Doc-Crentist | 22 points
60 Minutes on Twitter- NIH director mentions Ivermectinhttps://twitter.com/60minutes/status/1368969843584753670?s=21
[-] stereomatch | 3 points
Wow - change is afoot. Fluvoxamine may just be what opens the door - pushed by Steve Kirsch the entrepreneur - and may even give some face-saving to those who have opposed ivermectin and early treatment religiously. If Fluvoxamine opens the door to early treatment, ivermectin may well rush past through that door :-)
https://twitter.com/60minutes/status/1368969843584753670?s=21
@60Minutes “A big need right now is for a drug that you could take by mouth, that you could be offered as soon as you had a positive test, and that would reduce the likelihood that [COVID] is going to make you really sick,” says the director of the NIH. https://cbsn.ws/3kUfswG
Twitter video above is 0:54 minutes:
Rough transcript:
CBS 60 Minutes: Are there many options right now for therapeutics that don't require a visit to the hospital?
Dr Francis Collins (Director, NIH): A big need right now is for a drug that you could take by mouth, that you could be offered as soon as you had a positive test. And that would reduce the likelihood that that virus is gonna make you really sick. And we have some very good clues there. Drugs like colchicine. Like fluvoxamine. Like, potentially ivermectin. But they haven't been really proven in the kind of rigorous trial that you want to see happen before you decide to recommend this to everybody. That's what we are doing right now at NIH. Working with our colleagues in industry to try to take that kind of a test to where it needs to be and find out exactly what really works. And I'm optimistic that on that list there may be some real game changers. But we need to know for sure.
Commentary
Interestingly, while ivermectin, colchicine, and fluvoxamine are mentioned in the twitter video, and in the videos in the CBS article, only fluvoxamine is mentioned in the text of the article itself (which suggests how panicky these article writers are). But if this advances the acceptance of early treatment so be it - once early treatment is accepted as possible, then all sorts of possibilities will emerge.
In the CBS article, fluvoxamine is the one most prominently mentioned in the context of Steve Kirsch's fluvoxamine funding study.
Unlike ivermectin (which does not cross the blood brain barrier in adult humans - unless they have meningitis), fluvoxamine does cross the blood-brain barrier, which is why Dr Been has mentioned that it may have some benefit against "brain fog".
While fluvoxamine is a promising drug, it does not seem to have the same effectiveness, or the degree of trial support we have for ivermectin. This is acknowledged by Steve Kirsch's quora post (which got some traction) about early treatments - that is examined in this reddit discussion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/lslhhb Great post about available treatment options
While Steve Kirsch's quora post is good because it also pushes for early treatment (which is what FLCCC, and all the other researchers are doing), however he places all the alternatives on an equal footing - more as a list of things to consider.
And it does not seem he has direct experience with ivermectin - so while he mentions that it has stronger data than fluvoxamine, still Steve Kirsch's area of expertise seems to be fluvoxamine - which he therefore highlights a bit more than the others.
This is all good - because if he with his entrepreneurial connections can get himself featured on CBS 60 Minutes, that will help early treatments in general to be considered as a possibility by NIH and others.
Perhaps his emphasis on fluvoxamine also has the benefit that it triggers fewer of the Pavlovian reactions from the NIH and others - who have already shot themselves in the foot by opposing ivermectin (NIH earlier hostile attitude towards ivermectin, which they reversed to neutral only recently after Senate testimony and FLCCC visit to the NIH to present their case).
As a practical matter however, I do not see how fluvoxamine can be used as a mass administered antidote to COVID-19, because it is a harder drug, with mind-altering properties, much more open to abuse and overdosing.
Ivermectin in contrast has a wide therapeutic range (very difficult to overdose on it), and is already over the counter in many countries. It is also plentiful - thanks to it's dual use in the veterinary industry as anti-parasitic. In addition it has an excellent safety record - as the FLCCC and others have said for a while, and as Dr Tess Lawrie most recently indicated to Dr John Campbell - in 40 years and 3.7B doses, there have been only 4600 adverse events, and 16 deaths reported in the drug registry. This is much lower than aspirin or ibuprofen.
Thus of all the drug candidates right now - ivermectin is the clear winner in terms of trial data, safety and efficacy.
However, fluvoxamine, colchicine, inhaled budesonide (inhaled steroids) all have potential - but will always require much closer monitoring because of their side effects and potential for harm. And thus will require physician monitoring (perhaps this is why these drugs will be liked much more by physician associations?).
Ivermectin meanwhile also has the potential to be used during a 3rd or 4th wave on government instruction - in a way which could rapidly bring the wave to a halt (simultaneous dosing of ivermectin during a wave).
Contrast this with the logistics of mass prescribing fluvoxamine and other such drugs. Also compare to Remdesivir - an antiviral - but which in practice was not effective, because it was not a tablet, but intravenous, and thus would always be delivered a bit too late. Since it required a hospital to administer it intravenously. Remdesivir was also expensive - which will not be a problem for fluvoxamine etc. which are also generic drugs, like ivermectin.
Yeah, it's great to see things finally moving! I'm having high hopes for ivermectin, fluvoxamine and budesonide to end this pandemic.
The crazy thing is that we are one year in to the pandemic, and we just do not have good quality research of many obvious candidates.
Vitamin D is a clear one, but we do not know if supplementation helps.
How about early aspirin usage? COVID-19 causes thickening of blood, aspirin is anticoagulant. Surely we tested this one immediately? But no.
Then both fluvoxamine and budesonide have been visible in many analysis checking for background information. Both asthma and depression were linked to clearly lower severity of COVID. Surely these were immediately investigated as curious leads? Again no!
Then finally we have ivm where at latest Peru's experience should have caused a big rush of emergency RCTs. But of course the answer was again that high quality evidence is needed to start investigating! So, first you need to run extremely expensive and slow to conduct RCT before emergency RCT can be considered...
The big question is what else completely obvious the current research setup is missing? For example there's highly interesting research about IVM to treat cancer. Do we see a rush of high quality studies happening for that?
[-] stereomatch | 1 points
Commentary
Interestingly, while ivermectin, colchicine, and fluvoxamine are mentioned in the twitter video, and in the videos in the CBS article, only fluvoxamine is mentioned in the text of the article itself (which suggests how panicky these article writers are). But if this advances the acceptance of early treatment so be it - once early treatment is accepted as possible, then all sorts of possibilities will emerge.
In the CBS article, fluvoxamine is the one most prominently mentioned in the context of Steve Kirsch's fluvoxamine funding study.
Unlike ivermectin (which does not cross the blood brain barrier in adult humans - unless they have meningitis), fluvoxamine does cross the blood-brain barrier, which is why Dr Been has mentioned that it may have some benefit against "brain fog".
While fluvoxamine is a promising drug, it does not seem to have the same effectiveness, or the degree of trial support we have for ivermectin. This is acknowledged by Steve Kirsch's quora post (which got some traction) about early treatments - that is examined in this reddit discussion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/lslhhb Great post about available treatment options
While Steve Kirsch's quora post is good because it also pushes for early treatment (which is what FLCCC, and all the other researchers are doing), however he places all the alternatives on an equal footing - more as a list of things to consider.
And it does not seem he has direct experience with ivermectin - so while he mentions that it has stronger data than fluvoxamine, still Steve Kirsch's area of expertise seems to be fluvoxamine - which he therefore highlights a bit more than the others.
This is all good - because if he with his entrepreneurial connections can get himself featured on CBS 60 Minutes, that will help early treatments in general to be considered as a possibility by NIH and others.
Perhaps his emphasis on fluvoxamine also has the benefit that it triggers fewer of the Pavlovian reactions from the NIH and others - who have already shot themselves in the foot by opposing ivermectin (NIH earlier hostile attitude towards ivermectin, which they reversed to neutral only recently after Senate testimony and FLCCC visit to the NIH to present their case).
As a practical matter however, I do not see how fluvoxamine can be used as a mass administered antidote to COVID-19, because it is a harder drug, with mind-altering properties, much more open to abuse and overdosing.
Ivermectin in contrast has a wide therapeutic range (very difficult to overdose on it), and is already over the counter in many countries. It is also plentiful - thanks to it's dual use in the veterinary industry as anti-parasitic. In addition it has an excellent safety record - as the FLCCC and others have said for a while, and as Dr Tess Lawrie most recently indicated to Dr John Campbell - in 40 years and 3.7B doses, there have been only 4600 adverse events, and 16 deaths reported in the drug registry. This is much lower than aspirin or ibuprofen.
Thus of all the drug candidates right now - ivermectin is the clear winner in terms of trial data, safety and efficacy.
However, fluvoxamine, colchicine, inhaled budesonide (inhaled steroids) all have potential - but will always require much closer monitoring because of their side effects and potential for harm. And thus will require physician monitoring (perhaps this is why these drugs will be liked much more by physician associations?).
Ivermectin meanwhile also has the potential to be used during a 3rd or 4th wave on government instruction - in a way which could rapidly bring the wave to a halt (simultaneous dosing of ivermectin during a wave).
Contrast this with the logistics of mass prescribing fluvoxamine and other such drugs. Also compare to Remdesivir - an antiviral - but which in practice was not effective, because it was not a tablet, but intravenous, and thus would always be delivered a bit too late. Since it required a hospital to administer it intravenously. Remdesivir was also expensive - which will not be a problem for fluvoxamine etc. which are also generic drugs, like ivermectin.
[-] stereomatch | 1 points
Link below to the CBS article. And rough transcripts of the videos there.
Interestingly, ivermectin and colchicine are not mentioned in the text of the CBS article, although fluvoxamine is, since it is related to the Steve Kirsch story. Both ivermectin and colchicine are mentioned in the video (see Rough Transcript below).
First 13:24 minute video at the top has the journalist interview Dr. David Seftel (also South African origin - like Dr. Paul Marik and Dr Tess Lawrie) about the covid19 infections among employees at a racetrack. Then Steve Kirsch etc.
Second 2:38 minute video has journalist interviewing Dr Francis Collins, Director of the NIH.
The Twitter video segment that mentions ivermectin is here at the 1:40 minute mark (see above for Rough Transcript of that Twitter video segment).
Third 2:39 minute video continues discussion.
Rough Transcript:
CBS 60 Minutes: When it came to looking for COVID-19 treatments, if you could go back and rewind and do one thing differently from the beginning, is there anything you would have done differently?
Dr Francis Collins (Director, NIH): You know when we looked back in March and April (2020), there were an awful lot of scattershot efforts happening to try to find effective treatments. It wasn't as coordinated as it needed to be. We ultimately tried to pull the clinical trial effort in the US into a more organized form. I wish we had started that sooner. And I wish we had had an even stronger push for agents that you could take by mouth, even before you were in the hospital (AKA early treatment) to try to prevent the disease. It took a while after the hydroxychloroquine debacle (HCQ) to sort of get that back on track.
(NOTE: Why did they react so - and not continue in a logical manner ? As scientists they should have, instead of dismissing ivermectin out of hand, or even HCQ out of hand)
CBS 60 Minutes: Did the misinformation about that, did the rollout about that kind of hurt research on other repurposed drugs?
Dr Francis Collins (Director, NIH): All the enthusiasm about HCQ was basically dependent on anecdotal reports. I was worried from the very beginning. This is not the way to demonstrate whether something is really going to work. Basically it was a bust.
(NOTE: so why didn't they fund HCQ research - and even if that was a bust, by what logic did they deny funding to ivermectin - as Dr Rajter reported while doing his Broward County Hospitals research, they were not getting a response from the NIH on funding)
Dr Francis Collins (Director, NIH): And that did leave everybody with kind of a sour taste in the mouth about - wow - this whole idea of trying to grab something and repurpose it for this new pandemic maybe doesn't feel all that promising. We had to get over that.
(NOTE: what wimps - so they were hurt, and they chose to take it out on ivermectin? - how is that scientific, logical behavior ?)
Dr Francis Collins (Director, NIH): And that did leave everybody with kind of a sour taste in the mouth. All the enthusiasm about HCQ was basically dependent on anecdotal reports. I was worried from the very beginning. This is not the way to demonstrate whether something is really going to work. Basically it was a bust.
Dr Francis Collins (Director, NIH): But let me say, repurposing drugs is only going to work if you are kind of lucky, 'cause you are basically picking things that were developed for a totally different disease - HCQ for malaria.
(NOTE: how does this argument even make sense? Just because drugs are made for other diseases doesn't PRECLUDE them from being useful for something else - so if you apply relatively safe drugs and throw them at a problem, you may have gotten an earlier result - except they didn't behave like logical scientists, but were hand-wringing all through - as a result the burden of action fell on the country doctors and the doctors in the trenches to do their thing, and you opposed them tooth and nail for filling in that void that was created by hand-wringers. All these hand-wringers opposed action and trial and error - and now seek understanding of their emotional state - even as they were not in the trenches but on their desks)
CBS 60 Minutes: What would you say to people who right now have COVID-19 about participating in trials. Make that pitch.
Dr Francis Collins (Director, NIH): We will never find out how to help people with COVID-19 without running trials that require volunteers to take part. They are our heroes. So anybody listening to this, if you have just been diagnosed with COVID-19, you might be a great person to take part in a trial for one of these new drugs we are talking about. If you are not diagnosed with COVID-19 - you just got your test and you are fine, you may be a person to take part in a vaccine trial. Because those are running now too - we haven't finished that. And if you are somebody who has survived COVID-19 and you are fine, you may want to donate your plasma. 'Cause that could also be beneficial.
(NOTE: firstly these people are STILL not aware that a negative PCR test means nothing - it could be actually negative, or could be a positive person who is testing negative - I have seen households with all sick with COVID-19 where half test PCR negative and half test PCR positive. And I have seen PCR negative patients who have been told by doctors "it is just pneumonia" and they have delayed taking action even as their oxygen levels fell below 90 - just because they were reassured "they are negative")
(NOTE: regarding the other point of patient recruitment in trials - this person is still not aware of the feeling in the trenches - doctors who have prescribed ivermectin no long support any new randomized placebo control trials - because they feel they cannot force a patient to be on placebo, and deny them access to ivermectin. This is the view of the FLCCC, and many doctors in the field who have used ivermectin on their patients. Dr Tess Lawrie in her interview with Dr John Campbell has said that given the meta-analysis evidence, any trial that starts now will be interrupted mid-trial as the disparity between ivermectin vs. placebo arm will become obvious - and if patients are informed of the benefit of ivermectin they may be giving up being on placebo, no patient in their right mind will volunteer for such a trial - basically the evidence for ivermectin is settled - it works. Dr Tess Lawrie suggested it would be a violation of a doctor's Hippocratic Oath at this time to relegate a patient to the placebo arm)
(NOTE: all these bureaucrats can think about is their job - and how things should work to fit their job - they are incapable of thinking outside the box, or in ways that could jeopardize the centrality of their role in the process)
(NOTE: this guy is still not aware that "donate your plasma" for convalescent plasma is not an attractive option - since convalescent plasma has been demonstrated to not be that effective - as the FLCCC also takes pains to point out, along with Remdesivir, both being almost useless in practice - Remdesivir because it inevitably gets administered too late (though it may have some benefit for cases of viral persistence in immuno-compromised patients))
Dr Francis Collins (Director, NIH): Go to the website combatcovid - https://combatcovid.hhs.gov/ - it will tell you how to do all those things. And you can be part of the solution in this terrible pandemic.
(NOTE: so people can keep doing what they want them to do, but they will not do what people want them to do - fund ivermectin trials when Dr Rajter of Broward Country Florida needed that support - now of course ivermectin trials have been largely self-funded - in some the doctors have funded PCR testing with their own money - as Dr Tess Lawrie was informing Dr John Campbell. In fact Dr Tess Lawrie's meta-analysis is ALSO self-funded - because no organization would fund such endeavours. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is now funding a trial at McMaster Univ Canada on ivermectin, fluvoxamine etc. - however as explained above, that is a little bit too late, as given the evidence, it would not be a violation of a doctor's Hippocratic Oath to not harm the patient in the placebo arm, if they KNOW ivermectin works)
(continued below)
[-] stereomatch | 1 points
(continued from above)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-repurposed-drugs-60-minutes-2021-03-07/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7d&linkId=112900030 COVID-19 research points to repurposed drugs
60 Minutes reports on a 40-year-old OCD pill that may prevent severe symptoms in Covid patients. Mar 7, 2021 By Mabel Kabani
This Sunday, 60 Minutes reports on how a 40-year-old obsessive-compulsive disorder drug, Fluvoxamine, is being tested in the U.S. and Canada to be repurposed and possibly used in the fight against COVID-19. A trial organized by the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is testing the efficacy of this inexpensive pill in preventing severe lung damage in COVID patients.
60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi spoke with the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, about the job of therapeutics and drugs in this pandemic, and what role they play now that there are vaccines available.
"I'm as enthusiastic about vaccines as anybody you've ever met. But at the same time, I'm a realist," Collins said. "We know that vaccines are not going to reach everybody across the entire planet in the next couple of weeks. People are going to continue to get sick in the meantime... we need treatments for those people."
Collins explained that although he is a proponent of the vaccine, it's "not the whole answer," and as the virus transforms and continues to mutate into different variants, potentially rendering the original vaccine ineffective, "you want something that has a broad efficacy against the whole family of coronavirus."
Currently available therapeutics in U.S. hospitals are remdesivir, dexamethasone and monoclonal antibodies. So why are physicians intrigued by fluvoxamine? If approved, patients would be able to take a pill.
"A big need right now is for a drug that you could take by mouth, that you could be offered as soon as you had a positive test, and that would reduce the likelihood that the virus is going to make you really sick," Collins told 60 Minutes. "If you're somebody at high risk, that is, over 65 with a chronic illness and you've just been diagnosed... you have to basically go somewhere for two or three hours and have an intravenous line placed."
With hospitals already taxed with sick patients, the need for an oral drug would "reduce the likelihood of the drug making [people] really sick," according to the NIH's Collins.
Though fluvoxamine was already approved in 2007 for the treatment of OCD, the FDA needs to evaluate the benefits and risks of the drug for off-label use against COVID-19. The risks may be negligible because fluvoxamine has been widely used and monitored for side effects for over a decade.
"Fluvoxamine could certainly be something you want to put in the tool chest... it looks as if it has the promise to reduce the likelihood of severe illness," Collins explained. "It's not going to be the complete answer... but if it is a way of getting us further towards that goal of having fewer and fewer people really sick from this disease, then we want to pursue it as vigorously as we can."
Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health told 60 Minutes that misinformation about hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria, had a detrimental impact on looking for existing drugs that could also be used to to treat COVID patients.
"Basically it was a bust... maybe it got in the way of trying other kinds of repurposed drugs. All the enthusiasm about hydroxychloroquine was basically dependent on anecdotal reports," Collins said. "And that did leave everybody with kind of a sour taste in their mouths... we had to get over that. I think we're over it now."
Though ultimately, we want something "designed specifically" for this virus, Collins told 60 Minutes Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi that there is a way for everyone to play a part in finding a solution to this pandemic: by participating as volunteers in clinical trials.
"If you've just been diagnosed with COVID, you might be a great person to take part in a trial for one of these new drugs we're talking about," Collins said. "If you're not diagnosed with COVID, you've actually just got a test and you're fine, you might be a great person to partake in a vaccine trial... and if you are somebody who's survived COVID-19 and you're fine, you might want to donate your plasma. Because that could also be beneficial. You can be part of the solution to this terrible pandemic."
[-] Haitchpeasauce | 3 points
A sour taste? Do mine eyes deceive me? A sour taste?
They let a "sour taste" cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives. One bad experience with HCQ, which itself was due to poor understanding of the drug leading to incorrect application, causes authorities to overlook all other options? The frenzy around HCQ was driven by anecdote and the backlash by politics, but Ivermectin is supported by well run clinical trials with overwhelming data, and yet is dismissed out of hand.
All because of a sour taste??
This is gross incompetence without excuse.
Are they this ignorant, or are they lying?
It is coming up on 12 months for the NIH to seriously consider Ivermectin and other oral medications to fight and prevent COVID-19. How long does this sour taste last for?
Why have so many died and so many are still suffering, answer me that Dr Collins.
So, they’re “working with their colleagues in industry”. My guess is that none of those colleagues were looking at off-patent drugs they don’t own. Maybe their colleagues should come from the medical research field instead of the “industry”.
[-] Doc-Crentist | 1 points
I loled when he said that. All the great progress on Fluvoxamine is no thanks to NIH. They literally talked about how they were running out of money and Steve Kirsch saved the day.
Is there still hope for colchicine? COLCORONA and RECOVERY both stopped recruiting...
Principle trial was only testing budesonide a week or two ago. Now they are testing budesonide and colchine! They were supposed to test IVM, I wonder what happened to that?
[-] Doc-Crentist | 1 points
[-] scaramangaf | 1 points
aspirin. would reduce deaths by 50%, given at symptom onset. in fact, that's the one issue that is not being discussed enough. the key is EARLY treatment.
[-] Flying_Toufu | 7 points | Mar 09 2021 09:25:27
Collins declared in an NPR interview w Harris a month or two ago that the old repurposed drugs had been trialed and proven useless and we needed new drugs. Suddenly, here he is speaking of early-use as Dr Zelenko's 3-med protocol pioneered last March. The 3/28 DrZ interview had enough checkable info to have proven the HCQ (Collins mentioned a relative of it, also a gun best used w/ zinc as most folk are short on that bullet). And, if the extensive use of Ivermectin in Dominican Republic did not suffice for conceited Usanian docs, what Dr Hibberd's interview revealed in Toronto was surely evidence enough to prove BRD the efficacy of Ivermectin for beating Covid. I would like the brightest member of Biden's team -- maybe the ex-CIA analyst? -- to look at the evidence for Fauci & Collins being criminally negligent, thereby causing hundreds of K deaths in the USA, & millions in the world as I am afraid our no longer leading nation is nonetheless followed by others. For a billion bucks we could make enough Ivermectin to treat the whole world for this half-assed vaxing is just too wasteful & slow. We should have done that by last summer (indeed, Dr Hibberd suggested it) & would have if the med-sci establishment had a Feynman class mind. Ah, just the other day, the doctor's doctor, the very orthodox John Campbell finally jumped aboard SS Ivermectin. My guess is that is why Collins decided he had to at least mention it.
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