The New Normal

[Campgottagopee]

yikes

Ohio judge orders hospital to give COVID-19 patient ivermectin

WEST CHESTER, Ohio (WKRC) — Right now, an Ohio man is being treated with ivermectin, a drug commonly used as an animal dewormer. This comes after his wife filed a lawsuit to make it happen. The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both strongly warn against...

cnycentral.com

 

[MarzNC]

yikes

Ohio judge orders hospital to give COVID-19 patient ivermectin

WEST CHESTER, Ohio (WKRC) — Right now, an Ohio man is being treated with ivermectin, a drug commonly used as an animal dewormer. This comes after his wife filed a lawsuit to make it happen. The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both strongly warn against...

cnycentral.com

Here's a more detailed report. The patient tested positive on July 9, was hospitalized in mid-July, and has been on a ventilator since early August. Most of the COVID-19 patients in ICU in Ohio are unvaccinated.

August 30, 2021

Butler County judge orders West Chester Hospital to treat COVID-19 patient with ivermectin, despite CDC warnings

Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned Americans against the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19

www.cincinnati.com

The doctor who prescribed a 5-day treatment with ivermectin co-founded the organization that is the primary source of information about the value of ivermectin as part of a combination treatment. That website pushes a treatment for hospitalized patients that includes ivermectin plus a long list of vitamins and other medications, like melatonin. They have three "protocols" with cute names for different situations. If you like, there is plenty of swag on in their e-store.

I'm not convinced that I should go out and ask my doctor for a prescription.

 

[wonderpony]

I can't tell you how funny I find the fact that people are taking ivermectin for COVID. That stuff is gross, even the apple flavored version. Ask any of the horses that I have wormed with it. It's kind of like a chalky, thick toothpaste and the trick is to get them to keep their mouths shut and actually swallow it. I can't tell you how much has been spit on me or ended up on the floor. They won't eat anything for a while afterwards, not even treats.

But, maybe people who don't believe that the vaccine works somehow believe that a product which is designed for getting rid of worms in the gut will believe that said product will work on a respiratory virus.

 

[MarzNC]

After a bit more reading, I understand better why the NIH is keeping an eye on research related to ivermectin for treatment of COVID-19. Any drug development program has to start in the lab. Successful Phase 1 and Phase 2 studies are needed to check safety and to determine a "safe and effective" dose. All drugs are toxic above a certain dose. Assuming there is evidence of efficacy, that leads to an analysis plan for Phase 3 studies, ideally two separate clinic trials for a new drug. I would guess one well-designed Phase 3 trial would be sufficient for a potential treatment for COVID-19. But so far the Phase 2 trial results are inconclusive.

I came across this article in a chemistry journal. The co-authors are very clear in their conclusion that what they suggest is that researching " . . . explore the suggested drugs within permissible levels in clinical trial to unearth their potential in combination therapy for the better treatment of COVID-19."

March 2020

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00140

 

[Brownski]

That stuff is gross, even the apple flavored version. Ask any of the horses that I have wormed with it. It's kind of like a chalky, thick toothpaste and the trick is to get them to keep their mouths shut and actually swallow it.

Can confirm

 

[MarzNC]

I can't tell you how funny I find the fact that people are taking ivermectin for COVID. That stuff is gross, even the apple flavored version. Ask any of the horses that I have wormed with it. It's kind of like a chalky, thick toothpaste and the trick is to get them to keep their mouths shut and actually swallow it. I can't tell you how much has been spit on me or ended up on the floor. They won't eat anything for a while afterwards, not even treats.

But, maybe people who don't believe that the vaccine works somehow believe that a product which is designed for getting rid of worms in the gut will believe that said product will work on a respiratory virus.

Sounds nasty! I've only had to deal with worms in cats or dogs.

 

[Milo Maltbie]

I've also heard there's a push to stop unemployment benefits for those who refuse to get vaxed.

Here's a more detailed report. The patient tested positive on July 9, was hospitalized in mid-July, and has been on a ventilator since early August. Most of the COVID-19 patients in ICU in Ohio are unvaccinated.

August 30, 2021

Butler County judge orders West Chester Hospital to treat COVID-19 patient with ivermectin, despite CDC warnings

Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned Americans against the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19

www.cincinnati.com

The doctor who prescribed a 5-day treatment with ivermectin co-founded the organization that is the primary source of information about the value of ivermectin as part of a combination treatment. That website pushes a treatment for hospitalized patients that includes ivermectin plus a long list of vitamins and other medications, like melatonin. They have three "protocols" with cute names for different situations. If you like, there is plenty of swag on in their e-store.

I'm not convinced that I should go out and ask my doctor for a prescription.

So the crowd that doesn't trust vaccinations recommended by the scientific community and medical profession wants government judges to make decisions about medical treatment?
Interesting.

mm

 

[MarzNC]

Ivermectin was approved by the FDA for use against certain parasites at a pretty low dose. Apparently Merck has been donating it to people in Africa to combat "river blindness" for 30 years. There is a prescription topical lotion approved for use on head lice. Apparently taking ivermectin as a pill to help get rid of head lice seems to help, but that is an off-label use.

35 Years: The Mectizan® Donation Program - Merck.com

The Mectizan Donation Program is the longest-running, disease-specific drug donation program of its kind.

www.merck.com

I think some naturally cautious people want to believe that ivermectin is helpful is because they are looking for whatever protection they can get against infection. Even fully vaccinated people since breakthrough infections clearly are happening a bit more because of Delta when universal masking or social distancing isn't happening. The idea of having to mask up whenever a stranger or someone you don't see often is around is not of interest to anyone. But anyone, vaccinated or not, could be infectious if they haven't been tested recently. For that matter False Negatives happen.

At this stage vaccines are being developed and tested to minimize serious illness and death since SARS-CoV-2 is so new. The mRNA approach and parallel effort to set up manufacturing meant the time having all the data and documentation for full FDA approval was faster than usual. Plus it was pretty easy in 2020 to recruit 30,000-40,000 volunteers for the Phase 3 clinical trials for multiple vaccine candidates simultaneously. Extra funding meant doing a few trials in other countries could happen at the same time. That was useful as the variants surfaced. Research related to come up with something that will prevent infection or decrease the chance of transmission by someone who is infected is happening, but will take a while.

 

[MarzNC]

So the crowd that doesn't vaccinations recommended by the scientific community and medical profession wants government judges to make decisions about medical treatment?
Interesting.

mm

Not exactly. In this case the wife was grasping at anything to try to save her husband. He'd already had all the approved treatment medications and protocols for 3 weeks in July before he was put on a ventilator. She "researched" online and found the ivermectin proponents, who are physicians too. So she believed them over the doctors who had been treating her husband for weeks. It's possible the idea of a lawsuit was suggested by the doctor who wrote the ivermectin prescription. It's not the first time. He's obviously getting a lot of press from the story.

 

[MarzNC]

@Campgottagopee : here's my reaction to the post in the other thread about the Mu variant.

There are only four Variants of Concern as identified by WHO and followed by CDC. The ones that really spread across continents are Alpha and Delta. There are currently four Variants of Interest. Mu became one of them recently. Note that Mu is not the 8th variant to be identified, it's the 12th letter of the Greek alphabet (had to look that up). That means four identified variants faded away. Every time a new variant is identified, there is a concern the mutation that makes it different could be problematic in one way or another. I know people who have been panicked by headlines about Lambda for a while.

Viruses mutate. My understanding is that coronaviruses usually mutate less often than flu viruses. But SARS-CoV-2 is a novel coronavirus that is easily transmitted for days by people with no symptoms. This pandemic is very unusual because of that fact.

Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants

All viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, change over time. Most changes have little to no impact on the virus’ properties. However, some changes may affect the virus’s properties, such as how easily it spreads, the associated disease severity, or the performance of...

www.who.int

Alpha was estimated at around 65% of the detected cases in the USA in late May 2021. As of last week, Delta is probably over 98%. With the genomic testing of samples going on, not too likely that a new variant will sneak in undetected.

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

covid.cdc.gov