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Comment by Matthew Elvey on Should I advocate for people to not buy Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 in the Philippines for now? · 2022-08-25T23:50:51.001Z · LW · GW

I would say the strength of the evidence For the efficacy of ivermectin in treating in preventing Covid is greater than it was when I originally posted.

But it is less apparent. Pervasive censorship and malinformation campaigns mean people are more easily misled and have to do more and more work to have a clear understanding, It’s easier and easier to come to utterly invalid conclusions despite a substantial amount of research that is too superficial - E.g. rests on minimal assumptions of integrity of the peer review process and major institutions that it turns out one can prove are unwarranted. I would largely agree with the advice that JimRandomH gives, with this caveat: recognizing that there is pervasive disinformation and misinformation without a guide is hard; don’t rely on Wikipedia for more than Jim suggests. I suspect it’s easier to prove I am right here by proving the malinformation is malinformation. Communicating a straightforward argument for my point of view that won’t be rejected out of hand based on information the average reader thinks they already know is likely impossible. Perhaps even given the average reader on this platform. I’m thinking a solution is to focus on a few of the false claims of the other side that are so egregious, important and easy to disprove that once proven, they relatively quickly make the reader more open to considering further evidence. Then there is the possibility of conveying an argument that takes more time to build or prove. Another strategy is the one that the FLCCC use where they tell the story of who they are (subject matter experts) and how they came to believe what they believe. A year has gone by and I wonder which of these (if any) folks here are most interested in hearing about. The ivmmeta site is useful firstly because it is a continuously updated, comprehensive linked list of all but a handful of the relevant academic research.

Comment by Matthew Elvey on Should I advocate for people to not buy Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 in the Philippines for now? · 2021-06-04T20:36:05.224Z · LW · GW

I contacted the maintainer of the New York Times treatment tracker when her Information about Ivermectin was sorely (months) out of date. The interaction led me to conclude it’s not a reliable source. She promptly blocked me and didn’t respond and didn’t update it. I’m new here (or misplaced my credentials) so I won’t link to the tweet of the DM but it’s public. I’ve read all the primary source clinical trial studies on ivermectin for Covid. (including the one that just came out on 6/2. ). Either the reporter hasn’t read most of them or she’s part of the disinformation campaign.