, in particular the priors P(it was chance) and P(it wasn't chance). For this case it comes down to the a priori likelihood that IVM has a positive effect. If that were already considered really likely then the results presented here would provide some support. If it were considered incredibly unlikely then it would increase the probability somewhat without making it overwhelming.
I recommend checking out the examples at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes'_theorem to see the difference. Even apparently strong evidence can run up against incredibly low prior probabilities.
Thanks for all this, I am a grizzled Bayesian myself. Andrew Gelman developed Hamiltonian Monte Carlo which as you probably know enabled whole new vistas of statistical problems to be solved in fully Bayesian fashion using the programming language Stan. His blog is at Columbia and not hard to find.
I think you're actually conflating a couple of things here. One is whether rejection of a null hypothesis is the same thing as accepting the alternative hypothesis. It is of course not as a matter of interpreting the statistics. But it's really an experimental design question. The whole point of an experiment is to create controlled conditions and restrict the degrees of freedom of the experiment. We do this so that an effect, if it exists, is most credibly attributed to one particular cause. Therefore a rejection of the null must imply that cause. Of course this is never possible to do perfectly so every paper (and every science news article) should be very clear about what the limitations are of every experiment.
So I think Dean is right and you're criticizing a straw man essentially. But thanks for the good discussion.
I only meant to challenge two very specific statements:
Dean: "If I understand correctly, "P= .09" means there is a 91% chance that the effect was not by chance."
Igor Chudov: "Your interpretation is 100% on the mark, ..."
That interpretation wasn't what P = .09 means, but it's easy to be confused on these points and a common mistake to make. I merely wanted to set the record straight; I wasn't intending to argue more than that or express an opinion regarding this precise work.
Exactly how we should react to P = 0.09 in general and this study specifically is a separate, somewhat philosophical issue. Igor makes some good points -- maybe this doesn't conclusively demonstrate IVM effectiveness, but based on these numbers it doesn't rule it out; we'd just need a larger study to (hopefully) find stronger evidence (one way or the other, but I'd prefer IVM to work). On the other hand, I've seen people argue that confounders (such as relative vaccination percentages in the cohorts) taint these numbers, and so the arguments continue.
Our epidemiology course was deadly boring so I went skiing half the days. I have had to appreciate some of this to challenge the drug reps over the last thirty years.
I do remember my favourite pharmacology prof's advice though: "Test your drug on 15 people. You will know if it works."
Another great example of undermining a real finding "the effect size" with an underpowered study "statistical significance." Do people ever do power analyses any more before they start a study, it was always required for any Ph.D. candidate.
And a power analysis would need to take into account the very complicated dependent variables of who dies and who is ventilated, because of the varying "interventions" and policies in place in hospitals. You need a good size sample to get through the noise. But even more importantly no one is claiming Ivermectin alone is the hero with the silver bullet, as per all the work of the FLCCC and Dr. Peter McCullough. These are the same journalists who report to you your political, financial, and other news. Terrifying situation.
Problem 1: Recruiting for IVM studies is very difficult because they must be screened, consent and beging treatment VERY quickly, per McCullough. Problem 2: Ethical problems involved in not offering real treatment in pandemic. Problem 3: IVM is not a magic bullet and not usually used in isolation, but without isolation, the effects could be ascribed to any of the drugs in the typical regimen. Even given all of these problems, this is a very strong result favoring IVM, no drawbacks to trying it, that I can find.
Storytellers and shepherds. They don't wield any influence over the actual decision-makers, they just lend plausibility to the decisions that have already been made.
And it's not just the journalists, it's the scientists too. Follow the money.
I'm sure they did, and were reassured that no matter the results, they could say ivermectin didn't work: if it didn't, then they would ignore the p value. If it did, it would not be statistically significant. They must have s**t their pants when it worked so well it almost reached significance even with the low power.
OK Betsy, when did you get your Ph.D.? It's a woke communist world now and that's not how things are done. Please consider the feelings of the students looking to mislead the general public.
I have been a part of many studies with power calculations. At the end of the day the decision of how many patients to include was simply based on much money was budgeted each time. So that may be related to what happened here. But you are right.
I totally agree. I believe that the VA study that I discussed in my past article, purposely included the data that I found, so that it would be allowed past censors, but would be noticed and brought up.
Well, but Alex Berenson gleefully pounced on it in a post titled "Ivermectin Fails" with the final adjuration that "someone tell Dr. Robert Malone" (though I suspect this has more to do with his weird hatred for Malone than his skill in assessing data). Here's the link to that: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGmvBlCdCqhPcMqnKpBPjLHXQjw
Game the placebo. One study showing IVM "no better than placebo" used an active compound under investigation as effective treatment for Covid, folic acid, which was discovered when pregnant women while on prenatals had much better covid outcomes. Placebos should be totally inert, eg sugar, talc, etc.
Yes thanks for that. I put that down as No. 8 A bit embarrassing that I left it out originally as I wrote the original article pointing out the folic acid therapeutic benefits.
Review the Colombian IVM study where the study pharmacist mixed up the placebo and IVM for two weeks, started treatment on average day 7, still (to my surprise) had 1 day shorter symptoms, deemed non-significant. Also noted that IVM was widely available in the community, may have been used by anyone who became ill, or for prophylaxis.
This was the predecessor of the present "study" which was used by "Fact-Checkers" to "prove" IVM didn't work.
I see that Berenson's jumped on the anti-iver bandwagon today. If you read what the former NYT writer posted just a short time ago, though, it quickly becomes painfully clear that animus toward Robert Malone, not any kind of science, is what underlies his hasty conclusion. Berenson seems to have lit out initially on a quest for truth but then veered sharply onto a campaign for personal promotion.
A couple of years ago, a prominent swedish writer and doctor of ethics started speaking out against some of our governements more outrageous policies regarding migration and islam (such as offering asylum and new identities to ISIL-soldiers, yes really). This of course led to her being attacked, threatened, cancelled and blacklisted.
Last year, she released a tell-all style book of her "brave infiltration of the radical rght-wing nationalism" and so on stacking self-aggrandising and grandiose lies on top of each-other. Simultaneously she was recruited by one of the two major semi-oppositional parties. Now, she is fully accepted back in the fold having walked back all her previous statements, never once admitting to either being wrong before voicing criticisms, or being wrong in doing so or even ever having changed her mind.
I think Berenson is doing the same thing. He is critical against twitter and "cancel culture"-related issues, though in a highly selective manner. Note that he never says something he cannot walk back. Attacking (because how he expressed himself cannot be called criticism) dr Malone and chirping along with twitter regarding Ivermectin means he keeps a toehold on the side of the PC and woke brownshirts.
I'll wager an imaginary dollar that he'll release a book this year, about how he bravely investigated "the antivaxxxer movement and its links to white supremacism, Trumpism, and racism", complet with a little quotemining from his Substack.
Double speculating: Berensons behaving badly posts have like 2-3 times the likes of real good journalism he did. Either this means A: folks are addicted to DRAMA! More more more B: Some bots tipped the results or C: People really think he's right, and he's getting his settlement for back in the stable work. Or D: He's just your average jerk whose ego gets too big sometimes. My feeling is C
FWIW, someone in the discussion yesterday noticed that clicking on the "See the discussion" link in Alex's email sends you to that page with the Like heart already filled-in for you. Clicking the heart "appears" to Unlike, but doesn't reduce the running total.
For me, I think it's more that because it just feels like Alex doesn't read any of the studies he posts. I don't think he accessed this paper critically, and even if he agreed with the conclusion I find it very concerning he didn't dive deeper into the study.
He did the same recently posting about the two teenage boys who died after the vaccine saying they were perfectly healthy beforehand. But if he just looked at the paper he'd see one kid had ADD and another was obese. It doesn't mean that their deaths aren't attributed to the vaccine (I think the analyses were strange in that it didn't appear like other forms of myocarditis) but to me it just looked like he didn't even open the document.
Dr. Zelenko says that zinc must be used along with ivermectin or HCQ, along with vitamin D3 and vitamin c, but zinc is the main thing. Zinc is what prevents viral replication in cells, but it can’t penetrate cell walls easily. Ivermectin enables zinc to do that.
Ivermectin acts as an ionophore while providing additional antiviral qualities. Apparently it can also block receptors helping prevent the virus from entering the cell in the first place.
With Omicron HCQ may actually be more effective due to the change in viral/host cell entry. Omicron goes through the endolysosomal pathway rather than the membrane fusogenic pathway. HCQ targets lysosomes and so if this is what Omicron prefers it makes sense that it would be HCQ itself and maybe not necessarily Zinc.
Ivermectin acts against viral infection in many different ways - I linked to an article in a comment to one of Igor's articles a few months ago - not just zinc. That is why it still works on BA.2 while monoclonal, and many others do not.
I do not rate Dr. Z at the same level as say Dr McCullough or Kory, as he originally claimed no mortality when under his treatment (dont know what he claims now, dont care), and that is just statistically impossible for the large numbers he claimed without a lot of data massaging (right reason, but the same dishonest tactics big pharma drones use).
Allow me to suggest that you have no idea what you're talking about. In the absence of blood testing by McCullough, Kory, or anyone else to determine zinc levels when testing, there is ZERO way to draw any conclusions about the importance of zinc in combo. This is not necessarily a knock against those doctors, but what I know indicates that indeed zinc is the key. HCQ and Ivermectin don't kill the virus, they facilitate zinc getting into cells to do the killing.
If you've used zinc lozenges properly when you have a sore throat as part of a cold or flu and felt it destroy the pathogens in your mouth and throat such that 95% of the time that sore throat is gone quickly, you'll get the idea. The key is to leave that nasty bitter taste in your mouth as long as possible.
Testing for blood levels of vitamin D has been done, and it's importance is critical and very well known.
Home tested positive for Covid in early January 2022. Unvaxxed. Felt like a mild flu. Took ivermectin the next day (in my cabinet, just in case), napped for one hour, woke up with no fever and no body aches or fatigue. Ivermectin works. Took ivermectin for 4 more days. Totally fine. 55 years old, no comorbid conditions. Took my D, zinc and Quercetin. It’s AWFUL how our doctors/government aren’t telling us what to do, that we have to search for our own information. My husband’s brother just lost his healthy 74 year old father-in-law. Got vaxxed, one week week later in hospital with Covid and pneumonia. One week after that on ventilator in critical care unit on his stomach. Died one week after that. Lives in a different state and we didn’t learn of the details until he was in the hospital, unfortunately.
This is a fairly common story. It is very difficult to tell a Vaxx death due to the toxic spike protein from an infection due to the two weeks of immune suppression after the shot.
Autopsies rarely done as the "diagnosis" is "obvious" to the 95% of medical staff who are true believers.
So even after the fact, you are unlikely to know the details. The life insurance companies are becoming unhappy, that is to say, unprofitable.
The loss is sad, I hope the family is surviving. I don't usually tell the bereaved that I thought that the death was Vaxx-induced, it's usually not helpful.
I think I can spot the vax deaths easily at this point. The local papers are all using the "died suddenly" and "unexpectedly died" as code phrases. It's staggering how many of these there are in my area alone. Healthy people aged 5-50 simply do not up and die. Had they died from the Covid, the media has been eager to mention this entire time.
Yes, we had a 74 yr old perfectly fit acquaintance fall over dead this week. Since autopsies are taboo, you could possibly find out from the undertakers, who have described fully clotted corpses with vascular contents which are unique, long stringy wormy venous and arterial clots.
When we dissected cadavers in medical school, the vessels were injected with red (arterial) and blue (venous) latex to present the vasculature and make it look like the anatomy texts. In real life the colours are not too different, you have to know what you are seeing, and treat accordingly. I have no doubt that the undertakers know what vessels are like when infusing embalming fluid.
Just my two bits, but I think it is a monstrous crime to deny anyone the chance to try a remedy that has no measurable side effects! Especially those who are already dying ! My 30 year old son came down with a horrible sore throat and fever -he was very sick -the next day it was in his lungs but he started go take ivermectin and on the third day after he was well enough to go back to work. He never got any tests but it was going around at work -he is unvaxxed . Took vit c zinc D and melatonin, too. I think we witnessed a miracle.
If Pfizer was marketing ivermectin, that summary would read a 150% increase in reducing ventilation and over 300% reduction in death. Perspective matters.
I know it's not on topic here, but I'm not sure where else to mention this that might be seen. People need to check out this week's shocking VAERS data for myocarditis: https://openvaers.com/covid-data/myo-pericarditis and look at the chart for cases by year. 24,187 reports of vax-related myocarditis in 2021 was a shocking number in itself, but as of February 11 there are already 9,560 for 2022! That's on pace for over 80,000 this year.
That is the effect of the boosters. I recall reading that each shot doubled the probability of myocarditis. That said, your extrapolation (probably high as more vaxxes happened during a wave) suggests a higher increase rate.
IVM also allows you to enjoy gas station sushi without worry!
Seriously, though, I suspect many people in the US have undiagnosed parasites (or unfindable) and IVM will clear that up - Once upon a time, doctors would try drugs to see if they worked - but now in the age of insurance never-approval, there must be a firm diagnosis. I know someone who took IVM prophylactically, and her IBS disappeared.
One of the lesser-known effects of COVID is destruction of the bowel.i know of a couple of people who have nearly lost their lives due to this, or needed a transplant.
One reason that Dr Mercola et al have been pushing for pro-biotics and fermented foods this whole time. Keep the "gut biome" as strong as you can. Apparently a large part of your immune system resides there.
I'm troubled by what passes for "standard of care." According to the study, that is "symptomatic therapy and monitoring for signs of early deterioration based on clinical findings, laboratory test results, and chest imaging." That's basically nothing. Isn't the value of ivermectin achieved at least in part by its use together with Zinc? And what about the other elements of the various early treatment protocols? What is a "standard of care" that does not even include assessment of Vitamin D levels? In addition to being underpowered, this looks like a clear attempt to set up ivermectin monotherapy as a failure, thereby broadly tarnishing it as well as its use as part of a regimen.
That "standard of care" is one of the things that needs thorough investigation in the aftermath of the "pandemic". Most of the lives lost are and were entirely preventable with early treatment of which ivermectin, in conjunction with other cheap and readily available drugs and supplements, is just one of the options.
It almost looks as if the protocol is designed to admit people to the hospital late or past the viral stage, get them on a vent ASAP (more $$ for the hospital), then Remdesivir during the cytokine stage (when it is ineffective), thereby assuring DEATH and a big payoff. As evil as they come.
I agree with you, and I'm sickened that this is the reality in so many hospitals. The most you will get is Remdesivir, a shot or two of dexamethasone, and maybe a daily albuterol sulfate nebulizer session. No zinc, no D, no intravenous high dose vitamin C or even oral C tablets, none of these eastern herbal treatments that have been effective for a few thousand years now, and absolutely no HCQ or IVM. There is a mysterious government supplied "standard of (non-) care" protocol that they all follow like robots, and they will take your family to court while you lie there dying before changing their approach IF the judge forces them too. They are murder machines.
I found it disappointing they gave a totally misleading summary of the results, but the study was published and we're able to view it, so maybe you're correct. It's disappointing that Igor gets listed as "misleading" when posting a direct screen grab of the article, but there's no issue with contradicting the results of the study by saying Ivermectin doesn't work.
And it's only the rare person who bothered to read past the headline AND had enough learning to understand the statistical gobbledygook. Everybody else, "TLDR, and this is what MSNBC says anyway so that's that."
If I understand correctly, "P= .09" means there is a 91% chance that the effect was not by chance. And if there's a 91% probability that by taking a harmless drug for a few days I can reduce my chance of death by 70%, then how stupid would I be to refuse? The P=.05 cutoff is arbitrary and doesn't take into account risk vs. benefit, right?
Your interpretation is 100% on the mark, I might even include your passage in my article.
🤣 Alex Berenson is glomming onto this study to say IVM doesn't work. 🤡
Wow, that was huge!!!!! Thanks for the heads up!!! I did not realize what it will become :-) ;-)
I saw that - he's falling into the same trap as the people he criticizes. He's said that IVM doesn't work and that Malone's an idiot for saying it does - and now all he cares about is proving he was right, truth be damned.
Alex's ego is showing. Alex has Malonititis. Severe allergic inflammation from knee-jerk exposure to anything positive about Robert Malone
Is it a similar condition to TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome?
Yes I think they are similar pathologies. There is only one case of "true" Malonititis in the medical literature. TDS on the other hand is endemic.
Oh-oh
berenson has a real ego problem imo
I think he should stick to writing children’s stories about those cuddly bears, like before.
The system that's attempting to preserve itself relies on a mosaic of lies. These lies are so huge and brazen that most people will only ever doubt one or two of them.
It is not conceivable for most people to doubt that the official messaging is purposeful disinformation about EVERYTHING. Not just vaccines, not just climate change, not just the election, not just 9/11, not just the wars in the Middle East, not just ivermectin.
People will doubt one or two of these lies. People like Alex serve to corral the doubters by agreeing "Yes, these one or two lies are suspicious, but the rest are definitely true!"
Betenson is a shill that was playing the field looking for credibility amongst the healthy skeptics. Now looking to leverage his position to be the biggest hero that can claim they were in the thick of it with “those” people and can stand for truth , which happens to be the biggest money narrative . It’s pretty easy to see his strategy
Much better deal that what the vax is offering, but actually safe!
Why do you think they chose 0.05 ... I think it is on purpose. I mean starting with ~200 persons meant that the study was going to be almost certainly statistically troubling as Igor also mentions. So either way, this would be affected strongly by noise/coincidence and hence likely not to reach a high P-value. They knew, or should know this from the start. So this sounds like a hobby study from a doctor, who then uses the 'right' P value to not get dinged by his bosses and co-workers by reaching the wrong conclusion.
Also with this P value they were going to get way more citations from the powerful than with a other P value, so yet another reason to use 0.05.
They chose 0.05 because that's what RA Fisher said people like them should use. Sure, he said it in 1925, but he was quite a bright chap and is probably correct in this matter.
The problem here is that they've actually undertaken a pilot study -- this has given sufficient evidence to strongly support a full study with (far) more participants. It absolutely doesn't say that ivermectin doesn't work.
Given that ivermectin is very safe and doesn't interact negatively with too many drugs, this study actually suggests that medics tentatively use ivermectin to treat Covid, but with monitoring of outcomes to check that it is going okay (ie, the 'tentative use' becomes the clinical trial).
My thinking is that 1000:1000 person study with 3:10 death ratio would likely give P = 0.02 or even less.
I think that would depend on the raw numbers. 13 deaths splitting 3 and 10 isn't so unlikely. 130 deaths splitting 30 and 100 is.
Fisher only said it should be used for an initial reality check. Fisher never propose people validate scientific hypotheses with NHST at all and certainly not that p value. For a messy population study it is reasonable to set p higher, for a physics paper it should be effectively zero.
Even if the results were similar, the benefit of the prophylactic use on a population that we have seen in places such as Uttar Pradesh is still cause enough to ditch the jabs and distribute Ivermectin
The separate question is what are the permanent harm the vaccines are producing in a particular age group and are the numbers and cost way to high. Everything I’ve read is that those numbers are way too high and are on the way to becoming higher. We’ll see. I only know that when my 38 year old son by protocol let the virus cook in him for @ 8 days and could barely breath, went to the ER and was screamed at as in “how dare you come here” and was sent home. He called his primary who was appalled at his treatment by the ER, so then prescribed dexamethasone and other meds. He started to recover after the first dose. There was significant reversal after the first dose. Look at how mega hospitals are run today, at decision protocols that doctors are made to comply from on high. Haven’t the doctors there become nothing but employees who will lose their job if they breach those protocols, aka think and read for themselves, actually be advocates for patients? Aren’t those hospitals being run by the federal government?
My understand is different. It means the chance it is a random result is about 1 in 10. The 0.05 result is 1/20 and the reason that is the threshold is to avoid p-hacking.
That being said, this is a pretty solid endpoint that doesn't look like it's likely to be p-hacked. The obvious thing to do is say "we need a bigger cohort".
I will say, those CIs are huge. It seems like we would need a much much larger study.
That is a correct interpretation of this paper, and shame on the media who claim otherwise.
100% on the mark? Surely you understand that this is explicitly NOT what a p-value means? Are you a mathematician? What do you think a p-value means, and what do you think 100% means?
You are correct, sometimes p is set to .10, depending on the test. Since IVM is not dangerous, or rather the cost in taking it is extremely minimal, p could even be set higher!
Apparently, those crazy '5 out of 4' people who don't understand fractions are the same wacky folks who can't comprehend percentages.
Ivermectin FTW! 🙌🙌🙌
"If I understand correctly, 'P= .09' means there is a 91% chance that the effect was not by chance."
Despite Igor's claim that "Your interpretation is 100% on the mark," this is not accurate. P gives the probability that we'd see the results were the "null hypothesis" -- in this case, that the medicine had no effect -- accurate. A low P value (commonly <= 0.05) suggests that maybe we should reject the null hypothesis, but it doesn't imply any particular probabilities for alternative hypotheses. To determine such probabilities one would have to go the Bayesian route and find some way to define and estimate the prior probabilities.
Let's not lose the big picture. In an experiment involving a reasonable hypothesis, the lower is the P value, the more likely it is that the outcome is not due to random chance.
So P = 0.09 is really decent.
No, Dean's comment is indeed on the mark. A null hypothesis is comparable to a random number generator and we are looking for the probability that such a generator would have produced the results we see. Go check out Andrew Gelman's blog he supports such an interpretation.
can you provide link to Andrew Gelman's blog article? I'm interested in reading it. I have the same question. "the probability that such a generator would have produced the results we see" => yes, but this is not equal to "the probability that what we see is generated by a random generator". The former is P(Data|Hypothesis), while the later is P(Hypothesis|Data). The difference is fundamental in math. P value by definition is the former and cannot be directly translated to the later without introducing priors regarding hypothesises.
I haven't checked out Andrew Gelman's blog, but your phrasing is accurate. However, that's not the same as saying that "there is a 91% chance that the effect was not by chance." By Bayes' theorem we have:
P(it was chance | data) = [P(data | it was chance) * P(it was chance)] / P(data)
= [P(data | it was chance) * P(it was chance)] / [P(data | it was chance) * P(it was chance) + P(data | it wasn't chance) * P(it wasn't chance)]
The P value estimates P(data | it was chance). It doesn't tell us anything about the other factors, in particular the priors P(it was chance) and P(it wasn't chance). For this case it comes down to the a priori likelihood that IVM has a positive effect. If that were already considered really likely then the results presented here would provide some support. If it were considered incredibly unlikely then it would increase the probability somewhat without making it overwhelming.
I recommend checking out the examples at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes'_theorem to see the difference. Even apparently strong evidence can run up against incredibly low prior probabilities.
Thanks for all this, I am a grizzled Bayesian myself. Andrew Gelman developed Hamiltonian Monte Carlo which as you probably know enabled whole new vistas of statistical problems to be solved in fully Bayesian fashion using the programming language Stan. His blog is at Columbia and not hard to find.
I think you're actually conflating a couple of things here. One is whether rejection of a null hypothesis is the same thing as accepting the alternative hypothesis. It is of course not as a matter of interpreting the statistics. But it's really an experimental design question. The whole point of an experiment is to create controlled conditions and restrict the degrees of freedom of the experiment. We do this so that an effect, if it exists, is most credibly attributed to one particular cause. Therefore a rejection of the null must imply that cause. Of course this is never possible to do perfectly so every paper (and every science news article) should be very clear about what the limitations are of every experiment.
So I think Dean is right and you're criticizing a straw man essentially. But thanks for the good discussion.
I only meant to challenge two very specific statements:
Dean: "If I understand correctly, "P= .09" means there is a 91% chance that the effect was not by chance."
Igor Chudov: "Your interpretation is 100% on the mark, ..."
That interpretation wasn't what P = .09 means, but it's easy to be confused on these points and a common mistake to make. I merely wanted to set the record straight; I wasn't intending to argue more than that or express an opinion regarding this precise work.
Exactly how we should react to P = 0.09 in general and this study specifically is a separate, somewhat philosophical issue. Igor makes some good points -- maybe this doesn't conclusively demonstrate IVM effectiveness, but based on these numbers it doesn't rule it out; we'd just need a larger study to (hopefully) find stronger evidence (one way or the other, but I'd prefer IVM to work). On the other hand, I've seen people argue that confounders (such as relative vaccination percentages in the cohorts) taint these numbers, and so the arguments continue.
Our epidemiology course was deadly boring so I went skiing half the days. I have had to appreciate some of this to challenge the drug reps over the last thirty years.
I do remember my favourite pharmacology prof's advice though: "Test your drug on 15 people. You will know if it works."
Another great example of undermining a real finding "the effect size" with an underpowered study "statistical significance." Do people ever do power analyses any more before they start a study, it was always required for any Ph.D. candidate.
And a power analysis would need to take into account the very complicated dependent variables of who dies and who is ventilated, because of the varying "interventions" and policies in place in hospitals. You need a good size sample to get through the noise. But even more importantly no one is claiming Ivermectin alone is the hero with the silver bullet, as per all the work of the FLCCC and Dr. Peter McCullough. These are the same journalists who report to you your political, financial, and other news. Terrifying situation.
Problem 1: Recruiting for IVM studies is very difficult because they must be screened, consent and beging treatment VERY quickly, per McCullough. Problem 2: Ethical problems involved in not offering real treatment in pandemic. Problem 3: IVM is not a magic bullet and not usually used in isolation, but without isolation, the effects could be ascribed to any of the drugs in the typical regimen. Even given all of these problems, this is a very strong result favoring IVM, no drawbacks to trying it, that I can find.
Storytellers and shepherds. They don't wield any influence over the actual decision-makers, they just lend plausibility to the decisions that have already been made.
And it's not just the journalists, it's the scientists too. Follow the money.
I'm sure they did, and were reassured that no matter the results, they could say ivermectin didn't work: if it didn't, then they would ignore the p value. If it did, it would not be statistically significant. They must have s**t their pants when it worked so well it almost reached significance even with the low power.
Nah, the last ditch effort is to abort the trial (as I think was done for a UK trial). no need for new undies.
OK Betsy, when did you get your Ph.D.? It's a woke communist world now and that's not how things are done. Please consider the feelings of the students looking to mislead the general public.
1986!
I have been a part of many studies with power calculations. At the end of the day the decision of how many patients to include was simply based on much money was budgeted each time. So that may be related to what happened here. But you are right.
Yes. You'd think that other studies would have given enough indication as to the parameters to feed into a power calculation.
According to the study, they did do a power analysis. Of course, we only get to see the conclusion, so take that with a grain of salt.
"Hunter Biden-level art skills" 😆
This is a recurring theme. The abstract presents the press-release–approved conclusion so it's fit for print while the data proves the opposite:
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/telling-the-truth-in-the-age-of-sponsored
I totally agree. I believe that the VA study that I discussed in my past article, purposely included the data that I found, so that it would be allowed past censors, but would be noticed and brought up.
Yep, scientists are having to get clever to surreptitiously sneak the truth out.
Unfortunately, Igor was the only person on the thread who bothered to read the study…….but the ‘amen chorus’ sure turned out…..
It was noticed a little. Steve Kirsch EDIT: and Jessica mentioned my article. I wish some other important people would notice though
Well, but Alex Berenson gleefully pounced on it in a post titled "Ivermectin Fails" with the final adjuration that "someone tell Dr. Robert Malone" (though I suspect this has more to do with his weird hatred for Malone than his skill in assessing data). Here's the link to that: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGmvBlCdCqhPcMqnKpBPjLHXQjw
Jessica Rose noticed. She posted about it earlier.
Yes Jessica is incredible
Sorry, I should have followed the thread to the end…..I got tired of the smarmy horse dewormer posts.
The suppress early treatment play book.
1. Try and use the medicine out of its applicable time frame. i.e. give anti-virals to severely advanced patients on ventilators as happened with HCQ.
2. Give far too little of a dose to be effective.
3. Give far too much of a dose so as to appear dangerous.
4. If all else fails make your study severely under powered so you can write off the positive clinical results as being not statistically significant.
5. Drop or manipulate primary and secondary end points if the drug you wish to suppress happens to meet any of them.
Have I missed any more?
I forgot:
6. Try and trial the drug you want suppress against another 'placebo' that is also a potential therapeutic so they cancel one and other out.
Game the placebo. One study showing IVM "no better than placebo" used an active compound under investigation as effective treatment for Covid, folic acid, which was discovered when pregnant women while on prenatals had much better covid outcomes. Placebos should be totally inert, eg sugar, talc, etc.
Yes thanks for that. I put that down as No. 8 A bit embarrassing that I left it out originally as I wrote the original article pointing out the folic acid therapeutic benefits.
https://communityoperatingsystem.wordpress.com/2020/06/20/is-folic-acid-an-effective-treatment-for-covid-19/
sorry number 6.
9. Take a single drug from any multiple agent synergistic protocol and then RCT it on its own or in tandem with one other to show lack of efficacy.
8. Abort the study due to supply issues.
7. Do the study during an out of season period when Covid is not very prevalent in order to constrict the dataset.
I think your list has achieved statistical significance. You need to publish--JAMA, NEJM,
You have Big Pharma play book on how to kill and off patent drug.
abort the study.
Due to "supply issues", haha
Review the Colombian IVM study where the study pharmacist mixed up the placebo and IVM for two weeks, started treatment on average day 7, still (to my surprise) had 1 day shorter symptoms, deemed non-significant. Also noted that IVM was widely available in the community, may have been used by anyone who became ill, or for prophylaxis.
This was the predecessor of the present "study" which was used by "Fact-Checkers" to "prove" IVM didn't work.
I see that Berenson's jumped on the anti-iver bandwagon today. If you read what the former NYT writer posted just a short time ago, though, it quickly becomes painfully clear that animus toward Robert Malone, not any kind of science, is what underlies his hasty conclusion. Berenson seems to have lit out initially on a quest for truth but then veered sharply onto a campaign for personal promotion.
Speculating, and some background as to why:
A couple of years ago, a prominent swedish writer and doctor of ethics started speaking out against some of our governements more outrageous policies regarding migration and islam (such as offering asylum and new identities to ISIL-soldiers, yes really). This of course led to her being attacked, threatened, cancelled and blacklisted.
Last year, she released a tell-all style book of her "brave infiltration of the radical rght-wing nationalism" and so on stacking self-aggrandising and grandiose lies on top of each-other. Simultaneously she was recruited by one of the two major semi-oppositional parties. Now, she is fully accepted back in the fold having walked back all her previous statements, never once admitting to either being wrong before voicing criticisms, or being wrong in doing so or even ever having changed her mind.
I think Berenson is doing the same thing. He is critical against twitter and "cancel culture"-related issues, though in a highly selective manner. Note that he never says something he cannot walk back. Attacking (because how he expressed himself cannot be called criticism) dr Malone and chirping along with twitter regarding Ivermectin means he keeps a toehold on the side of the PC and woke brownshirts.
I'll wager an imaginary dollar that he'll release a book this year, about how he bravely investigated "the antivaxxxer movement and its links to white supremacism, Trumpism, and racism", complet with a little quotemining from his Substack.
Double speculating: Berensons behaving badly posts have like 2-3 times the likes of real good journalism he did. Either this means A: folks are addicted to DRAMA! More more more B: Some bots tipped the results or C: People really think he's right, and he's getting his settlement for back in the stable work. Or D: He's just your average jerk whose ego gets too big sometimes. My feeling is C
FWIW, someone in the discussion yesterday noticed that clicking on the "See the discussion" link in Alex's email sends you to that page with the Like heart already filled-in for you. Clicking the heart "appears" to Unlike, but doesn't reduce the running total.
I noticed my last two likes on his ivermectin rant were not actually liked by me
That's probably just a bug. But not a good look for Substack
Berensons behaving badly rofl... sounds like an episode from Jerry Springer! But yeah, seems like he is feathering a future bed.
Is that an inflation-adjusted dollar?
Because I'm not sure there will be much of a market for that book this year.
🎯
For me, I think it's more that because it just feels like Alex doesn't read any of the studies he posts. I don't think he accessed this paper critically, and even if he agreed with the conclusion I find it very concerning he didn't dive deeper into the study.
He did the same recently posting about the two teenage boys who died after the vaccine saying they were perfectly healthy beforehand. But if he just looked at the paper he'd see one kid had ADD and another was obese. It doesn't mean that their deaths aren't attributed to the vaccine (I think the analyses were strange in that it didn't appear like other forms of myocarditis) but to me it just looked like he didn't even open the document.
A little humility goes a long way--honesty, integrity, humility: That's a trifecta.
why would Alex B waste time on research or reading for a hit job? Its not as if being correct is relevant.
Hilariously, I don't think Berenson has one subscriber who agrees with him.
He now has one less subscriber. Me
CNN is a lie machine
Dr. Zelenko says that zinc must be used along with ivermectin or HCQ, along with vitamin D3 and vitamin c, but zinc is the main thing. Zinc is what prevents viral replication in cells, but it can’t penetrate cell walls easily. Ivermectin enables zinc to do that.
Ivermectin acts as an ionophore while providing additional antiviral qualities. Apparently it can also block receptors helping prevent the virus from entering the cell in the first place.
Quercetin is also an ionophore and much more easily obtained than Ivermectin.
But apparently much less effective. Better than nothing tho.
yes
I also heard not to take ivermectin and quercetin at the same time of day.
With Omicron HCQ may actually be more effective due to the change in viral/host cell entry. Omicron goes through the endolysosomal pathway rather than the membrane fusogenic pathway. HCQ targets lysosomes and so if this is what Omicron prefers it makes sense that it would be HCQ itself and maybe not necessarily Zinc.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7146719/
Proposes a mechanism for synergies between prescribing IVM and HCQ together, which matches the latest FLCCC protocol
Ivermectin acts against viral infection in many different ways - I linked to an article in a comment to one of Igor's articles a few months ago - not just zinc. That is why it still works on BA.2 while monoclonal, and many others do not.
I do not rate Dr. Z at the same level as say Dr McCullough or Kory, as he originally claimed no mortality when under his treatment (dont know what he claims now, dont care), and that is just statistically impossible for the large numbers he claimed without a lot of data massaging (right reason, but the same dishonest tactics big pharma drones use).
Allow me to suggest that you have no idea what you're talking about. In the absence of blood testing by McCullough, Kory, or anyone else to determine zinc levels when testing, there is ZERO way to draw any conclusions about the importance of zinc in combo. This is not necessarily a knock against those doctors, but what I know indicates that indeed zinc is the key. HCQ and Ivermectin don't kill the virus, they facilitate zinc getting into cells to do the killing.
If you've used zinc lozenges properly when you have a sore throat as part of a cold or flu and felt it destroy the pathogens in your mouth and throat such that 95% of the time that sore throat is gone quickly, you'll get the idea. The key is to leave that nasty bitter taste in your mouth as long as possible.
Testing for blood levels of vitamin D has been done, and it's importance is critical and very well known.
Dont have time to get into it in detail during the day, but
see Table 1
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32942671/
Many antiviral functions - not just ionophore transmission.
A quick search found a dozen other papers.
Home tested positive for Covid in early January 2022. Unvaxxed. Felt like a mild flu. Took ivermectin the next day (in my cabinet, just in case), napped for one hour, woke up with no fever and no body aches or fatigue. Ivermectin works. Took ivermectin for 4 more days. Totally fine. 55 years old, no comorbid conditions. Took my D, zinc and Quercetin. It’s AWFUL how our doctors/government aren’t telling us what to do, that we have to search for our own information. My husband’s brother just lost his healthy 74 year old father-in-law. Got vaxxed, one week week later in hospital with Covid and pneumonia. One week after that on ventilator in critical care unit on his stomach. Died one week after that. Lives in a different state and we didn’t learn of the details until he was in the hospital, unfortunately.
Wow. I too have Ivermectin, just in case. So sorry about the loss of your relative.
Thank you 🙏🏻
This is a fairly common story. It is very difficult to tell a Vaxx death due to the toxic spike protein from an infection due to the two weeks of immune suppression after the shot.
Autopsies rarely done as the "diagnosis" is "obvious" to the 95% of medical staff who are true believers.
So even after the fact, you are unlikely to know the details. The life insurance companies are becoming unhappy, that is to say, unprofitable.
The loss is sad, I hope the family is surviving. I don't usually tell the bereaved that I thought that the death was Vaxx-induced, it's usually not helpful.
I think I can spot the vax deaths easily at this point. The local papers are all using the "died suddenly" and "unexpectedly died" as code phrases. It's staggering how many of these there are in my area alone. Healthy people aged 5-50 simply do not up and die. Had they died from the Covid, the media has been eager to mention this entire time.
Yes, we had a 74 yr old perfectly fit acquaintance fall over dead this week. Since autopsies are taboo, you could possibly find out from the undertakers, who have described fully clotted corpses with vascular contents which are unique, long stringy wormy venous and arterial clots.
When we dissected cadavers in medical school, the vessels were injected with red (arterial) and blue (venous) latex to present the vasculature and make it look like the anatomy texts. In real life the colours are not too different, you have to know what you are seeing, and treat accordingly. I have no doubt that the undertakers know what vessels are like when infusing embalming fluid.
Just my two bits, but I think it is a monstrous crime to deny anyone the chance to try a remedy that has no measurable side effects! Especially those who are already dying ! My 30 year old son came down with a horrible sore throat and fever -he was very sick -the next day it was in his lungs but he started go take ivermectin and on the third day after he was well enough to go back to work. He never got any tests but it was going around at work -he is unvaxxed . Took vit c zinc D and melatonin, too. I think we witnessed a miracle.
If Pfizer was marketing ivermectin, that summary would read a 150% increase in reducing ventilation and over 300% reduction in death. Perspective matters.
ROTFLMAO but yes
I know it's not on topic here, but I'm not sure where else to mention this that might be seen. People need to check out this week's shocking VAERS data for myocarditis: https://openvaers.com/covid-data/myo-pericarditis and look at the chart for cases by year. 24,187 reports of vax-related myocarditis in 2021 was a shocking number in itself, but as of February 11 there are already 9,560 for 2022! That's on pace for over 80,000 this year.
Good thing that’s just a mild, temporary side effect and not permanent heart damage, right? Safe and effective, right?
Severe myocarditis means that the vaccine is strong and is a sign that it works as intended.
Yes!
That is the effect of the boosters. I recall reading that each shot doubled the probability of myocarditis. That said, your extrapolation (probably high as more vaxxes happened during a wave) suggests a higher increase rate.
I'm glad I didn't wait for CNN to tell me ivermectin is useless before I took it for covid. I can't prove it helped but it sure didn't hurt.
IVM also allows you to enjoy gas station sushi without worry!
Seriously, though, I suspect many people in the US have undiagnosed parasites (or unfindable) and IVM will clear that up - Once upon a time, doctors would try drugs to see if they worked - but now in the age of insurance never-approval, there must be a firm diagnosis. I know someone who took IVM prophylactically, and her IBS disappeared.
So possibly better than it didn't hurt.
One of the lesser-known effects of COVID is destruction of the bowel.i know of a couple of people who have nearly lost their lives due to this, or needed a transplant.
One reason that Dr Mercola et al have been pushing for pro-biotics and fermented foods this whole time. Keep the "gut biome" as strong as you can. Apparently a large part of your immune system resides there.
I'm troubled by what passes for "standard of care." According to the study, that is "symptomatic therapy and monitoring for signs of early deterioration based on clinical findings, laboratory test results, and chest imaging." That's basically nothing. Isn't the value of ivermectin achieved at least in part by its use together with Zinc? And what about the other elements of the various early treatment protocols? What is a "standard of care" that does not even include assessment of Vitamin D levels? In addition to being underpowered, this looks like a clear attempt to set up ivermectin monotherapy as a failure, thereby broadly tarnishing it as well as its use as part of a regimen.
That "standard of care" is one of the things that needs thorough investigation in the aftermath of the "pandemic". Most of the lives lost are and were entirely preventable with early treatment of which ivermectin, in conjunction with other cheap and readily available drugs and supplements, is just one of the options.
It almost looks as if the protocol is designed to admit people to the hospital late or past the viral stage, get them on a vent ASAP (more $$ for the hospital), then Remdesivir during the cytokine stage (when it is ineffective), thereby assuring DEATH and a big payoff. As evil as they come.
I agree with you, and I'm sickened that this is the reality in so many hospitals. The most you will get is Remdesivir, a shot or two of dexamethasone, and maybe a daily albuterol sulfate nebulizer session. No zinc, no D, no intravenous high dose vitamin C or even oral C tablets, none of these eastern herbal treatments that have been effective for a few thousand years now, and absolutely no HCQ or IVM. There is a mysterious government supplied "standard of (non-) care" protocol that they all follow like robots, and they will take your family to court while you lie there dying before changing their approach IF the judge forces them too. They are murder machines.
If taken early on, the results are much more impressive, for sure.
Those are better odds than the vax is offering. And a week after symptoms is bordering on late to start IVM.
is there a chance that the headline was the only way this would be published while the authors knew folks can read?
my thinking exactly
I found it disappointing they gave a totally misleading summary of the results, but the study was published and we're able to view it, so maybe you're correct. It's disappointing that Igor gets listed as "misleading" when posting a direct screen grab of the article, but there's no issue with contradicting the results of the study by saying Ivermectin doesn't work.
And it's only the rare person who bothered to read past the headline AND had enough learning to understand the statistical gobbledygook. Everybody else, "TLDR, and this is what MSNBC says anyway so that's that."