Yes, it has been explored, trialed, and experimented with quite significantly.
The results show that there might be something there, but it’s not a miracle cure.
The conspiracy angles are coming from those who have been misled into thinking it has been more successful than it really has been, which leads to confusion about why it’s not being used everywhere.
> The conspiracy angles are coming from those who have been misled into thinking it has been more successful than it really has been, which leads to confusion about why it’s not being used everywhere.
No, the "conspiracy angles" are coming from people who have seen youtube videos and HN posts disappearing just for discussing it.
I would like this translated into normal English. This is the basis of the argument of why posts disappear from the article, and I don't understand what the author is trying to say at all:
> One of the challenges of the pandemic period is the degree to which science has become intertwined with politics. Arguments about the efficacy of mask use or ventilators, or the viability of repurposed drugs like hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, or even the pandemic’s origins, were quashed from the jump in the American commercial press, which committed itself to a regime of simplified insta-takes made opposite to Donald Trump’s comments. With a few exceptions, Internet censors generally tracked with this conventional wisdom, which had the effect of moving conspiracy theories and real scientific debates alike far underground.
Matt Taibbi supposes (in that paragraph) that their motivation in censoring scientific discussion of Ivermectin's effectiveness was to be "opposite to Donald Trump's comments" and thus to conform to one's own ideological tribe ... because if you don't conform, you risk being cancelled, don't you? And he bemoans that politics has corrupted real science and driven actual scientific debate underground.
Refer also to the Solomon Asch conformity experiment which occurred during a previous episode of cancel culture called "McCarthyism".
There are other theories. Some people have supposed that the motivations have to do with the money that big pharma would lose if they couldn't sell their vaccines because a safe and effective alternative was already available and proven, and therefore the conditions of the emergency use authorizations for the vaccines would become void. But nobody has any smoking gun evidence here that I'm aware of, it's just a plausible motivation.
Some people might believe so strongly that vaccines are the only possible savior of humanity that anything which detracts from the success of the vaccine campaign will be devastating, and so they do what they can to shut it down. Bret argues this is illogical if Ivermectin works because all forms of immunity work together to build herd immunity. But logic is unfortunately lost on far too many people.
More far fetched ideas include influence campaigns from foreign powers who aim to see America defeated. If they can influence the right people in the right way at the right time, they might be able to prolong the pandemic in America.
I'm sure there are even more hypotheses as to why such censorship is being attempted.
I can see how that might prove difficult for a non-native speaker. Here's a version written in less fancy English.
During COVID times, scientists have become political. Many scientific arguments were not written about in the American media, because journalists assumed that the truth was the opposite of whatever Donald Trump was saying. Tech firms mostly did the same thing. This means discussion of conspiracy theories and real scientific debates have both been suppressed, and now take place "underground" i.e. in non-mainstream forums.
Well a lot of people with biochem background also have a lot of skepticism about it too.
Ivermectin works by interrupting nerve function of helminths(parasites). covid is a virus, not a multicellular organism with nerves.
I'm not saying ivermectin is useless, but why it would work for covid doesn't make sense (yet at least). Maybe it has some other mechanism to slow down covid that isn't fully understood.
"but why it would work for covid doesn't make sense"
This is the way many treatments work. For example, hydroxychloroquine was a treatment for malaria, but doctors found that some patients with autoimmune disease had their symptoms lessened or eliminated as they were treated for malaria.
So, it has become a milder treatment for autoimmune disease in some cases. The scientific community doesn't 100% understand why it's effective for autoimmune disease, but there you go. It seems to work in many cases.
I say this not as an expert, but as someone who has taken it and it has worked for me. I don't care that the mechanism is unexplained.
there were some studies that seemed to show that it shrank melanomas. my guess is it is triggering the immune system response. but i just write software, so dont go chugging horse dewormer instead of seeing a doctor because this smart guy on hn said it would get rid of your melanoma.
This. A lot of things generate a broad immune response that would probably improve mild to moderate cases of just about anything. My gf secretly switched my usual horse dewormer for Sanka. On the third day I ate the postman, but I haven't had covid since.
With 0.38 risk ratio, it may well be that it should be used everywhere (except for patients already advanced enough to need mechanical ventilation, as mentioned).
I don't have a reference for this but I recently read it was basically used on every tested-positive case with symptoms in Mexico City, with significantly improved results.
The results show that there might be something there, but it’s not a miracle cure.
The conspiracy angles are coming from those who have been misled into thinking it has been more successful than it really has been, which leads to confusion about why it’s not being used everywhere.