TorahUmadda-731-MelechYavanHarasha

“For e/o else – Medicine is like Cooking.
Anybody can follow a recipe, but it doesn’t always Work. Most of the time – You need a thinking Cook.
Same with medicine – anybody can follow Protocols, but not everybody can use them correctly, or ad lib.”

“health is right. a physician can not limit himself to protocols. he has to know where and when to apply them.
and anyone who wants to con people into thinking he is equal to a physician cannot just quote google. he has to know how to apply it to pretend it is his own.”

Amen 1,000 times over.

“2scents wrote:
ToraUmada,
Since you have out yourself out there, what other treatments do you offer for Covid patients and overall how is the disease managed?
Lastly, under what context is the treatment administered, inpatient? Outpatient? Clinic? Home based care?”

I don’t personally provide ‘care’ in the clinical sense. I advise people who ask on what treatment options are available and indicated for them, and try to put them in contact with a doctor who can treat them or prescribe for them. Anyone who came to me and had moderate covid, I will give them Ivermectin myself if I have & they can’t obtain it within a few hours, but I always forward cases onward to greater experts in the doctor group that I belong to, and to a few of the big big guns if it seems potentially complicated. I get far more requests about vaccine injuries/side effects and prophylaxis, especially recently with the vaccine mandates. The most intense situation I was involved in re covid was helping to arrange for a sick, elderly patient to be transported to a hospital 200 miles away so he could get treated with the FLCCC protocols by someone I had contact with who happened to be at that particular hospital and was able to somehow miraculously navigate the hospital admin/bureaucracy, when the hospital that he was going to be taken to was adamantly opposed to Ivermectin. (He ultimately recovered). I know of so many specific cases through other doctors who treat or work with the ones who treat covid with Ivermectin +.

Prophylaxis/early treatment is by definition out-patient. As far as I’m concerned, Mt Sinai (and I assume for other hospitals until proven otherwise) is a covid death trap or long covid trap to someone with severe covid and at high risk (google Bucko Ivermectin court case), and if you can get someone WITH MEDICAL/CLINICAL INTUITION to treat not in hospital with proper drug combo, stay out of the hospital. I know a few DOCTORS who did exactly that because they feared that if they went to the hospital, they wouldn’t be coming home again (approx. quote from one).

I’ll just add 2 prophylaxis options besides Ivermectin that are almost foolproof:
1. if you have vitamin D >50, you’re essentially immune from serious covid & complications, regardless of age/comorbidities (and a recent meta-study on vitamin D studies even concluded such – “COVID-19 mortality risk correlates inversely with vitamin D3 status, and a mortality rate close to zero could theoretically be achieved at 50 ng/ml 25(OH)D3: Results of a systematic review and meta-analysis”). (Active Vit D (calcitriol) and even precursor form (calcifediol) are even very effective treatments for ICU covid patients, significantly reduce mortality anywhere from 40-80% (hard to pin down because of confounds and lack of broader uptake at least in documented cases or by docs who talk about using it, one doc said that FDA banned compounding of calcifediol per his pharmacist.)
2. If you use mouthwash with cetylpyridinium chloride & povidone-iodine nasal rinse/drops/spray 2x a day (FLCCC pres Dr. Pierre Kory I heard say 3x if known exposure or test positive, keeping viral load down is absolutely critical), similarly near perfect record of success per doctors I know that encourage their patients (it’s a shame how these brave and heroic docs have to be so secretive about this, cuz if word got out they would be investigated by their medical boards and possibly lose their accreditation and jobs), but you have to do this wholeheartedly, not tepidly gargling for half a second in half your mouth, gargle in throat as deep as you can hold it, these are viricidals that kill on contact.

Obviously, please no one run with what I wrote and make sure to find a competent doctor or at least look up the FLCCC protocols yourself so you understand the situation. For the record, there is no replacement for a competent doctor with clinical intuition derived from treating patients for decades, but the basic treatments are far far far better than nothing even if using a general dosing principles as direct guidance for personal use. (Mods, maybe you can bold this last paragraph?)

“Maybe a better question than “Please explain Ivermectin” would be “Please explain the difference between anecdotes and scientific studies.” There are many people posting anecdotes as if they are scientific proof that Ivermectin does or does not work against Covid.”

This is actually a great question. Unfortunately, people really have no conception of what a study is or demonstrates in real life.

The answer is that studies are nothing more than a group of documented ‘anecdotes’ where more of the underlying context is controlled and known, allowing more robust inferences with more statistical power (ie confidence/reliability) to be drawn from the “anecdotes” documented by the study. The strength and reliability of inferences entirely depends on the quality (and honesty) pf a study’s design & execution. Critically, not all studies are equal, and some are even worse than regular anecdotes (I’m limiting anecdote to a reasonably verified story, not some vagueish rumor for the purposes of this argument), because a poorly designed study can give categorically false results whereas anecdotes “are often the leading indicator of an undiscovered negative side effect, or even an unanticipated positive outcome in new drugs” (approximate quote from a review of the hierarchy of evidence in “evidence based medicine”, I will post source when I find it). Here’s an example that actually happened recently: WHO major multi-pronged drug trial added an arm to test Famotidine + Celecoxib on hospitalized covid patients, but layered them upon a backbone treatment regiment of Remdesivir & Dexamethasone, which are contra-indicated for Fam+Cel & are mevatel them, and the WHO trial was warned by the docs who ran the small trial that found the initial success of Fam+Cel that this was the case (in fact, Dexa was specifically used as a control vs the Celecoxib and they found that Dexa was harmful by comparison (there’s a reason that the FLCCC uses Methylprednisolone as the steroid of choice and not Dexamethasone)), and of course the WHO trial found no initial effect compared to control group, and dropped them from the trial altogether “concluding” that they don’t work.

Or you can take the Bangladesh study, where they neglected to establish a baseline infection rate prior to commencement of the study (big confounder), they matched towns without any real attempt to bother characterizing any of them for other relevant characteristics, they measured “reported symptoms” as a proxy to establish primary & secondary endpoint efficacy (I’m pretty sure that the study was initially designed to see what measures could increase mask compliance), which is a total and complete joke, as the study design straight up incentivized non-reporting and even straight up lying by the mask towns from financial and other various social incentives, and even their finding was so tiny that it has zero statistical power in any event with a stratospheric p-value (IY”H I hope to post a more thorough analysis of this garbage heap).

It is worth reemphasizing, studies are nothing more than documentation of a series of ‘anecdotes’ that are (hopefully) more rigorously documented and characterized so we can better understand what is actually happening (and if a one off real anecdote is more than a statistical randomness). They are not any sort of magical fount of knowledge.

Another critical point is that just because the authors of a study say something does not make it true, or even mean that it is supported by the study’s own data. Especially now, you have to go through the study itself to see if the study’s authors are competent and/or honest (which these days is the case more often than not, see John Ioannidis’ recent essay documenting how literally every branch of science – all the way through automotive engineering – has somehow published on covid).

And just for those who will immediately leap to respond that “anecdotes are fundamentally different than studies because anecdotes we know nothing about the context whereas studies are by definition a documented & controlled group of cases where we can compare/contrast all the details etc”, I already acknowledged this above and I disagree with the characterization of this as a fundamental intrinsic difference also per above.

(For the record, I haven’t forgotten about the other posts I said I’d respond to.)

“when I check w/ Ivermectin, I did not see any large studies quantifying the effect, so it is hard to judge. Given the low cost, I am surprised why the proponents were not able to organize that.”
It’s hard to judge if you have loony toon evidence standards. I posted earlier regarding this. Take a look at ashmedai.substack “dot” com/p/the-gross-misapplication-of-evidentiary.
Also, I don’t know how you missed all the large studies, specifically the country-level ones that found country wide effects. ואין כאן מקום להאריך
Furthermore, RCT’s are not “low cost”, they cost millions of dollars to set up and execute, which means that a benefactor is required to finance it (like the govt).

“Masks – I quoted recently a large high-quality study from Bangladesh about effects of masks in real communities. It is very convincing.”
The Bangladesh study is such a joke that it would get laughed out of an elementary school science fair. I challenge you to explain what they measured and how it relates to what the study’s authors were claiming to see from the study. I think that you have no idea what the study actually found or how they assessed the raw data etc., but you’re quoting it nonetheless because you heard someone else say it was “high quality” and you’re merely regurgitating that which you heard without understanding a כי הוא זה about the study itself.

“I was wondering about nasal sprays myself. This would make sense, provided population can do it. Are there any reliable studies on that?”
The FLCCC in their documentation on their website explaining their protocols references the studies underlying the treatments they advocate for.

Health stated: “TU -“You do realize that if a medicine like Ivermectin works, then everyone who is against it has blood on their hands, especially those who advocate against it publicly??”

The problem is – when something is in the Medical realm & unscrupulous People make it a Political or for Financial gain issue.
Eg. – HCQ – When Trump mentioned it – the Media & others laughed.
This was Politics.
The Truth is HCQ has more success than Remdisivir, which the Gov. Approved.
Go look at the studies.”
I don’t understand how you said is responding to what I said. The political interference in medicine does not excuse anyone who weighs in on the issue publicly for failing to do even cursory research into the sugya (ie more than a superficial tallying of how many studies exist that fit preconceived notions of what evidence should look like) My point was that AAQ’s argument – ““Anyway, I am looking how those who are skeptical can positively contribute without causing controversies and opposition when they just call for medicines others like.”” –
is unsettling, because it cavalierly dismisses what is claimed to be a miracle drug against covid on the grounds that it causes controversy, which makes it an absurd argument on its face.

Remdesivir is a total zero, HCQ is pretty effective with proper dosing, timing, and companion drugs/supplements, but Ivermectin dwarfs HCQ in efficacy. There is a reason that all of the FLCCC protocols are built on Ivermectin and not HCQ.

AAQ said: “Also, when you claim your scientists are against everything – what is the chance that someone can find scientific argument against vaccines and against masks and against lockdowns and for one specific controversial medicine. This is for me impossible coincidence. It means they all are drinking from the same bucket.”

And what is the chance that someone could find a scientific argument against gender fluidity, and against homosexuality, and against atheism, and for Creationism… what an impossible coincidence…

This is logically incoherent, because these are not 4 independent issues that are all coincidentally wrong, they are all the product of the same corrupt processes. If the policy makers are mostly either corrupt or extremely biased & working under tremendous political pressures and are making policy choices on the basis of political calculations and emotion while ignoring scientific research, then one should expect to easily find scientific arguments against every single policy and position they promulgate. To borrow AAQ’s own words, it is the policies themselves that are all from the same bucket.

Also, what you see from the stories of Cochrane corruption is that “science”/academic institutions are not only susceptible to corruption/political influence, but that it is something fairly routine (observe the ease by which the Cochrane institution simply disregarded any semblance of intellectual honesty & following proper standards/protocols, an academic culture that was truly aghast at such interference with “pure honest research” would not produce top people that possessed no instinct for this. Science & scientific research that has significant financial support from govt is by definition fundamentally corrupted somewhat, as politicians do not care for truth but for whatever result best suits their political ambitions/incentives.)

Same author wrote up this piece a few days ago on the leaked audio of the Cochrane board meeting to oust Gøtzsche:

The Cochrane Tapes

Three years ago, a scandal erupted within the Cochrane Collaboration, the world’s most prestigious scientific organisation devoted to independent reviews of health care interventions.

One of its highest profile members, Prof Peter Gøtzsche, was sacked from the Governing Board, amid growing tension over Cochrane’s shift towards a commercial business model approach, away from its true roots of independent, scientific analysis and open public debate.

The controversial decision to revoke Gøtzsche’s membership, a position in which he had been democratically elected, provoked the immediate resignation of four other Board members.

Thirty-one of Cochrane’s Centre Directors from Spain and Latin America called for an independent investigation into the scandal.

Coordinating editor of Cochrane Work, Jos Verbeek and other prominent scientists called for the entire Governing Board to resign and demanded that independent elections be held.

But Cochrane remained defiant. Its leadership went on to ensure that Gøtzsche was stripped of his role as head of Denmark’s once famous Nordic Cochrane Centre, a legacy he built over 25 years.

In 2019, Gøtzsche published a tell-all book detailing what he described as Cochrane’s “moral collapse.” At the root of the problem he blamed the CEO Mark Wilson, who has since resigned after 9 years at the helm, citing “personal reasons”.

There has been continued speculation about what really happened in the boardroom that day in Edinburgh. Leaked audio recordings reveal the events that unfolded, raising questions about the conduct of Cochrane’s Board, and the legitimacy of Gøtzsche’s expulsion.

This is what can be revealed on The Cochrane Tapes.

Gøtzsche faces the Board
A meeting of the Trustees of Cochrane was convened in Edinburgh, to resolve an ongoing dispute between Gøtzsche and Cochrane’s CEO, Mark Wilson.

Cochrane had hired an independent Counsel to conduct an internal investigation into the dispute. The findings of that report are about to be discussed.

As the meeting commences, co-chair Martin Burton instructs Board members on how to audio record the meeting on their computers.

Co-chair Marguerite Koster acknowledges the “time crunch”, referring to the expeditious nature of the investigation by Counsel, whose report was delivered to the Board members only twelve hours prior to the meeting.

All Board members are expected to have properly reviewed the case. However, they have not, with one Board member saying they had not received all the documents.

Nonetheless, the meeting continues.

The co-chairs have been instructed by Cochrane’s lawyers to ask Gøtzsche one question and then give him “five minutes” to respond before asking him to recuse himself. The question is a direct one:

“Peter, do you accept the contents of this report?” asks Koster.

But, it is not a simple ‘yes or no’ answer for Gøtzsche. Koster repeats the question a couple more times before compelling a response.

“No”, says Gøtzsche who proceeds to point out his areas of disagreement.

After two minutes and two seconds, Koster interrupts Gøtzsche and continues to do so until she receives a stern rebuke from one of the other Board members:

“Given that Peter has not been able to speak more than 30 seconds without being interrupted would you at least allow him to ask a few questions?” says the Board member to Koster.

Gøtzsche continues to plead his case to the co-chairs. “It’s not prudent of you to treat me this way. I’m just the messenger”, he says.

Gøtzsche fires off more questions, provoking Burton to respond:

“I intend to say nothing on this. I wish as the Chair to record my objection to this. The lawyers advised that we should ask him the question, we’ve asked him, given him five minutes. It is now 10 or 15 minutes and I think this is an abuse of process,” says Burton.

“You must understand, Cochrane is in deep trouble and the world is watching what you’re up to,” Gøtzsche warns the members.

Koster demands that Gøtzsche recuse himself from the discussion while the other Board members vote on how to move forward.

Gøtzsche complies, but not before saying, “This is looking more and more like a Kafkaesque process, don’t you realise this?”

The secret deliberation
Gøtzsche leaves the room and twelve Board members remain.

Burton, who was part of the dispute was not required to recuse himself, for reasons that remain unknown.

Koster provides an ‘Executive Summary’ of Counsel’s report and then opens for discussion.

Some Board members raise a complaint about the “selective” nature of the evidence that was submitted for investigation.

“Counsel did not see all the information and he doesn’t know what has been going on in Cochrane”, says one Board member in Gøtzsche’s defence.

“They have a very narrow view of the documents”, adds another.

The discussion continues for several hours with intermittent breaks.

It is frank, robust and at times, tense.

It becomes evident however, that Counsel’s report will not give grounds for censuring Gøtzsche, so without this point of reference, the conversation turns to his “behaviour”.

Gøtzsche’s behaviour
“We have to do something about Peter’s behaviour. We cannot let it continue, it’s too costly,” says one member.

Much of the blame is put squarely on Gøtzsche’s public criticism of Cochrane’s HPV vaccine review. Gøtzsche and colleagues claimed Cochrane’s review of the HPV vaccine was “incomplete and ignored important evidence of bias.”

Some members of the Board were offended that Gøtzsche was “publicly trashing” Cochrane’s publication, saying that he “undermines the reputation of Cochrane” instead of keeping his scientific criticisms in-house.

Notably, there is no equivalent objection to Gøtzsche’s co-authors, Lars Jørgensen and Tom Jefferson in the Boardroom.

“[Gøtzsche] is going to push ahead and he’s going to say that Cochrane’s evidence is not trusted evidence,” says one member, strengthening the resolve to “get rid of him from the Board”, as Burton puts it.

Other members in the room disagree, saying that publicly debating science is necessary to “enrich the reputation of Cochrane” and that the impact of Gøtzsche’s criticism was a “drop in the ocean” compared to the “tidal wave” of mainstream media support for Cochrane’s HPV review.

Burton wants to avoid the perception that Gøtzsche is being ousted from Cochrane because of his criticisms of the HPV vaccine review, so he workshops ideas with the Board.

“We have the option to say [publicly] that there were a series of other events and that it is absolutely not just the HPV review”, says Burton.

Gøtzsche has opponents on the Board. They accuse him of being a “bully”, saying that action needs to be taken to “protect employees and enable a safe working environment”.

No evidence is presented to the Board to substantiate bullying allegations but there are threats of resignation if Gøtzsche is not properly dealt with.

After several hours of roaming the hallway, Gøtzsche becomes impatient and knocks on the door.

Burton opens the door but blocks it and tries to prevent Gøtzsche from saying anything to the Board. Gøtzsche barges one step into the Boardroom, accidentally bumping into Burton on the other side of the door.

“Don’t push me” says Burton with an accusatory tone.

“I’m sorry. I have a question,” says Gøtzsche making inquiries about how long it would take.

“This is unacceptable. I have been out the door for four and a half hours,” he says before telling the Board he would return to his hotel room.

Burton shuts the door and complains of a bruised arm. It’s not clear if he will escalate the situation.

“There’s no reason why we can’t call the police”, says one member in support of Burton.

“They would laugh at us”, replies another, signalling its triviality.

There’s some sympathy for Gøtzsche in the room.

“We have to keep in mind how much we’ve been pushing him in the last couple of years. If you push me that far, I’d lose my temper,” said one member.

The member points out the double standards being applied to Gøtzsche and proceeds to tell the Board about a physical altercation that they had six months earlier with Cochrane’s CEO Mark Wilson.

“Mark [Wilson] lost his temper, he shouted at me, he assaulted me, he called Peter a liar and we’re excusing that?” recollects the Board member. Nothing comes of it.

Gøtzsche’s enormous contribution to science is acknowledged.

But then the conversation takes a dark turn. Board member Catherine Marshall, [now current co-chair] on more than one occasion, draws parallels between Gøtzsche and the MeToo movement, referencing the history of influential men whose “bad behaviour [is] overlooked and indulged”.

Burton even draws parallels between Gøtzsche and Kevin Spacey, an accused sexual predator who did “wonderful work” but says that sometimes, “you’ve just got to call them out”.

Some Board members warn Burton against implying that Gøtzsche had “criminal” behaviour.

These warnings went unheeded. The defamatory insinuation made its way into Burton’s speech at Cochrane’s Annual General Meeting a few days later.

Burton made an announcement about Gøtzsche, to over a thousand people in an auditorium;

“We are living in a world where behaviours that cause pain and misery to people, are being ‘called out’”, leaving many with the impression that Gøtzsche’s “bad behaviour” might have been criminal in nature.

Gøtzsche rejected the claims unreservedly and sought legal advice for damages.

A distraction from the real issues at Cochrane?
As the deliberations at the Board meeting continue, several members refuse to get drawn into the distraction from the “real issues” like the move to impose greater restrictions on Cochrane Centres and the organisation’s lack of pluralistic, scientific debate.

One member delivers an impassioned speech to the Board:

“Every single conflict between the central executive board and Peter is about an issue where the central executive board takes the side of the pharmaceutical industry. And I can document this,” says the Board member.

Gøtzsche’s track record of publicly condemning the drug industry’s criminal behaviour has attracted a “history” of complaints to the Board and punishing Gøtzsche for expressing his scientific views plays right into the hands of the drug industry.

“Industry will be elated,” says the concerned member, warning that Cochrane was setting a dangerous precedent whereby industry representatives only had to “write a complaint to Cochrane and then Cochrane caves in under the pressure”.

When Burton suggests that Gøtzsche has breached the Code of Conduct for Trustees, one member requests clarity about what behaviour warranted the breach.

“Can we be more specific?” asks the Board member but Burton dismisses the request and replies, “We don’t need to be more specific.”

As the discussions continue, two things become clearer. One, there will be no further detail to the generic claims against Gøtzsche. And two, despite this, the co-chairs appear resolute in their objection to Gøtzsche’s continued service to Cochrane.

Procedural fairness?
The leaked recordings reveal much about the process applied to Gøtzsche.

Board members had insufficient time to digest and assess the independent report. Gøtzsche is prosecuted in the room with generic and ambiguous claims made about his character, without an opportunity to contest.

Burton’s position is clear. He says Gøtzsche needs to go or else he will continue to “misbehave”.

One Board member suggests a formal mediation or arbitration to handle the dispute peacefully, to which Burton responds, “personally, I don’t think that’s an option”, pointing to the burden of costs.

Amidst the discussion about Gøtzsche’s alleged “bad behaviour”, a procedural issue goes unnoticed.

Gøtzsche was required to recuse himself after levelling complaints against Wilson and Burton.

Yet, Burton remains in the Boardroom, he takes an active part in the discussions and is offered untimed opportunities for defence of claims made against him. He is also afforded access to ‘on call’ legal assistance.

Burton is inexorably involved in the conflict. He was interviewed by Counsel and conclusions were drawn about Burton’s character and credibility as part of the investigative report, which mentions Burton 42 times.

Why did Burton not recuse himself during those deliberations? Why did Cochrane’s in-house lawyers not advise Burton to recuse himself too? Or did they?

The public punishment
Considerable time is spent discussing how Cochrane can publicly explain Gøtzsche’s sudden exit. The co-chairs suggest a way to “force retirement” in order to “save face” with an agreement that is “legally robust” and one that Gøtzsche cannot “wriggle out of”.

Some members try to warn Burton that the punishment is “disproportionate”. One says Gøtzsche is a “scapegoat” and objects to the Board taking “the nuclear option”. Another member says “this is like capital punishment” and some are concerned that this level of censure is usually reserved for people who commit crimes in the workplace.

The co-chairs maintain they have been “scrupulous” and “impartial”, but this is likely to be challenged. Koster accuses Gøtzsche of being part of the “old regime”, “a dinosaur” who needs a “baby sitter” to manage him.

Burton addresses the Board:

“We can have as much huffing and puffing as we want, but as far as I’m concerned, he needs to leave the collaboration and have his membership taken away,” says Burton.

The final vote
Gøtzsche’s fate is sealed, he loses by one vote. But Burton is still troubled.

“So it’s a majority of one. Very disappointed with that indeed,” says Burton annoyed with the support for Gøtzsche in the room.

If Burton had abstained, which might have been expected in this case, the final vote would have been tied. In the event of an ‘equality of votes’ under the Articles of Association the ‘Chair’ has a second or casting vote.

Koster would have cast the deciding vote. However, the outcome of such a vote will never be known since it is not possible to quantify Burton’s influence on the Board’s decision that day.

The day after Gøtzsche’s ousting, four more board members resigned in protest, but not before they all received an email Mark Wilson’s senior advisor. It read:

“Martin [Burton] has asked that if any of you recorded the meeting yesterday, you give me the recording when you next meet and delete it from your computers”.

One Board member refused to comply with the CEO’s instructions to delete a record of the meeting, and now a transcript of The Cochrane Tapes is available here.

It is difficult to quantify the damage to Cochrane’s reputation in the wake of this scandal, but a review of Gøtzsche’s book sums it up;

It’s a “dark period in medical science where, a once trusted institution, carried out one of the worst show trials ever conducted in academia. The CEO and his collaborators went about their task in a manner that mirrors how the drug industry operates.”

@Health – do you prescribe Ivermectin (or any of the other FLCCC protocol drugs)?

Excerpts from a rebuttal to an article trying to hide behind the Cochrane Review:

A Cochrane review is not some magical method for determining absolute truth that is free from human judgement, which is the only truly pertinent fact here, because anything subject to human judgement is by definition subject to human error, and corruption. A Cochrane review essentially is a collection of standards and tests dictating the quality and quantity of evidentiary value assigned to a data point or collection based on characteristics such as the source’s size, sampling, biases, protocols, and so on. It also provides a series of statistical methodologies by which one can assign a value to data or data sets, and combine data from different sources.

There are at least two glaring flaws in this model:

1. Ultimately, the application of Cochrane standards relies upon the research capacity and integrity of whomever is performing the review, meaning that the failure of the reviewer to accurately document pertinent characteristics will compromise the results. (To take an obvious but extreme example, suppose an RCT was fraudulently conducted but written up in a manner that successfully eliminates any trace of the fraudulent activity (again, to pick an absurd illustration, swapping the drug being tested with something else in an attempt to ensure that the trial fails to observe a benefit in the tested drug), a reviewer’s ignorance of this will lead him to categorize the study as high-certainty evidence per the Cochrane review standards.

2. Cochrane reviews stipulate a hierarchy of evidence that while (let’s assume is) generally able to accurately capture the effect’s significance and certainty, it does so by assigning values to characteristics that are often situationally unwarranted, which can then falsely portray evidence as either weaker or stronger than it is. The prime example of this is probably the consideration of RCT’s as the ultimate “gold-standard” of studies, but there are plenty of other assumptions by the Cochrane standards that are somewhat unsound. To put this more succinctly, any formal, rigid formula used to assess something by definition lacks the flexibility to cope with situations where the available evidence will not conform to the exacting specifications demanded by the Cochrane standards, but where the evidence is obviously convincing and demonstrative to anyone with common sense.

These flaws when combined with broad systemic corruption in the scientific community results in a cult-like insistence of ignoring an avalanche of real-world experience & evidence in favor of following the officially prescribed method of evidence assessment, which is what has occurred regarding Ivermectin. Here is a “theoretical” example to illustrate this: Suppose there was a pandemic where the world was caught flat-footed. Doctors and scientists scrambling to find an effective treatment rapidly began testing different drugs to see if any seemed to be of help. Harried doctors on the front lines, noticing a potential signal of a potential drug that might be efficacious, quickly organize ad hoc trials, where they essentially give a group of people, usually either health care workers or patients, the option to take or refuse the new drug. These trials show insanely huge reduction in mortality, disease severity and prophylaxis. As word starts to spread around the world, a few countries engage in mass distribution of this drug to a substantial portion, or all, of their population, with a reproducible tight correlation between mass distribution and near eradication of the pandemic virus. None of the evidence in this “hypothetical” would be acknowledged by a formal, proper Cochrane review, because these are either “low quality” studies, or determined and judged to be nullities, due to lack of adequate procedural controls, proper pre-registration, and similar technical specifications that dotted all the “i’s” and crossed all the “T’s”.

With that introduction, let’s turn to the substance of this article. The author comically claims that being empaneled by a government is somehow a positive attribute for adjudicating the panel’s credibility regarding a controversial political topic. A govt panel is controlled by the govt, either directly or indirectly via some combination of legal, social, financial, and professional peer pressures, usually all of the above. Thus, you can be sure that the governments wishes and priorities will not be lightly disregarded.

Next, he claims that such scientists are “independent”. The virtue of independence is meant to say that the scientist is unencumbered by any external influences in executing his scientific analyses. The most powerful corrupting influence currently present emanates from the scientific community itself. Thus, unless a scientist is demonstrably acting independently of the scientific establishment (at minimum), he is presumed to be not independent of the crushing peer/social/govt pressure, as is the case here, where in addition to the default scientific community pressure, as mentioned earlier, the govt itself constituted the panel. That the panel rejected a drug purchased by the govt as a potential useful treatment is wholly irrelevant, because there is no political cost to having purchased a drug, even for a sizable cost, that maybe could have worked out, as the citizenry (especially one already whipped into a panicked frenzy) would tend to appreciate that the govt is acting so proactively and therefore not feel as though the govt had acted irresponsibly. In any event, absurd and unreasonable govt expenditures are a common and routine phenomenon that does not excite the passion or provoke the ire of the population. Ivermectin, on the other hand, is politically charged dynamite, as anyone remotely familiar with the current political climate and discourse surrounding Ivermectin readily appreciates. Representation from across the medical spectrum is likewise irrelevant because the medical establishment itself is a primary corrupting influence on the scientific process, and everyone working under the aegis of the govt is equally subject to the corrupting whims and diktats of the politicians and bureaucrats who wield its powers. This claim is ultimately useful only as representative of the delusional naivete of the author.

AND

Their [c19Ivermectin . com] work, however, speaks for itself. Even more compelling are the genuine world-class medical pioneers who are the driving academic force behind the Ivermectin campaign, who hold this website and its creators in high esteem.

In any event, this attack is not only dumb, it’s akin to attributing special relativity to some middling college physics professor while ignoring Einstein and claiming that the primary authority behind the theory is the no-name professor. The FLCCC, comprised of unimpeachably credentialed brilliant medical luminaries, presents a thorough overview and analysis of the evidence base and protocols for Ivermectin. The conundrum posed by the author is in truth a question of which experts should you trust: a govt empaneled committee who are essentially analyzing from comfortable perches in their ivory towers, who face no real threat of sanction for denying Ivermectin’s efficacy but face very real professional perils should they buck the medical/scientific/govt establishment, vs a group of brilliant doctors who have put their careers, social lives and reputations on the line while successfully using Ivermectin for a year and treated tens of thousands of patients directly and consulted for doctors worldwide who have collectively treated millions. Not much of a choice when you frame it honestly and accurately.

AND

If you look at their references for their Ivermectin research, you will find cited Lopez-Medina et al. This study literally engaged in deliberate scientific fraud. A panel dedicated specifically and solely to grading quality of evidence that cites an obviously fraudulent study lacks even a semblance of credibility. Period. There reference list is highly problematic for other the inclusion of other dubious references while omitting perfectly acceptable studies that were far less problematic procedurally than some of those included. Like Lopez-Medina. (At least they aren’t citing the Roman et al meta-analysis, which simply lied about the results of some of the studies whose results they were allegedly analyzing.) The FLCCC doctors, in a few of their weekly updates, explained the ins and outs of some of the ridiculous anti- studies. You can listen to an explanation of the evidence base from (formerly?) world-renown FLCCC President Dr. Pierre Kory here, and from expert WHO consultant Dr. Tess Lawrie here.

AND

In any event, this argument is rubbish, because one of the cornerstones of the current debate is the medical community’s censorship of dissenting opinions from mainstream journals and publications. Obviously, if the top journals simply refuse to publish any papers that would place the political narrative in serious jeopardy, you cannot adjudicate the credibility of a paper by where its published (or more to the point, where it is not published). A more viable approach to assess the credibility of a study by its provenance is to look at the authors – if they are highly credentialed and mainstream according to a Google search starting from before March 2020 who are not conforming to the establishment narratives, then they carry far more weight than those who do not meet these criteria. Ultimately, there is no substitute for sensible judgement, which is an intangible quality that some people have and some people don’t.

AND

This is functionally illiterate. A number of small trials all showing the same result is itself extremely high-powered evidence, because the chance of running, say, 30 independent trials with widely ranging characteristics and observing the same results are so infinitesimal as to be negligible. 25 small, individually underpowered studies are far more conclusive than one large trial, because while 25 trials with widely ranging characteristics can largely negate each other’s (potential) biases, one large study cannot overcome its own design flaws. (Yes, RCT’s can be designed quite horrifically while following every rule and standard, something which cannot be emphasized enough.) This is emphatically the case regarding Ivermectin, although you would have to look at the individual studies to get a sense of this, which the very website this author maliciously attacks provides, ie lists all of the studies with a summary of the basic results intelligible to a layperson.

AND

C19early.com is a compilation of every study for Ivermectin (and other treatments), ranked chronologically from most recently published. They include every study run, regardless of the results, and regardless of the statistical significance. (They still have up the fraudulent Lopez-Medina and Roman studies.) Their list is not designed to filter out low quality garbage. This author is being ridiculous, a competent person easily understands the nature and purposes of the website, and would use a little, you know, judgement and certainly not cherry pick the first study as representative. Furthermore, a number of low-quality studies taken together provides quite robust evidence in sufficient numbers, because, as previously stated, the odds of practically all the studies show efficacy if there wasn’t any are so remote as to be absurd speculation. Furthermore, there is a marked tendency to label any study that was run somewhat haphazardly as entirely devoid of any evidentiary value. This is, to put bluntly, moronic and disingenuous. Someone treating ill covid patients doesn’t have time to properly randomize sorting into evenly propensity score matched groups and all of the other minutiae necessary to run a “proper” RCT for a disease that will either start recovery or turn towards ventilation (or death) within a week or two. Furthermore, delaying the start of treatment in any event increases the risk that treatment will not be effective, which is both highly unethical and reduces the chance of seeing a statistically significant result especially when you have a low study subject population to begin with.

AND

Conclusion:

The Ivermectin evidence base, ranked in order of quality (ie, most improbable results if Ivermectin doesn’t work), is essentially:

1. The clinical experience of thousands of doctors worldwide successfully treating patients with Ivermectin & Ivermectin centered protocols. This includes a spate of court cases where judges ordered hospitals to administer (or not impede administration of by 3rd party physician of) Ivermectin to already ventilated patients for whom their hospital had no other treatments to offer and who all subsequently recovered (with the notable exception of the Mt Sinai case where the patient died amidst the inconsistently administered Ivermectin during the court wrangling).

2. The countries that mass distributed Ivermectin to part or all of their population with tightly correlated and reproducible “flattening the curve” of every covid metric (like Mexico, Peru, India, just to name a few), some of which had a control group of an untreated population or subsequent change of policy.

3. The numerous prospective control trials, both random and unrandom, showing Ivermectin’s brilliant efficacy. I personally think that Carvallo et al, which was an unrandom control prospective prophylaxis study (the subjects chose whether to accept Ivermectin by choice), is the most compelling – 237/400 or so in the control contracted covid vs 0/788 on Ivermectin – ZERO!! – a result so lopsided and stunning that cannot possibly be chalked up to chance, biases or any other nonsensical pathetic attempt to invalidate the study.

4. The small, individually underpowered retrospective observation trials.

5. In-vitro/in-silico demonstrations of Ivermectin wiping out covid, and everything else not mentioned above.

The Cochrane standards reject #1 outright, severely undervalue #2 because they are lacking one or more technical requirements, assign “low weight” qualification to almost all of the studies in #3 for not following proper academic protocol or for “risk of biases”, and basically exclude # 4 entirely as “noise”; while simultaneously incorporating straight up fraudulent studies like Lopez-Medina, poorly designed studies that dose too low, treat too late, use a demographic that already widely uses Ivermectin, and meta-analyses that are rigged by excluding all of the above while including all the aforementioned poorly designed junk studies, and have no mechanism for assessing the political corruption of the academic process.

Health:
“TU -“This is because a study, by its very nature, is a rigid one-size-fits-all (in order to reduce the potential of confounding variables) – everyone gets the exact same dose of the exact same drugs and does not get any other treatments whatsoever. ”

You simply Don’t know what you’re talking about!
Go to that website and see the studies on Ivermectin.
The studies have different doses. Some are the same dose, but very few.
And some are retroactive.
A lot of them have combined other therapies”

You did not grasp my point, not even a little bit!!
Any one study will have to be internally homogenous in its protocol, which is the issue that I was raising, and one backed up by doctors who actually, you know, treat with Ivermectin and run the studies!! The fact that different studies chose different dosing titrations is irrelevant to this. Furthermore, there is a demonstrable sensitivity to higher dosing, which is itself a typical indicator of efficacy. I think it really is quite comical that Health thinks that “I don’t know what I’m talking about” when Dr. Pierre Kory had the following to say to me in an email:

“It was GREAT. In fact there were sentences that I will have to borrow for other stuff or tweet they were so good – esp in the conclusion section as I recall.

What also made me happy… is that there are so few of us fighting back against absurd bias and ignorance from pseudo-experts who willfully or not lack an understanding of EBM.. I would LOVE to have the time to take down these [vulgarity] publishing stuff out there but I often have not even enough time to go to the bathroom yes so thanks for being a partner in the fight for truth in science.

I assume you saw this thing I wrote up recently? Attached”

” “I know of many, many docs who used Ivermectin for >year, most haven’t lost a single patient.”

That’s great – did they do a Study?
Do you actually practice medicine, or you just have degrees, or None of the Above?!?

Nothing is a Cure for Covid 19.
I hate repeating myself.
You’re like the Government – all you need is Vaccines and you’ll be fine.
Or like the Anti-Vaxxers – Covid 19 is Not worse than a Cold!”

I have been in extensive correspondence with many prominent doctors and researchers, including some involved in a few of the Ivermectin studies, and including Dr. Pierre Kory himself. I have also read every single Ivermectin study, even the ridiculous ones anti-Ivermectin. The notion that I am somehow ignorant is comical. What are your qualifications, I might ask?? Dr. Kory indicated to me personally his intention to use some of my work. The only illiterate individual here is you, who wishes to ignorantly blather on about “there is no cure etc” and other such nonsense.

As for the rest of this conversation, you need daas & a sense of how things work on the “inside” — something that I have labored to gain an appreciation of by correspondence with researchers and doctors who perform these studies or treat with Ivermectin actual patients — to understand what is actually indicated by a study, especially meta’s, which follow a rigid set of formulaic standards in evaluating evidence that often is unmoored from common sense when applied to some scenarios.

Health — look at the substack article I mentioned to search for in duckduckgo.

Sorry. On Duckduckgo, search the following: “The Gross misapplication of evidentiary standards how rigid evidentiary formulas defy common sense and corrupt science ashmedai substack” re ivermectin evidence base

The list and explanations for the mechanisms of action was written by Daniel Horowitz (I meant to lead off the post with this acknowledgement), not myself.

Sam2:

Hopefully, with a rebbe, one learns how to learn.

Furthermore, I’ll repeat what I responded to PAA earlier, that default is to assume they are talking straight, but here, the shitta already exists, making it possibly reasonable that there is an underlying premise the rishonim just don’t talk about. This is similar to the Maharals supposed revolution in how to learn aggadata — conventional scholarly understanding would have it that he invented a new approach that the rishonim en masse did not ascribe to whatsoever. However, the truth is that (some/most) rishonim did hold that aggadatas can be understood as describing mystical realities, etc, but they chose not to discuss, and even sometimes seem hostile towards it. I am not definitively claiming this is what is pshat here [techeiles], just a maybe.

“the army of yavan is secular knowledge”

That is quite a hostile attitude towards knowledge.

Um, that is pointing out the “latent danger”. Furthermore, I was not being serious. It’s a gematria. Almost by definition, that implies that it’s cute drush. We can debate the merits and dangers of secular knowledge in a dedicated thread.

Those with hostility to general knowledge tend to avoid Torah learning that has too much to do with any secular knowledge.

Could you clarify what you mean by that exactly?

It is ironic that in this thread we have someone who has taken a long screen name to indicate that “secular knowledge is the equivalent of an evil king who tried to uproot Torah Judaism”.

That is incorrect. Secular knowledge is not, in and of itself, the equivelant of “evil king. . .”. Secular knowledge raised upon the same pedestal as Torah is. For that blurs the distinction between that which is kodesh and that which is chol. Etc. (For the record, “Cheil (ches-yud-lamed) Yavan” = 120 = “madda”. Meaning that the army of yavan is secular knowledge. For it has enormous latent danger within it.)

it isn’t muchach poskim know those exotic sources. I spoke to many tremendous talmidei chachamim who didn’t know they exist.

I assumed R’ Elyashiv knew of at least some of them. (The one I asked answered with R’ Elyashivs shitta, that he heard from him personally.)

There are no dissenting opinions, hence I don’t quote them.

Wow. This is beyond arrogant. But at least now you’ve made it abundantly clear that this is agenda driven, and that you’re unsinterested in hearing anything else to the contrary. “Don’t let the facts get in the way of the truth.”

I am not familiar with the bekius. I asked a posek.

sorry, mechaber.

But where you regularly eat during davening (or long davenings), then maybe it is ???? ????? .

There are two reasons that you can dismiss the evidence: 1- it doesn’t meet the required standard; 2- there is no standard [good enough]. There are those who hold of “1” (I know cuz I asked one). And preaching to me is stupid because I’m not holding in the sugya enough to appreciate the merits of the different sides. Brisk holds of “2”. Furthermore, there is the question of whether there is anything at stake if it’s not techeiles. So the answer is, machlokes whether we should be choshesh for Rashi’s shitta — that discoloration = tzitzis are pasul — as asserted by the Rema. I’m not citing names of poskim I asked, as common sense and basic erech eretz dictates, that they don’t want to be quoted on an internet forum.

TU731 – if the Beis Hamikdash is rebuilt tomorrow, are you going to say we don’t have the mesorah for bringing korbonos?

I imagine that maybe, just maybe, Eliyahu Hanavi &/or Mashiach might resolve such an issue. . .

He wants congressional approval probably because it means he can share the blame when it goes south and say that [the republicans in] congress voted to go to war.

And the medrash says Moshe only saw Hashems tefillin. It does not say he saw His Tzitzis. So presumably we can infer that Hashem didn’t Wear, Kaveyachol, His Tzitzis out.