Joe Rogan got burned by Reuters’s error last night, which is the last thing he needs when he’s already caught in a firestorm over COVID misinformation. Via Mediaite:
He deleted his tweet after the story was changed but there was no way to put the genie unleashed by Reuters fully back into the bottle once it began rocketing around the web. Too many people are invested in the idea that a treatment decried by experts will ultimately prove effective against COVID, exposing that the eggheads either don’t know what they’re talking about or have been deliberately badmouthing ivermectin as part of a pro-vax propaganda campaign.
The Reuters headline now reads, “Ivermectin shows ‘antiviral effect’ against COVID, Japanese company says.” What’s the difference between that and the original headline that Rogan tweeted? It has to do with the mention of “Phase III” trials. Those are conducted in human beings; if it were true that ivermectin was working to cure COVID caused by Omicron in actual people, that would be huge news at a moment when supplies of other antivirals are scarce. But Reuters misunderstood what the study said. The “antiviral effect” in this case was based on test-tube studies, not a trial of people. And we’ve already known for more than a year and a half that ivermectin has an “antiviral effect” on COVID *in the lab.* (That’s how it caught on as a possible treatment in the first place.) All the Japanese study did was confirm that that same effect is being seen against the Omicron strain as well.
Unfortunately, the way a drug behaves in the lab and how it behaves in people are two different things. That’s why Ron DeSantis is pushing the FDA to re-authorize Regeneron’s and Eli Lilly’s antibody treatments for use in Omicron patients. Those drugs don’t work on Omicron in lab tests — but without a clinical trial in human beings, how can we know for sure? Reuters:
Japanese trading and pharmaceuticals company Kowa Co Ltd (7807.T) on Monday said that anti-parasite drug ivermectin showed an “antiviral effect” against Omicron and other coronavirus variants in joint non-clinical research.
The company, which has been working with Tokyo’s Kitasato University on testing the drug as a potential treatment for COVID-19, did not provide further details. The original Reuters story misstated that ivermectin was “effective” against Omicron in Phase III clinical trials, which are conducted in humans…
Many potential COVID-19 treatments that showed promise in test tubes, including the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine promoted by former U.S. President Donald Trump, ultimately failed to show benefit for COVID-19 patients once studied in clinical trials.
Oxford has been studying the use of ivermectin to treat people with COVID for several months and doesn’t have any results to report yet. But Chris Pandolfo reminds us that there have been some small clinical trials conducted with the drug and no benefit against the coronavirus was seen. A few months ago Scott Alexander of Astral Codex Ten did a deep dive into multiple studies of COVID and ivermectin conducted abroad and discovered that the data showing a degree of effectiveness just so happened to come from countries where a relatively large share of the population has parasitic worms. Alexander’s theory was that ivermectin only seems to work against COVID in those places because it’s doing the thing it was actually designed to do — eliminating parasites — and resolving that underlying health problem left patients better able to fight off the virus through natural immunity.
Maybe the Oxford study will bring a surprise once it’s finally done but for the moment there’s still no rigorously conducted clinical trial showing that ivermectin works on COVID. Not that that will convince anyone who saw Reuters’s initial headline last night and took it as confirmation of their priors:
We don’t doubt Reuters’s diligence in correcting itself; we doubt only how effective it’ll be. The mistaken report, after all, landed in a country where poison control centers last year were beset by an increase in ivermectin overdose calls — the byproduct of one strain of covid hype/misinformation.
Look for that machine to roar once more, perhaps by claiming that Reuters had it right the first time. Early Tuesday morning, host Mike Dinow of One America News (OAN) told viewers: “A top Japanese drugmaker confirms ivermectin is highly efficient in fighting covid-19 and the omicron strain. According to Nagoya-based Kowa Co., phase III clinical trials have confirmed ivermectin has a strong antiviral effect in human beings, in human patients.” The finding, said Dinow, “further disproves mainstream media attacks on ivermectin.”
Ivermectin has become such a phenomenon in the United States through word of mouth and conservative media promotion that 88,000 prescriptions were written for the drug nationally during one week in August last year as compared to 3,600 in an average week before the pandemic. Republican politicians are so eager to ingratiate themselves to their base by championing the drug that 11 different states have introduced bills that would bar the state medical association from taking action against those who prescribe ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for COVID. There’s probably no authority at this point capable of persuading true believers that the drug doesn’t work on the virus, mainly because the enthusiasm for ivermectin is mostly a political reaction to the pro-vaccine expert class. If we have a drug that works, why do we need the shot that Fauci and Bill Gates keep pushing on us?
I’ll leave you with this. One million excess deaths is a number straight out of science fiction.
