Blut2 wrote: » https://twitter.com/marktigheST/status/1410158673486307331?s=19 When we're an extreme outlier on policy it requires justification. We have a higher vaccination rate of 60-69 year olds than a lot of other European countries, but they're all now more open than us. Why?
greyday wrote: » Yep. no science backs up any claim that ivermectin has efficacy which would be accepted by regulators for Covid.
charlie14 wrote: » Have you actually read my post of how Merck who manufacture ivermectin from their statement view these so called studies ? "No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against Covid-19, no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with Covid-19 and a concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies " Like this other poster you are on here pushing a dangerous nonsense that has no connection with this thread and making claims that the producers of this drug completely disagree with.
Redrum123 wrote: » The producers of a drug which is now out of patent and of no more value to them. Wow, I'm so shocked that they wouldn't recommend the use of that product over their new, similar but patented version of the drug. Jesus...
ceadaoin. wrote: » Of course not. History has shown that pharma companies always put the interests and safety of patients first and not their own profits. Its not like they deliberately started a prescription drug addiction crisis and lied about knowing exactly what they were doing, all while pocketing billions of dollars and laughing at the people they were killing. Nope. Never happened. It's completely unbelievable that they would put profits over saving lives, ever
Nevertheless, assessments of ivermectin as prophylaxis or treatment for mild to severe COVID-19 continue being published in preprints26 27 and protocol repositories,28 29 which do not follow the recommended process to ensure quality standards in publications; whereas peer-reviewed reports (both observational and experimental studies) are slowly emerging, yet methodologically limited by heterogeneity in population receiving ivermectin, dosis applied and uncontrolled cointerventions.28–30 Similarly, other studies that can be rapidly retrieved in ClinicalTrials.gov, medRxiv and MEDLINE make up a quite heterogeneous body of evidence31–33 (including ivermectin as intervention, but with different underlying clinical questions), among other issues that do not contribute to the certainty of evidence—according to the systematic reviews that we comment on below. Up to February 2021, the PAHO identified twenty two ivermectin randomised clinical trials through a rapid review of current available literature.34 There is considerable heterogeneity in the population receiving ivermectin, with studies administering it to family contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases as a prophylactic measure29 and other studies using ivermectin for treatment of mild and moderate infected cases28 or even severe hospitalised patients.30 Applied dosis and outcomes of interest were also highly variable. Additionally, patients also received various cointerventions, and control groups received different kinds of comparators ranging from placebo or no intervention to standard care or even hydroxychloroquine. The authors claim that pooled estimates suggest beneficial effects with ivermectin, but the certainty of the evidence was very low due to high risk of bias and small number of events throughout the included studies. Most study results have been made publicly available as preprints or unpublished, with no peer review or formal editorial process. Others incorporated their results only in the clinical trial register, but nearly half of these randomised clinical trials had not been registered. Registering clinical trials before they begin and making results available fulfils a large number of purposes, like reducing publication and selective outcome reporting biases, promoting more efficient allocation of research funds and facilitating evidence syntheses that will inform stakeholders and decision-makers in the future. A recently published systematic review and network meta-analysis compared the efficacy and safety of pharmacological interventions for COVID-19 in hospitalised patients. It included 110 studies (78 published and 38 unpublished) with 40 randomised clinical trials and 70 observational studies. Based on observational data, they found that high-dose intravenous immunoglobulin, ivermectin and tocilizumab were associated with reduced mortality rate in critically ill patients. None of the analysed drugs was significantly associated with increased non-cardiac serious adverse events compared with standard care, but the overall certainty of the evidence was very low in all outcomes and reduced the ability for recommendation.
Well-designed and reported meta-analyses can provide valuable and confirmatory information. Ivermectin is generally safe at the conventional doses in approved indications. However, IVM safety became a concern due to longer use and/or higher doses in COVID-19 patients. IVM was found to be of similar safety and tolerability to placebo even at 10 times the highest FDA-approved dose of 200 g/kg in healthy voluntaries , but not in COVID-19 patients. In addition, IVM use needs further analysis when combined with other agents for COVID-19. In several settings, it was wrongly assumed that the potential benefit of using repurposed drugs outweigh their potential harm [46]. Well-designed RCTs with longer IVM use and higher IVM doses are necessary in COVID-19 to further evaluate is safety. Our study has several strengths. First, we performed a recent and comprehensive systematic search in five engines and unpublished studies without language restriction. Second, we only evaluated RCTs; several previous studies included all types of designs and their findings may have been biased and confounded. Third, we evaluated outcomes with information from at least two RCTs; no data was available for clinical improvement and need for mechanical ventilation. Fourth, we described the severity of COVID-19 disease per RCT carefully, using the WHO classification [19]; our findings do not support the use of IVM in mild disease. Fifth, we performed subgroup analyses by RoB and severity of disease, which were mostly similar to main analyses; however, we found that three RCTs at high risk of bias [30, 36, 37] had a significant reduction of all-case mortality. Sixth, we also performed sensitivity analysis by excluding studies with short follow up times; effects were similar. Finally, we evaluated the quality of evidence using GRADE methodology. Our study also has some limitations. First, quality of evidence was low or very low for all outcomes. However, our study evaluated the best current available evidence and all IVM effects were negative. Second, we included only ten RCTs, five of them using a placebo as control group, and studies included a relative low number of participants. However, included RCTs are the available studies until March 22, 2021. Third, all selected RCTs evaluated patients with mild or mild to moderate COVID-19. However, the supposed benefit of IVM has been positioned precisely for mild disease, but we did not find differential IVM effects between these two severity categories. Fourth, some outcomes were scarce, in particular all-cause mortality and severe adverse events; we adjusted for zero events in one or both RCT arms in our analyses of these outcomes. Finally, analyses of primaryoutcomes excluding short follow up studies (5-10 days) showed similar IVM effects. In conclusion, in comparison to SOC or placebo, IVM did not reduce all-cause mortality, length of stay, respiratory viral clearance, adverse events and serious adverse events in RCTs of patients with mild to moderate COVID-19. We did not find data about IVM effects on clinical improvement and need for mechanical ventilation. Additional ongoing RCTs should be completed in order to update our analyses. In the meanwhile, IVM is not a viable option to treat COVID-19 patients, and only should be used within clinical trials context.
[Deleted User] wrote: » You clearly aren't informed enough to be talking about this subject, which is precisely why you are posting about such. I suspected as much when you replied to greyday quoting him saying "Yep. no science backs up any claim that ivermectin has efficacy which would be accepted by regulators for Covid." and then demonstrated that you don't know what efficacy means, nor the threshold required for experts to recommend a treatment. Every meta-analysis I've read about Ivermectin has come to an identical conclusion and the opposite of what you're concluding. The difference between the experts writing the meta-analyses and you? They don't get their 'knowledge' from Facebook. Here's a snippet from https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111678: How about a snippet from here https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab591/6310839 (apologies for the formatting, copied from a PDF): Of course, this will all go way above your head. Don't spread fake news, it makes you a bad person.
Blut2 wrote: » The measure used by health services the world over to assess cost/benefits of decisions is Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALY). Basically - what decisions can we make with the limited resources we have available to save the most amount of high quality life years. In a covid context given the median age of death is 83. Which is actually higher than the life expectancy in Ireland - 82.5 So assuming each of those covid deaths would have lived for 6 months (which is possibly a high figure given the above) that gives them a value of QALY value of 0.5 QALY. Or about 1125 total QALY saved by our covid measures. If an otherwise healthy 20 year old kills themself due the sky high domestic abuse rates, or lockdowns etc, that "costs" 63 QALY. If someone aged 50 dies of cancer thats a "cost" of 23 QALY. Which means all it would take is twenty young people across the entire country to have killed themselves (or to do so in the near future) to wipe out the QALY from the entire covid response. Or about fifty premature cancer deaths. Not both, either. Or some combination of the two. Which we are unfortunately highly, highly likely to surpass. This might all sound a bit heartless - every death is always a tragedy - but in the real world running a health service (and country) involves making choices. Choices which minimise loss. The maths above which would suggest Ireland made the wrong choice, and Sweden the right one.
Blut2 wrote: » Oops, mea culpa on the life expectancy at age 80 - end of the day here. But that doesn't change the base calculation hugely, which is the QALY per covid patient saved is still extremely small given the median age of death of 83. Which means the lives saved by the longest, strictest, lockdown in Europe here in Ireland will rapidly be overshot by the QALY lost to suicides, deaths of despair, and cancer from the lockdowns, even at very low numbers, given their high QALY. Each death to a suicide or delayed cancer diagnosis is much, much more costly to society than a covid death - by an order of magnitude. Sweden never once reached their hospital capacity. So theres absolutely no guarantee we would have, if we had copied their measures. I don't think anyone is claiming that the Swedish healthcare system suffered no disruption from covid. But rather that it was much, much less serious than the disruption to the Irish healthcare system (by our government's choice). And consequentially will result in much much fewer avoidable deaths from other causes.
Blut2 wrote: » Oops, mea culpa on the life expectancy at age 80 - end of the day here. But that doesn't change the base calculation hugely, which is the QALY per covid patient saved is still extremely small given the median age of death of 83. Which means the lives saved by the longest, strictest, lockdown in Europe here in Ireland will rapidly be overshot by the QALY lost to suicides, deaths of despair, and cancer from the lockdowns, even at very low numbers, given their high QALY. Each death to a suicide or delayed cancer diagnosis caused by our lockdowns is much, much more costly to society than a covid death - by an order of magnitude. Sweden never once reached their hospital capacity. So theres absolutely no guarantee we would have, if we had copied their measures. I don't think anyone is claiming that the Swedish healthcare system suffered no disruption from covid. But rather that it was much, much less serious than the disruption to the Irish healthcare system (by our government's choice). And consequentially will result in much much fewer avoidable deaths from other causes.
odyssey06 wrote: » Your figures are wrong and incomplete. You simply dont know how many lives were saved or lost You have no figures for avoidable deaths due to measures in Sweden in society or healthcare. A statement tying cancer deaths and lockdowns when they have zero connection given that Sweden didnt lockdown and cancer services were disrupted. Do you have data on level.of disruption versus Denmark? Using phrasings like If someone committed suicide is vague and cannot be used in any comparison. You have zero data on same. Someone could resort to suicide after losing loved ones to the virus. Another factor your overly simple model does not consider. To compare Ireland v Sweden and not include Swedens nearest neighbours on the comparisons makes it meaningless. You fail to consider the hospital capacity of the different countries. Or the voluntary compliance for cultural reasons or reasons of population density and living arrangenents. Or that Sweden was surrounded by neighbours who did lock down and gave Sweden a free ride to an extent. So to suppose Swedish outcomes would follow to other countries if they took the same meaures is without foundation.
PintOfView wrote: » Just regarding suicides, there doesn't seem to be evidence that suicides increased. If you search there are multiple articles saying there is no noticeable increase. See -> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56818876 ". . . . Using real-time surveillance data, which records suicides as they occur but before an inquest is held, academics studied suicides in areas of England covering some 13 million people - around a quarter of the population. They found that the suicide rate between January and March 2020 was 125.7 per month compared to 121.3 per month between April and October. . . . .
Blut2 wrote: » I was responding to a post (that seems to have been deleted, oddly) that did just that - it stated the estimate of the number of lives saved by our lockdowns at 2,245 I believe. The poster will hopefully come back and repost it... This thread is about Sweden's policy, and we're in Ireland, so thats why the comparison between the two is made. You can make all the excuses for Sweden doing well you want (and it actually has less ICU capacity per capita than we do, despite having an older population), but if you'd prefer we can compare Ireland to other European countries as I did in an earlier post.
Blut2 wrote: » ... Cancer deaths and lockdowns have a huge connection - I personally know people who have died of cancer in the last 6 months, who would have lived if they had been diagnosed earlier. But they weren't, because of corona delays. The Irish cancer society estimated over 450 people with cancer, and 1600 with precancers, were not detected during the first screening pause in spring 2020 alone who would have been otherwise. When that leads to hundreds of premature cancer deaths (as it will) that will wipe out any QALY saved from our 18 months of lockdowns by itself. Swedish cancer services were not disrupted to any similar level. ...
I see Sweden are offering about €20 (200sk) to entice reluctant people to get vaxed.
Not sure what 20 quid would get you in Sweden, not much in my experience.
All it would take for me is to offer the Moderna instead of the AZ.
Sweden had a stricter lockdown than Norway/ Finland according to the Oxford analysis.
Sweden might have fared better if it shut down inward travel like Norway, so might we, remember Cheltenham/ Italian match.
I've read a few posts about Sweden having a stricter lockdown than Norway and Finland, but I find that hard to believe because I was in Sweden earlier this year and life was completely normal there. It's only ever been recommendations there. I don't know how it could have had a stricter lockdown than those countries when there doesn't appear to me to have been any lockdown there. I'll have to read that Oxford analysis to see what they mean by lockdown.
That Philip O'Connor "journalist" was on Eamon Dunphy's podcast in March or thereabouts claiming Sweden (where he lives) was basically a runaway train on the brink of collapse, that there was essentially about to be a public revolution over the hands off approach the government took, that the place was about to fall off a cliff.
Seeing as absolutely none of this happened in the end I wonder will we get a retraction from him. He's from the Paul Murphy school of left, he would love a good lockdown.
This may in fact be the best explanation to account for the different outcomes of countries. Those that controlled borders early on fared better. And the varying harshness of internal control measures may have far less impact on control of spread than strict border control.
I think you might be waiting a long time for a retraction! More disappointingly, the media won't be calling any of these doomsayers to account.
Hence the saying "be careful what you wish for".
Covid hasn`t gone away but you may perhaps be getting over anguish in relation to the numbers. The numbers infected, other than the possibility of a variant developing, were never that big a problem. What was was the relationship between that number, those hospitalised and requiring ICU, and most of all deaths. Since the introduction of vaccine, although not entirely broken, that chain has been severely weakened.
Back of an envelope figures for Ireland. 1st. May - 1st August 2020. 5,383 new cases. 504 deaths. Same period 2021. 53,610 new cases 129 deaths. Roughly 10 times the number of new cases this year but just 1/4 of the deaths.
June 1st. - August 1st. 2020. 944 new cases, 118 deaths. Same period this year 40,728 new cases 53 deaths. Over 40 times the number of new cases with less than 1/2 the deaths.
I don`t see where there is a dismissal of herd immunity. Just a realisation that with the more transmissible Delta variant the percentage required is most likely higher than previously thought to be and that few if any country have reached that figure in fully vaccinated.
Works both ways it seems.
I haven`t seen the media call Johan Giesecke to account on his herd immunity masterplan either. With his subsequent appointment as vice chair of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Infectious Hazards, a role in which he is advisor to the WHO Director-General on pandemic response, more important of media calling to account than the ramblings of a random journalist on an Eamon Dunphy podcast imo.
Sweden have declared they were hoping for herd immunity with their strategy, and there was science that allowed that outcome, but that their main goal was to flatten the curve and slow they spread as their scientists believed nothing would halt the spread of Covid in the early days in the absence of a vaccine.
They weren’t alone in looking at the science of herd immunity in the early stages. Even New Zealand had it under consideration briefly. Contemplating the possibility of herd immunity and implementing it as a strategy are different things.
You have obviously set your stall that Sweden’s strategy was a herd immunity masterplan, despite their declarations to the contrary- it’s your prerogative to think them liars.
But does the fact that Johan Geisecke was appointed advisor to the WHO director-general for pandemic response not even give you pause to consider that perhaps global health experts see value in his theories?
Not for the first time I have no idea what you are on about. Other than just another of your vague ramblings opposing vaccines.
Nobody has ever claimed that vaccines were 100% guaranteed to prevent transmissions and thus eradicate Covid. But then you appear not to know the difference between eradication and herd immunity.
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