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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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Feels like he's dug himself too deep of a hole at this point.

It feels like no one bothers addressing any of his arguments, and that they were just waiting for Scott to write a response post so they can pretend it's the final word.

It feels like no one bothers addressing any of his arguments

Look, way back when, for my sins I trawled through that Cochrane meta roundup of all the ivermectin and other possible cures studies, and the vast majority of them were shoddy, threw everything in so it's hard to say which if any had a positive effect, and the best effects constantly and consistently showed up in developing world countries and/or areas with high poverty levels and high parasitic infection levels (including the study from Florida - which is an area of high parasite load).

So the conclusion "ivermectin helps by reducing parasite load" is the reasonable one, not that "ivermectin has an anti-viral effect". The only study that would make me incline to the second one is the Israeli one, because that seems to have been carried out on a city population with high standards of living (on the other hand, it was formerly agricultural region, is to the west of the West Bank which does have high parasitic infection levels, and it may have included poorer/immigrant population in the study, I haven't looked into it deeply enough yet).

Alexandros ignores any comments to that effect and continues on with "all the studies show this works! Cadegiani shows it works!" while Cadigiani is a huckster and the other co-authors of his study all have bees in their bonnets about vaccination.

Frankly, if I were looking to buy a new kettle and looking for recommendations, I wouldn't trust Alexandros on that.

Look, way back when, for my sins I trawled through that Cochrane meta roundup of all the ivermectin and other possible cures studies, and the vast majority of them were shoddy, threw everything in so it's hard to say which if any had a positive effect, and the best effects constantly and consistently showed up in developing world countries and/or areas with high poverty levels and high parasitic infection levels (including the study from Florida - which is an area of high parasite load).

Ok, and the counter argument to that is that even if you throw out all the supposedly shoddy studies, you still have a signal, that the negative studies are just as shoddy if you hold them to the same standard, and that if the worms are responsible, we should see some evidence specifically in support of that hypothesis. You do have an advantage on me, in that I didn't actually look up all the relevant studies, but it's just weird how no one is responding to the points he's raising.

Frankly, if I were looking to buy a new kettle and looking for recommendations, I wouldn't trust Alexandros on that.

It's just bizarre to feel so strongly about him, but think Scott is ok at the same time.

You know, just for that I'm going to read some more of his posts, because you seem to have accurately described my unconscious process. I'm pretty much in the "Ivermectin probably has little effect on Covid, and all the studies purportedly showing that are terrible." But I'll at least give him a chance to address that position.

Oh wow, wasn't expecting that. Kudos!

If you want to cut through the unrelated side swipes, and the minutiae, I'd say the core of the argument is that even if you remove the studies Gideon / Scott don't like you still have a strong pro-ivermectin signal, and that the worms hypothesis doesn't hold water. I don't know if I can point to a specific place this is well articulated, because 37 blog posts... but if you want to give him a fair shot, this is what I'd focus on.