RogerKnights | 10 points | Apr 21 2021 16:52:55

Why Big Med's Blind Eye?

Why has Big Med used preposterous pretexts to marginalize the use of Ivermectin for Covid-19 (and why did it fail to fund early studies of it)? Here’s a list of likely or possible motives for their behavior, roughly in their order of importance. (I don’t think that Big Med regulators are getting payoffs from Big Pharma.):

A strong pro-vaccine mentality, which many Big Med authorities share, leading to:

A) a determination that the public should not be fobbed off with a second-rate remedy;

B) a desire to eliminate the virus worldwide by vaccinating everyone; and

C) a desire to maintain the maximum incentive for vaccine producers to invest in production, research, and development by keeping alternatives out of the market.

A desire to protect, from competition, anti-Covid-19 therapeutics, known by Big Med to be in the pipeline, such as:

Molnupiravir, Merck’s recently unveiled drug—a drug that has already had about $400 million invested in it by private money and a government grant. In adds, the government has ordered up to 100,000 treatment-doses from Merck for $356 million, or $3560 per patient. See the gushing story about it in Bloomberg Business Week at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-25/merck-mrk-molnupiravir-pill-could-change-the-fight-against-covid?utm_campaign=news&utm_medium=bd&utm_source=applenews

OR:

https://getpocket.com/read/3289802725

The Bloomberg article illuminates how intimately Big Med’s regulatory and advisory agencies have been involved in the financing and test-designing of anti-Covid-19 medications and vaccines. Therefore, regulators might resent and resist approving a repurposed drug that would upset the applecarts of companies they have encouraged to spend big on anti-Covid-19 medications..

An awareness of, or hope for, a paper in the pipeline that would play up ivermectin’s adverse effects. There have been anecdotal reports of such AEs from Brazil.

Hope that an RCT study in the pipeline would debunk ivermectin’s effectiveness, as the Minnesota RCT study of HCQ did.

A fear by national or regional authorities abroad that green-lighting ivermectin would result in their country or region being put at the end of the queue for getting vaccine supplies. (E.g., they might fear that the WHO would move them lower on its donation schedules, or reduce their allowance.)

A fear that recognizing ivermectin as therapeutic might remove the “no other approved treatment available” justification for the Emergency Use Authorization for vaccines. (But I think that if ivermectin were given only an EUA, it wouldn’t “count” as a fully “approved” treatment and therefore wouldn’t disrupt the EUA that vaccines have been given.)

POSSIBLE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOTIVATIONS:

(Many of these partially overlap within one another.)

“Learned incapacity,” defined as: “Education, training, experience or habits that lead to an inability to think beyond a set of constraints and assumptions.” E.g., a failure to realize that what counts as being a responsible regulator varies with circumstances. I.e., that in an emergency situation, absolute proof of efficacy is not a requirement (example: the rollout of penicillin in 1942 on the basis of a 15-patient study), and that a lengthy trial to prove safety isn’t needed for a repurposed drug whose safety has already been established.

Academic scientism—a believe that anything short off the most scientifically rigorous, gold-standard evidence is worthless, likely contaminated by subjectivity and bias..

Affronted officiousness—a desire to punish off-label advocates for not showing authorities proper respect by jumping through their designated hoops.

Groupthink, follow-the-leader deference, conformism.

A dogma-centered, authority-centered, by-the-book attitude, as opposed to one that is patient-centered and pragmatic.

A black/white mentality that is uncomfortable psychologically with shades-of-gray evidence that falls short of proof.

A Bureau-centric mentality. The Bureau’s mission (helping patients) is secondary. Deaths are viewed as collateral damage in accomplishing the mission of vaccination. Patients are seen as lab rats, not ends in themselves.

NIH (not-invented-here) attitude.

A reluctance to share the glory of defeating Covid-19 with a drug outside their shepherding.

A desire to be seen as “advancing science” with new medicines—which ivermectin is not.

A disdain high-status, academic “bench doctors” often have for low-status “trench doctors.” The latter are sometimes referred to dismissively by god-doctors as “local MDs” or “LMDs.”

A fear of ivermectin’s not working as well as proponents claim, leading to some deaths that would not have occurred if those patients had been vaccinated—something critics would make a fuss about.

A knee-jerk belief that ivermectin just CAN’T be working as well as is claimed, because it is being “touted” by “enthusiasts” on “social media,” like HCQ.

“Doubling down” or “denial”—a fear that admitting the usefulness of ivermectin NOW would prompt critics to claim that 100,000 (say) lives would have been saved if they had approved it earlier.

Cowardice—a crime of omission may seem less likely to draw criticism from peers than an offense of commission (which would be attacked for being gullible, unrigorous, and hasty).

Short-sighted tunnel vision. No appreciation of how their delay-and-deny behavior will play in the court of public opinion if ivermectin turns out to be as effective as claimed—meaning that Big Med has cost society a million deaths and a trillion dollars in damage due to unnecessary lockdowns after the first half of 2020.

————

Nothing makes me more confident in the accusations I’ve made above as Big Med’s inside-the-box blindness to the risk it is running by RECOMMENDING AGAINST the use of ivermectin of public, and eventually political, condemnation it is running. They will be accused of allowing the pandemic to rage, and lockdowns to persist, since May 2020.

It is fitting that the hubris that led them into offensiveness has blinded them to the nemesis that will result.

I suspect they foresee only this: That by the fall of 2021 their approved therapeutics will have practically eliminated hospitalizations and deaths, and that they’ll be hailed as heroes for so doing. Maybe they will, in some quarters, for a while.

But then, when ivermectin proves their comparatively expensive pill’s equal or better in performance elsewhere in the world, accusatory questions will be asked. Once it turns out that 90% of our lockdowns could have been avoided but for Big Med’s blind eye, the big anti-lockdown contingent (I wasn’t one of them) in the U.S. will rise up and demand hearings and trials. And Trump might come roaring back in 2022 as a candidate for a House seat and then its Speakership. (Ha-ha! The Pranksters on Olympus will be relishing the appalling sight.) All their own knock-on doing,.

Oh, and another effect Big Med failed to anticipate: A lasting social legacy of distrust (mostly unjustified) of the advice and warnings of bigshot medicos, and a belief that “All professions are conspiracies against the laity.” (G.B. Shaw)

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