Brazil: Ivermectin's biggest failure

https://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-tragic-ivermectin-for-covid-frenzy-warning-to-us-experts-2021-9

Brazil's tragic ivermectin frenzy is a warning to the US, experts say

Early on in the pandemic, Brazilians thought that ivermectin might also help treat and prevent COVID-19.
But, as one ICU doctor put it: "We Brazilians had to learn in the hardest way that ivermectin didn't work."

Brazilian authorities even at one point launched an app, called TrateCov, (in English, an abbreviation of "treat COVID" ) which recommended the same seven "kit" drugs to all its users. (The evidence base for that protocol leaned heavily on data from Dr. Flávio Cadegiani, who's now a member of the FLCCC, a US-based ivermectin propaganda machine.)

But Brazilians quickly discovered — through heart-wrenching personal experience — the limits of treating COVID-19 with ivermectin. Brazil suffered some of its worst death rates yet in late 2020 and early 2021, even in heavily ivermectin-dosed areas, as the more transmissible P1, or Gamma, variant spread quickly across the country.

"Look at what happened in Brazil," Natália Taschner, a Brazilian microbiologist and research scholar at Columbia University in New York, said. "Then wonder: If this drug worked, would Brazil be in such bad shape?"

Entire cities took ivermectin. It didn't work.

The ivermectin strategy was once so popular in Brazil that entire towns tried it out. (Ivermectin is cheap and available in pharmacies across the country.)

In July 2020, ivermectin was available for free to all residents of Itajaí, to the tune of about $826,000 in government spending.

Ivermectin "prescription practices didn't upend the tragedy of COVID here in Brazil in terms of preventing infections, preventing hospitalizations, and then preventing deaths," said Dr. Kevan Akrami, an infectious-disease and critical-care physician working in the northeastern city of Salvador. "Whether somebody was taking it or not didn't seem to have any impact on whether or not they got hospitalized or ended up dying from their COVID infection."

From the article:

Brazilians now want vaccines, not more ivermectin

@vivify
Well, I guess they can all switch to horse dewormer.....

Duh.

Let’s listen to every health authority on the planet. Or a some guest on an internet podcast…

It’s evolution doing the sorting, really.

@shavixmir
There is only one cure for stupid.

@vivify said
https://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-tragic-ivermectin-for-covid-frenzy-warning-to-us-experts-2021-9

Brazil's tragic ivermectin frenzy is a warning to the US, experts say

Early on in the pandemic, Brazilians thought that ivermectin might also help treat and prevent COVID-19.
But, as one ICU doctor put it: "We Brazilians had to learn in the hardest way th ...[text shortened]... pact on whether or not they got hospitalized or ended up dying from their COVID infection."

@metal-brain said
Here is an excerpt from that article you posted:

"Many Brazilians used to spend about $30 a head on what they called the "kit COVID."
It was a mix of vitamins and other pills that President Jair Bolsonaro touted as early treatments for COVID-19"

What were the other pills? Your own article does not list the entire content of the kit. It wasn't just ivermectin. To bl ...[text shortened]... blem. To test ivermectin properly you have to test ONLY ivermectin.

Your article proves nothing!

@shavixmir said
It proves that all those ingridients, no matter what they were, didn't work.

Vaccines do though.

To some, this appeared to be a smoking gun. Merck wants to make money, they reason, and people are interested in using ivermectin for Covid-19, therefore, Merck would warn against such usage only if the scientific evidence were overwhelming. But that’s not how the pharmaceutical industry works.

Here’s how the FDA-regulated pharmaceutical industry really works.

The FDA judges all drugs as guilty until proven, to the FDA’s satisfaction, both safe and efficacious. By what process does this happen? The FDA waits for a deep-pocketed sponsor to present a comprehensive package that justifies the approval of a new drug or a new use of an existing drug. For a drug like ivermectin, long since generic, a sponsor may never show up. The reason is not that the drug is ineffective; rather, the reason is that any expenditures used to secure approval for that new use will help other generic manufacturers that haven’t invested a dime. Due to generic drug substitution rules at pharmacies, Merck could spend millions of dollars to get a Covid-19 indication for ivermectin and then effectively get zero return. What company would ever make that investment?

With no sponsor, there is no new FDA-approved indication and, therefore, no official recognition of ivermectin’s value. Was the FDA’s warning against ivermectin based on science? No. It was based on process. Like a typical bureaucrat, the FDA won’t recommend the use of ivermectin because, while it might help patients, such a recommendation would violate its processes. The FDA needs boxes checked off in the right order. If a sponsor never shows up and the boxes aren’t checked off, the FDA’s standard approach is to tell Americans to stay away from the drug because it might be dangerous or ineffective. Sometimes the FDA is too enthusiastic and these warnings are, frankly, alarming. Guilty until proven innocent.

There are two reasons that Merck would warn against ivermectin usage, essentially throwing its own drug under the bus.

Once they are marketed, doctors can prescribe drugs for uses not specifically approved by the FDA. Such usage is called off-label. Using ivermectin for Covid-19 is considered off-label because that use is not specifically listed on ivermectin’s FDA-approved label.

While off-label prescribing is widespread and completely legal, it is illegal for a pharmaceutical company to promote that use. Doctors can use drugs for off-label uses and drug companies can supply them with product. But heaven forbid that companies encourage, support, or promote off-label prescribing. The fines for doing so are outrageous. During a particularly vigorous two-year period, the Justice Department collected over $6 billion from drug companies for off-label promotion cases. Merck’s lawyers haven’t forgotten that lesson.

Another reason for Merck to discount ivermectin’s efficacy is a result of marketing strategy. Ivermectin is an old, cheap, off-patent drug. Merck will never make much money from ivermectin sales. Drug companies aren’t looking to spruce up last year’s winners; they want new winners with long patent lives. Not coincidentally, Merck recently released the clinical results for its new Covid-19 fighter, molnupiravir, which has shown a 50% reduction in the risk of hospitalization and death among high-risk, unvaccinated adults. Analysts are predicting multi-billion-dollar sales for molnupiravir.

While we can all be happy that Merck has developed a new therapeutic that can keep us safe from the ravages of Covid-19, we should realize that the FDA’s rules give companies an incentive to focus on newer drugs while ignoring older ones. Ivermectin may or may not be a miracle drug for Covid-19. The FDA doesn’t want us to learn the truth.

The FDA spreads lies and alarms Americans while preventing drug companies from providing us with scientific explorations of existing, promising, generic drugs.

https://www.citizensjournal.us/the-fdas-war-against-the-truth-on-ivermectin/

@metal-brain said
No. It proved mixing drugs without testing the results doesn't work. At best, the kit didn't work.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33278625/

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/japans-kowa-says-ivermectin-effective-against-omicron-phase-iii-trial-2022-01-31/

https://www.thedesertreview.com/news/national/ivermectin-obliterates-97-percent-o ...[text shortened]... 2022-02-05&utm_medium=email&est=K6itCgq7r9zYKAb4Kf2C3%2F9JCdrmPCZI1aV60yiZngktg91nH3Ck5nvJVZpLiHw%3D

@shavixmir said
Sweet Jesus.

Where's the whooooooooosh emoji when you need one?

@metal-brain said
Here is an excerpt from that article you posted:

"Many Brazilians used to spend about $30 a head on what they called the "kit COVID."
It was a mix of vitamins and other pills that President Jair Bolsonaro touted as early treatments for COVID-19"

What were the other pills? Your own article does not list the entire content of the kit. It wasn't just ivermectin. To blame one ingredient in the kit is incompetent.

@metal-brain said
No. It proved mixing drugs without testing the results doesn't work. At best, the kit didn't work.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33278625/

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/japans-kowa-says-ivermectin-effective-against-omicron-phase-iii-trial-2022-01-31/

@vivify said
https://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-tragic-ivermectin-for-covid-frenzy-warning-to-us-experts-2021-9

Brazil's tragic ivermectin frenzy is a warning to the US, experts say

Early on in the pandemic, Brazilians thought that ivermectin might also help treat and prevent COVID-19.
But, as one ICU doctor put it: "We Brazilians had to learn in the hardest way th ...[text shortened]... pact on whether or not they got hospitalized or ended up dying from their COVID infection."

@sh76 said
Really. Rather than saying "stop using the damned horse paste, you idiot"