Part One: The Ivermectin Episode

Jamie Loftus. I'm so, I'm so, I'm all over the place, but I'm good. I'm all right, all things considered. I brought my cat on a cross country flight yesterday. So that's what did you do? Was he good? What was the vibe? Was good? We were we were sitting like I was in the two rows. I was the only person that wasn't on the way to celebrate someone's thirtieth birthday. But they really took to the cat. They were we were all an emotional support unit. They were all watching

Naruto on iPads. I was listening to an Amityville Horror audio book and just reaching down and petting my cat for six hours. It was. It was a real treat. How are you, Robert? I'm good, um, by which I mean terrible, by which I mean normal. Um okay, so nothing's changed since we last spoke that I just flew to. I was in Texas from my brother's wedding, and so I was. I got to be as I was when I left Texas there the day a new shitty law came into being. Um, okay, you need to stop going

back your jinks. Yeah, I mean when I moved to l A, I had just like immediately. It was immediately after I attended the protests for Wendy Davis at the Capitol over the over abortion. Um, so that's just me and Texas. Baby. Wait, Robert, what is your what is I'm what is your vibe at a wedding? I can't picture you at a wedding, so I need to have trouble picturing me too at a wedding, Jamie. But I was to it was very Catholic wedding. Did you get to eat the tiny bread? No? No, no, I don't

I don't take I love the tiny bread. It tastes so good. Tucksolved. I had to wear a tux I have. Where's the pictures? I felt bad about killing the photographer, but I just couldn't let there be a chance of those photos getting out. So send me a pick of you what I had to do? A smiling with teeth

in the pics? No, but I did get extremely drunk at the it was thankfully it was um It was a Catholic wedding, but it was also a Mexican wedding, so the food was incredible and I was able to get very drunk afterwards, so that I can't believe you smiled with teeth. Also, my brother's happy. I guess that's important too. Yeah, who gives a ship? I don't know your brother allegedly whatever, Jamie, what how do you feel about the death of all hope? I feel, I feel

I feel very numb to it. Yeah, that's a good way to feel about the death of all hope, Jamie. Today, I'm going to tell you a story, and it's a story about the end of the world. Now, this story doesn't involve a nuclear holocaust or global war. The culprit for our incipient apocalypse is the modern information ecosystem, which has doomed us all and cannot be reformed. Now to make it clear why I'm gonna tell you a story about ivermectin. I guess you've heard a lot about iver

met in the last couple of days, haven't you. You sure have course paste um all that tends to be how people talk about it in social media. These idiots are taking horse paste um, which is It's one of those things where people who love horse paste will be like, we're not taking horse paste. Is. There's a bunch of

different formulations. There's even human versions, and that's true. They're like a horse paste is the meanest possible I've I've seen versions of that, like saying it's horse paste is a little bit inaccurate when they say something else scary, I'm actually taking sheep dip um. But a lot of people are taking the human version of iver mecht in too, particularly when talking about Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan isn't going to a feed store in getting apple flavored horse paste.

He's getting ivermectin prescribed him by a doctor because he's rich um. And ivermectin is very much kind of a miracle medicine, just not in the purpose is being used for um. It was discovered in nineteen seventy five and went on sale widely in the early nineteen eighties, and it is still today one of the most potent anti parasitic medications in existence. It is effective in livestock and

also in humans. It is credited with curing a once devastating illness called river blindness, which I feel like the name describes more or less the problem. Um, I don't agree. What is parasites from unclean water make you blind and stops that? Okay, it's very it's very good stuff. The scientists who discovered it won a Nobel Prize UM and in two thousand fifteen it was even found that the anti parasitic drug is also effective at disrupting the transmission

of malaria UM, which is great. And when taken as directed, iver mecton is extremely safe with minimal side effects, and it is cheap enough to produce that you can find it all over the world, or you could anyway. Before about like six this month, six or so months ago, iver macton has developed I think a really toxic fan base, and it's the Rick and Morty of anti parasitic drugs sure um, And like Rick and Morty, it will stop

herds of horses from shifting worms out. It acts. Yeah, people, they have horses watching early seasons of ricking mortial ther to see what will happened to their bodies. You give season four, it'll keep shitting worms. So in September of Australian researchers found that huge doses of iron mectin, when ministered in a laboratory setting might stop or could stop replication of COVID in cell cultures in less than forty

eight hours. This was potentially a big deal for obvious reasons, but also these are cell cultures, right, This is not in the human body. These are in in in a very controlled laboratory setting. So this is a very useful piece of data. And obviously follow up studies were immediately commissioned around the world to see if maybe this might

be something that could help with COVID. Now pre vaccine doctors were looking at a wide variety of medications and treatment options that might act as stop gaps until there was a vaccine. One group of physicians who were doing this was the Frontline COVID nineteen Critical Care Alliance or f l c c c UM. This group had been formed by a number of critical care specialists with different medical backgrounds who wanted to try and hash together new

ideas for treating the virus. Their first stab at this was to use cortico steroids to reduce mortality in severe COVID cases. Now, the man most behind this particular idea was a guy named Dr Umberto Maduri. He's known as the Guru of cortico steroids in lung disease. Conventional wisdom, what an amazing I hope there's a T shirt for that. I hope there's a T Yeah, he should get They announced him like it's a w w E wrestler when

he comes out at medical conferences. I mean funcket. I want him to get a two Chains album, Like why not? I want to hook up with him? Why not? Yeah? Um so yeah, this guy has this idea that like, hey, maybe cortico steroids might be useful in this situation, and that was very controversial at the time. Conventional wisdom um was that steroids like that do more harm than good

when treating a virus, like when treating a coronavirus. But Dr Marduri and his colleagues were pretty sure that their solution would help, and they distributed a new hospital protocol called MATH plus for patients hospitalized with severe COVID. Hospitals began trying it out because again, this is early in the virus. There's not it's kind of like throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Um, And there's evidence that this seriously slowed down mortality. It seems to

have worked. Hospital administrators noticed rapid slowdowns and mortality when they adopted this, specifically for people who were very sick. Um, when you hire the guru, that's great, you're bringing the guru. So yeah, um, And there was of course, you know, they kind of started adopting this before there was a huge body of science, but a body of science was built as they started adopting this, and a large UK patient study in June of showed that steroid treatment that

the FLCCC suggested really worked. The MATH plus protocol was greenlit, and hospitals around the United States praise for ed in for the f l c c C, who at this point looked like hard working doctors doing their damnedest to find creative ways to save lives in an incredibly challenging situation. Wait were they not? Well, this is not an easy

answer to that question. Jamie, Okay, because um, they definitely did a good thing there and saved a lot of lives with that, they have also gone on to do some sketchy things And I don't have an easy summary for you of like the f l c c C is, like they're horrible grifters or there you know, decent medical you know, people who got something wrong or their their truth. Like I don't. I don't have an easy answer for you for what these people are. But things take a

turn at this point. So one of the doctors, one of the co founders of the f l c c C, was a guy named Dr Pierre Corey. Now Dr Corey was not the brains behind Dr Murdery's cortico steroid plan, but he did helped found the f l c c C. He was very interested in the early in the early data that started coming out about iver mechton. In October, he and other FLCCC doctors noted that there had been several small successful trials using iver mecton as a preventative measure.

These studies were not large or particularly high quality. We'll talk a little bit about them later, but in those pre vaccine days, a case could be made that they were not being irresponsible by adding iver mecton to their math plus protocol alongside a new preventative protocol called i'm ask plus. There's not vaccines yet. The pandemic October is kind of at the fucking worst it's been um and you know, you could also say, like, well, they kind of took a little bit of a stab on cortico

steroids and that wound up saving lives. Might as well give it a shot with especially since iver mechten, when taken in quantities for humans, that's prescribed by a doctor fairly minimal risks. Right. I've never known anyone who's had river blindness, So yes, exactly exactly, you don't and I spray you with a lot of contaminated river water, Jamie.

You do. You've been doing a lot of experiments, But I I do believe when you say, it's for the greater good of some So these guys are kind of operating off of the goodwill of having been semi successful before to experiment with, and they're they're also operating. You do have to acknowledge the situation when you're dealing with a pandemic of this severity, you can't necessarily wait, like you have to make You have to kind of triage

when you wait to try something. And I can see in the case of being like look when you when taken when when giving people like normal human doses of iver mactin very minimal risk of side effects. If it might help, it's worth trying. You know you can you can make that case. And that's the case these people were making it at this point. They're not being bastards that I can tell um. And they imagine they're making a shipload of money also would that be I don't

I don't have that information, Jamie, some of this. So one of the troubles with this, This is gonna be a little bit of a messier because a lot of this is still breaking. And in fact, one of the studies that I was talking about earlier, an article just dropped today kind of talking about it. So I think that we will learn more about the f l c c C in time as a result of some of the things we'll talk about. I don't know the extent to which people are making a profit off of it.

I don't know enough to allege any that kind of fiscal wrongdoing. But there's something weird here at some being on the cutting edge as usual, Robert, thank you, Jamie, thank you. I am on the cutting edge like I am in the cutting edge of basketball strategies, here in the cutting edge of weddings, on the cutting edge of COVID analysis, on the cutting edge of smiling with your teeth and pictures. Thank you, thank you. You know I

invented the four pointer recently. No one had ever done that in basket No kidding, Wow right, that's right, make me fire you again. So at this point, it's also important to enough that the FLCCC, they're saying, we're adding this might we're recommending this in certain situations for people who are sick and as a potential prophylactic to prevent COVID.

They were not billing iver mectin as a replacement or an alternative to the vaccine, and in fact, they're early advocacy of iver mectin discussed it purely as a stop gap vaccines are not available at this point. There's some evidence that this might help stem the tide of infections, and we are at capacity in hospital, so this might

reduce infections that might improve outcomes. We're going to recommend people take it until there's a vaccine, right, and I'm gonna quote from Yahoo News here to talk about some people who did use it in that situation. In a February local news segment, a Midland, Texas woman describes how she learned about iver mectin backed in October from the Internet, and she and her family had been taking it in animal form ever since. Though she wasn't taking the tablets

for humans as the f LCCC recommends. In a way, she was taking it as intended as a bridge to the vaccine. I just got my first vaccine shot a few days ago, So no more horse paste, she told the reporter. So that is I do want to acknowledge here, that's not being unreasonable, like right, maybe I would recommend get the human version if you can. But whatever, people, I know a lot of poor people in the country. Sometimes you take veterinary medicine because it's what you can afford.

I mean that the turn of phrase. So no more horse paste alone. But I'm not gonna say this is the most responsible decision of person could have made. But she got her vaccine right, and she there was I want you to I want you to type fl c c C into Google and pull up their web page and take a look at it. Because when she says she found it on the internet, and because this person took the vaccine, I don't know, that can mean a

lot of things. That can mean somebody's like seeing someone on Reddit talk about taking random medication or like on Facebook. But if you look at the f l c c C page, this doesn't take credit. Call care dot com Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a very reputable looking website. These are real asked doctors with real Jamie Lakes Community College popa for you twenty times and then it gets to the this had to have been an s e O disaster for the

finger Figure Lakes Community College. Sorry, I forgot, I had a picture of I forgot. I had a picture of Joe Rogan in a tab and I just like it was like a jump scare Um, okay, COVID nineteen, critical care dot com. This does look like how I picture

medical website to look like. Okay, and you can you can see how a concerned parent in the middle of a horrible fucking plague could come to this and be like, Okay, well, this seems like a reasonable thing to do for my family until I can get the vaccine, like avoid censorship connects to f l c c C alliance here, there's

definitely definitely and that I think is is newer. Like you can see some kind of griff to your things getting in here, right, um, but you can also see how a perfectly reasonable person just trying to like do what's best for their family could be like, okay, well I'll give it a shot, right. And that's where fast too, like everything quickly and in February, you know you October to like January, October, January. People. I can see people just being like, okay, well this seems like it might help.

I can't get a vaccine. So far, so good? Right, so far the fl C c C I can't. I'm sure, I'm sure there are things doctors could could quickly complain about here. There's definitely a debate to be had about certainly desperate, but there's no perfect choices you can make in a fucking pandemic either. Um. That said, while they haven't really gone off, they haven't broke bad yet. There were early signs that something was awry. In December of Dr Pierre Corey testified to a Senate panel about I

for mectin, which he called a wonder drug. Now, when you hear the term wonder drug and they are not talking about delauded. The only wonder drug which I call a wonder drug because it's wonderful. What is that? You know, I don't know what a drug is. Delatted is the Toyota tacoma of opiates. It's liable, it's hard working, it's comfortable. Oh my god, it's so good like um yeah, yeah, because fuck oxy um delatted, baby, it's all about delatted. Okay,

that's good information for when I begin taking opiates. Yeah. Absolutely, everybody needs good information and that information is tried a lauded sponsors of the podcast. By the way, wait, he called it a lot a wonder drug to the Senate, which is not in court. He called it a wonder drug. Okay,

that doesn't sound good. That doesn't sound good. That's not very especially since there is data in December of that suggests this might be a useful and and it's perfectly it would have been perfectly reasonably said, hey, we've got some data. This might help. Here's the situations in which the data suggests it might help. This is my recommendations that might be how a responsible doctor would say it.

You don't call it doctor oz rhetoric exactly. Yeah, Well with the Senate, and so number one it this Senate panel was a Homeland Security Senate panel. So I don't know why the funk they're talking about that. Why none of you people like you're not even good at homeland security. Why are you talking about fucking COVID nineteen killing time? That's so bizarry, let's get a doctor up here. Now. The panel was chaired by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, because flag,

that's a real red flag right there. Okay, Now, the problem is that because of the fl CCCS reputation with Cortico steroids, Dr Pierre Corey isn't doesn't seem when he's coming up front, he's not just some yahoo. He is a real doctor working with an organization that took a very bold stab early in the pandemic and was very right about it, like and which then immediately jokerfied themselves and then they went jography. Yeah exactly, but like you can see why this is so dangerous, right, um? Right?

And I also understand, I mean with Ron Johnson, there's no excuse for anything he does. But I understand from like a regular, like a person consuming this media with not a lot of information, why it might have seemed like not the worst most dangerous thing in the world to do so at this point, there's some shady stuff going on that Senate testimony is questionable, right um, But there's also not really anything to suggest at the end of that ever mectin is about to become a public

health problem. And in fact, while the US started ramping up and distributing vaccines at the tail end of early one, huge chunks of Latin America started adopting ever mectin as a standard treatment protocol. And the reasoning for this is as bleak as it is understandable. Latin America has some

of the worst COVID death rates on the planet. Whitespread poverty meant that while the vaccine was starting to get rolled out in the United States, it was not going to be anywhere in the near future for millions tens of millions of people in Latin America. So while the wealthy countries hoarded vaccines for their own people, doctors in South and Central America looked at the early evidence on iver mactin and said, this is the best we can fucking do and we can afford it, you know, yeah,

which is very sad, that's extremely blak. Yeah, it's real fucking bleak. Um and Peru included the drug and its basic treatment guide lines, and one health minister in the country told Nature magazine that clinical trials investigating the drugs efficacy had trouble recruiting control group participants because there were so many people already on the drug. Basically, they recommended people take this and then they had trouble studying it

because they couldn't find people who weren't taking it. Um wow, okay, So it just and was this like a very fast process, like it went zero okay, And it's it's fast in part because you know, unlike when hydroxy cloquine, which we'll talk about a bit later, kind of went viral, there's not a lot of that ship, right, It's not just like an o TC thing like people had to get it prescribed. You don't just walk into a CD SID. You could walk into stores down the corner and pick

up iver mecton. Because especially in like rural at in America, any rural place, there's a shiploaded animal feed stores. It's all over the place. Over the counter veterinary drug. Yeah, yeah, it's over the counter veterinary drug. It's not super you do have to get it prescribed for a person, but I think most these people are taking the veterinary version. But even the person version, it's extreme, especially since a lot of Latin America a lot of huge amount of parasites,

so a lot of people are taking this anyway. It's available, is the point. It's available, and it's cheap, so it's once these people here, this might protect your family from COVID. They actually have the ability to get this stuff immediately. Um In Bolivia, healthcare workers pretty much instantly distributed three and fifty thousand doses. I Ever, met In also grew popular in South America for the same reasons poverty and

desperation um so from the website Pharmaceutical Technology quote. The pro iver met In campaign has taken a particularly stronghold in South Africa, where coronavirus infection rates are among the worst in the continent and the vaccine program has yet to cover all the country's most vulnerable. Some doctors have been prescribing the worm drug to COVID nineteen patients, claiming anecdotally that it alleviates virus symptoms, despite the South African

Health Products Regulatory Authority warning against its use. I ever met In is also thriving the country's black market, where one tablet can sell for as much as twenty five pounds, and sales of veterinary forms of the drug have skyrocketed.

Grassroots collectives such as the iver Metin Interest Group formed of South African health practitioners, public health experts and medical scientists, have campaigned for approval of the drug, while civil rights group afro Form earlier this year filed a court case against SAFFRA, which is the South African Health Products Regulating Authority,

to have the treatment approved for COVID nineteen patients. After initially allowing controlled compassionate use of the drug in an attempt to curb illegal sales, the health agency this month received a High court order to permit the off label prescription of iver mectin by doctors. Iver met And also took off in the Philippines, where viral social media posts sent the product flying off the shelves of veterinary suppliers. One doctor was found to have printed eight thousand iver

mettin pills using his own recipe. The Philippines FDA. Yeah, the Philippines f d A attempted to reign this in and issued warnings that were not heated, but they also approved too limited studies on the use of iver mectin in hospitals, admitting that they had been pressured to do so by sheer public demand. So when we talk about I'm curious about, like how this information because you're saying like that there were like viral posts that got the

word out very quickly. Were they just post from regular people that were taking off where they're like groups that were posting like how was So here's the way we're gonna talk about this more. But you have at the top of the list, you have actual scientific studies. Right, We're going to analyze a little bit, some of what you're sketchy, some of what you're real, some of which

show a potential benefit. Those filter down to the f l C c C and some a couple other similar groups who are made up of doctors and start advising people to take iver mactin. That filters down to influencers too, people in media figures and whatnot who start advising people to take it, and that filters down to like face book, groups and ship where people start spreading memes and what

the bassist area of the human psyche hidden Facebook groups. Okay, and that's how you get from the FLCCC saying doctors should consider prescribing this too. I'm going to buy horse paste and give it to my children. So it's just like the most sinister game of telephone ever, Yes, and

it is. I do want to note as we as everybody continues laughing at the fucking stupid ass Americans who could easily get a free vaccine and take fucking horse paste, most of the people taking this stuff in mass have no options and are incredibly poor and live in the periphery in countries rights. What else are they've gonna fucking do?

Doctors are telling them. There are a lot of doctors, and again they're very shady doctors, usually working off a very bad scientist, but they're fucking doctors and they're telling these people this could help your family, and they can't get a fucking vaccine. They have no options, right, Like,

what are they? You're not dumb if you're in the Philippines, if you're in Latin America, South americ and you're like, this is what else am I gonna do, you know, right, if it it's the only option there's there's it's so urgent that there's no I mean, there's no time to get that's that's what is like sticking out to be here as like especially frustrating because there are very few options and like no time to get better information. So it is you're saying, what are you going to do?

And it's it's also important to note that a lot of these people and a lot of these communities and their communities, I grew up in a community like not on like this. In the US, there's a decent chunk of of veterinary medicines that work just as well on people and are cheaper and more available. And sometimes poor people do that because again, what the funk else do

you want me to do? Like my kid is sick? Um, and it doesn't like it's not always a bad idea, like it's never the thing that doctors are recommened, but fucking people do it, and there's things that it can work on, because like, what else are you gonna fucking do? Um?

There's different anyway, I know, I'm not advising you to go by veterinary medicine for your family I'm saying people have done it for a long time, and it's not always a bad idea, and that's part of why people are like, well, sure, you know, I've taken like I had to give my kids some fucking antibiotics or whatever like that I got from a you know, like or I've mected because you got a fucking uh because you got a fucking parasite and I gave him, you know,

a small dose of horse paste because I couldn't afford to go to a doctor and get it prescribed. I'm sure a number of these people like, again, these are not dumb people. I just really want to because so much of the discourse around this is like making fun of the idiots in America who do it, and a lot of them are very dumb and funk a lot of those people because they could be getting a vaccine um.

But like most of these people just don't have an option, right, which like trickles down in so many different ways of like how broken the health care system is, Like that wouldn't even be a necessity. You wouldn't need to make that judgment call off if there were actual, you know, more viable options made available. But you know what, viable options. Everyone has, Jamie, what to engage with some light product

and services, some light or some heavy. You know, you can you can stick, you can just kind of business, just the tip of the products and services, or you can go all the way in. That's your business, you know. Yeah, we don't. We don't judge, we don't ask questions. We just we just sell people products and occasionally services. Wonder products, Wonder services. Yeah, Wonder products and Wonder services. All right,

here's an ad Ah. We're back. And boy, I don't know about you, but all of my depression thinking about the desperation that would lead people in cash for nations to self medicate because uh, wealthy nations have hoarded the vaccine in many cases for profit. Um. I don't know where I was going with this. I was trying to make a product and services joke, but now I'm just sad again. How are you doing, Jamie, you know, talking about pharmaceuticals under capitalism. I'm flying high. I feel incredible.

I don't have a problem in the world. Everything is perfect and great. Yeah, I want to die. I mean, I don't know we're what we're a half hour into the episode. I absolutely want to you know, just walk into traffic, Robert, is that what you want to hear? Because that's where I'm always at at this point in the episode, That's where we're at. That's where we're at. That's just so we're at. Jamie. You like science, Yeah, sure, yeah, I'm nothing against silence. I got nothing against science. I

know what, do I have a brain for it? No? Does it make sense to me? No? No, of course not. I'm I'm glad people do it also, No, yeah, yeah, which is my way to think I hate science. We're gonna talk a little bit about We're gonna talk a

little bit about um fucking uh. One of the problems that science has, which is so the basic idea behind you know, doing science is you you conduct studies to test hypotheses, and you publish those results, and generally you do small studies at first to kind of see if if there's anything further to investigate or in you know, those small studies, if if they're promising, kind of lead to larger studies, and eventually you build a body of

evidence that leads you to one conclusion or another. Right, that's the broad idea of how to sell the kind of science you learn in when you're in first grade. Yeah, that is that all that ship gets published, and oftentimes it means that these tiny studies are getting published and then people just assume, well, that's a study and it says this is good, so I'm going to do it, and then whole industries crop up around that while scientists

are still trying to figure out if it works. And then another shady thing about it is that there's play is that lets you publish studies before the studies have

been peer reviewed, which has some benefits. I've I've found some writing as two people say why that can be useful, um, But it also means that shady people who build themselves as scientists can put up a study that isn't really a study and hasn't been peer reviewed and has massive laws and make it look like there's evident supporting something when in fact there was not. And that's what we're going to talk about now. So Peru was as as far as I found, I think, the first nation to

include iver mecton in its national coronavirus treatment guidelines. This was based on findings in a pre print of a study by health analytics company surges Fere and again a preprint not yet peer reviewed, so they're they're sticking to rough draft, right, you know, but if these are publicly I do think that it's like that is like a an ethics thing, Like no one knows what preprint means, so it's like you have to make I I wish that that was made clearer to I don't know. I

don't know what I'm saying. It's really like I understand that if you're a scientist, you know what a preprint means, and you know that this cannot be taken at face value. This is preliminary ship. Uh, but I feel like you need to make that as readily apparent to the layman as possible. Yeah. Um, And I don't know. It's so

let's talk about that Surgis Fear study. Sokay, before we talk about that, I do I want to talk about Surgius Fear a little bit because they've been involved in a controversy over the last medicine that wasn't really a medicine that went viral over COVID nineteen, which of course is hydroxy clerk wine. Now, if you've forgotten, hydroxychlork wine was a medicine that doctors briefly thought, based on some

early studies, might have efficacy in treating COVID nineteen. Those early studies, while they were still trying to figure out if it actually did have efficacy, were turned into a magical cure, all because Trump started tweeting about them. He was desperate to open the country back up and the get the economy back on track in time for the election. Several people died trying to treat themselves with hydroxy chloroquine

or drugs they thought were hydroxychloroquine. All the controversy over this drug obscured the fact that serious scientists were actually trying to understand if it might be useful for COVID. In mid May, the Lancet published an article suggesting that it was dangerous for patients with COVID to take hydroxy clorquin.

This study was almost immediately retracted because the authors were unable to independently verify their data set, which had come from a large proprietary collection of electronic health records analyzed by Surgis Spear. So Surgis Spear had put together these health records that they were using to make claims that hydroxy clorquin was dangerous for certain patients. But when they attempted to verify the data set, Surgis Spear said, we

can't show you the health records. We can't actually show you the records themselves, which like to study being retracted because they can't verify it. Yeah, now it might not seem like a problem because again, as we now know, hydroxychlorkquin is not helpful and treating COVID nineteen. So the facture I mean, which is like luck of the job.

But that's so that's they can get that far into publishing something because they're like, oh, I don't know, but it's not even really luck of the draw because that thing doesn't seem to have been true. Um, And when the study got retracted, that just fueled paranoia that there was a conspiracy to trick people out of taking hydroxy clarquine. The next month, June, another paper was retracted, this time from the New England Journal of Medicine, due to unverifiable

data from Surgio sphere. That study had found that a variety of heart of heart medications had no safety concerns when administered to COVID patients. The fact that these papers were being retracted after many doctors had taken action based on their findings. Was disastrous in the midst of an already chaotic time. I encourage. An Australian bioethicist called it catastrophic. Quote.

It is problematic for their journals involved, It is problematic for the integrity of science, It is probably matic from medicine, and it is problematic for the notion of clinical trials and evidence generation. This right up from Nature explains exactly

why Surgi Sphear's data was problematic. Quote. Both papers relied on propriety proprietary data analyzed from electronic health records that were apparently gathered from hundreds of hospitals around the world by Surgi Sphere, but after critics raised questions about the studies, the firm did not make its raw data available to third party auditors for validation. According to the attraction notice in the Lancet, Surgi Sphere was concerned that transferring the

data would violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements. Since we do not have the ability to verify the primary data or primary data source, I no longer have confidence in the in the origination or and veracity of the data, nor the findings they have led to, said mandep mea cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, who

was the lead author on both studies. So this is and again with SURGEI sphere, there's something going on here and I don't know what it is with these guys. It's it's do you have any inkling of it? Just sounds like the sort of thing where it's like, what

is the end game for doing that? It may be as simple as they're just kind of a shady company, um who's not very good at who was trying like that there They were trying to like make a quick buck providing these records to research scientists, but um weren't actually able to give the scientists as much information as they would need to be able to use that kind

of stuff. UM short sighted, Like, yeah, that sounds very bizarre. Yeah, and it's it's a bunch of ships like that and it's coming in like you're getting like one of the problems with this is that, um, they they approve a study like or sorry they so the when the hydroxy clorquin article comes out saying that it's dangerous to give to certain patients, they stop a bunch of studies to trying to determine whether or not hydroxy workin works, and

then they have to restart those studies later after it's retracted, which slows down the period of time after which we get concrete evidence that it doesn't work. So again, even though like it might not seem like that's a bad saying, it actually slows down the process of figuring out that hydroxy quorkin doesn't work. It's all part of this problem. Um that Yeah, that makes total sense because I'm so I'm so naive in these areas and I'm like, wait that wood fuck things up. Okay, Yeah, I love it's

just bad. Now. One of the co authors of both retracted studies was a guy named Sapon Decide, and he's the founder of Surgei Sphere, so he's founds the company and is also one of the authors of both of the studies that get retracted. Um. And while his co authors kind of all come out and say, hey, we're were we no longer stand by these studies because of issues with the data, he's notely quiet. For the most part. I think he agrees to retract one of them and

not the other. Now and two thousand and one or twenty one. Sapon Decide was the co author of another study using data from his company, surge Sphere, which claimed to find a large reduction in COVID mortality when patients were given iver mecten. It was first published to the Social Sciences preprint server SSR in on April six and a second version was posted on April nineteenth, And this is what caused PERU to add iver mecton to their

national standards of care. So this guy, whose record couldn't be shadier visa v COVID nineteen studies, puts out another preprint, so not peer reviewed, not a finished thing on a server, because it immediately shows like, look, COVID iver mecton reduces COVID nineteen deaths and whole nations start taking action based on this. Now that is so can't they like I'm right, I'm like trying to it. They just put his credibility on.

I mean he doesn't have any credibility obviously, but just like, can how can you continue to publish preprints when your track record is that horrific? Like how how? Yeah? That's why? Fuck? Okay, So so that preprint comes out and that that is what like result in ivermectin taking off. Yeah, that's what results in it taking off In Latin America. The f l c c C, I think, has much more of a job of the tape. But this this feeds into that too because it's one of the studies that they're siting.

So one of that studies authors again, Sapondasi has co authors on these studies who are more credible people, and one of the studies co authors pulls it from the pre print server because, as he told Nature, he did not feel it was ready for pure review. So it does get pulled, but the damage is done. By that point, he's already convinced the Peruvian government to add it to

their official like COVID protocol, and Bolivia followed soon after. Now, when the study seems like the pattern with this, right, it's just like you put something out, you say, oh, sorry, never mind, that information is terrible, but it's too late because the information has already had consequence. There's again when you look at like the way the disinformation spreads, it's a lot like how COVID spreads, Like you have, they're

both they're both spreading. It's like a person fox up and walks into a room without a mask on, not realizing he's been exposed, and he might realize an hour later, but by that point he's already passed it on to four people who then all go to the grocery store whatever. Like it's it's the same way with disinformation. It spreads like a virus and it and it's like just too yeah. So it just takes like one bad actor intentionally doing

it to Jesus chrisis. And I think it's often a mix of bad actors and people who are acting in good faith but aren't quite careful enough. Um now, So the good news is that PERUME removes iver mectin from their treatment guidelines as soon as the study gets pulled. But by that point other South American nations have started using it and they don't all stop. And again, even outside of that, regardless of what the state health authorities

are saying, people are now taking it in mass right. So, back in January of one, the n i H, the National Institutes of Health in the United States had changed its guidance on iver mectin for the COVID treatment from against to neither for nor against. So there's enough data. By January the sayre not against this, and we're hedging it's complicated. Yeah, exactly, Okay, got it. Now, in a reasonable world, this would not have counted as a positive endorsement.

But we don't live in a reasonable world. The NIH made this change after Dr Corey, from the fl C c C and w H O consultant Dr Andrew Hill, presented data to the n i H Treatments Guidelines Panel. That same month, Dr Corey released a study with the f l C c C co founders and several other doctors that they believed would convince the CDC and FDA

to approve iver mect in for use against COVID. Now, by this point, doctor Corey had become convinced that iver met in was a bona fide wonder drug, as he told the Senate, but the people he asked to publish his study, the study that he thought was going to convince the FDA to approve it for COVID, we're less convinced.

Frontiers is an open access platform for peer reviewed science journalism, and they investigated the integrity of the study and announced on March second that they were rejecting the article for quote a series of strong unsupported claims based on studies with insufficient statistical significance and at times without the use of control groups. Oh my god, this guy is going to have to start publishing in like Highlights magazine. This

is so ridiculous. Now, I'm not a scientist, Jamie, I'm in fact legally the opposite, um, but I know that control groups are important. If you want to know if the thing does something, you need a group of people who aren't doing the thing and movies before they can come out much less fucking pharmaceutical like. That's absolutely yeah. So by this point, vaccines were increasingly available in mass

around the United States. In December, it had made sense that iver Mecton had been on the FLCCCS protocol because kind of a desperate time. But by March, iver Mecton is still part of their protocol, but none of the vaccines had been added to their recommended preventative protocol. So this is the point where they're very clearly doing something shady. Yeah, exactly, fucking December, people can't get vaccines. There's evidence iver Metin

might help. It's debatable whether or not it's responsible to put it on there, but still completely but there's an ument more sense to make attempt to make that argument prevactive. By March, motherfucker's are walking into their cvs and getting vaccinated and they still haven't added that to their protocol. But the horse paste, I mean again, they're not telling people to take the horse pace, They're telling people to get it prescribed. But whatever, I'm gonna call it horse

paste sometimes. So Dr Corey also grew more combat combative from this point forward, telling the Huffington's Post quote when I came out and told the world that cortico steroids were critical to save lives. I got crushed for that until the recovery trial came out and it became the standard of care worldwide overnight. Which is true that cortico steroids, that use was criticized and they wind up being helpful. But also, wasn't your idea? Broheim? Quick? Yeah, like what

you Is that actually his voice? Or is that just you just made him Ben Shapiro. Everyone's been Shapiro, Sophia. It was about to say, like, what is it? I was like, do you just wanted to sound like a dork? And then I found out that was your Ben Shapiro voice? Okay, that all tracks. That's 's just float probably right, Yeah, if I hate him, there, Ben Shapiro, that's the way it works. Again. I'm just like, what is the end game? There's no endgame, Jamie. It's Joker Ship. I hate it

is Joker Ship. It is Joker Ship. It's it's and you know what's Joaquin Phoenix got to say about any of this. That's what I want to know, Jamie. I don't know. He's like five six. I can't hear him. Oh okay, so I forgot your You're a you're a height chauvinist. So the other thing about cortico steroids, well, he's right that people were like, I don't think this is a good idea, and we're proven wrong when the

FLCCC embraced cortico steroids. Cortico steroids were also very quickly shown via extremely reputable studies to be useful in COVID treatments, right, um it, it's actual science backed it up. And the same unequivocal evidence did not come out for iver mecton. Well we start to get right, yeah at this point. Yeah,

and and so we have not especially by March. Again, it's still a mix of small studies that shows not all of which suggests that it works, some of which are shady, whereas by March there's fucking excellent data that the vaccines are very effective. Um so it's not the same thing, you know, it just isn't. He's trying to he's trying to make that that claim because the it's it's his organizations claim to fame. But like, it's not

the same situation. There were quickly studies that backed up the cortico steroids thing there aren't isn't the same body of evidence for ivermectin, And there's a lot of evidence for vaccines, and you're not telling people to take vaccines. Yeah, it's fucked up. Uh Yeah, this is absolutely fucked up. So when he was asked why he's not telling people to get vaccinated, Dr Pierre Corey said, most of what we feel, and especially me, is that the data on

vaccines is moving so fast and it's non transparent. I just really don't know what to say about these vaccines. I just don't feel comfortable with the kind of data that we're getting again, the big ivermine. I cannot be more specific about this at this time. Yes, the data is not transparent enough. What about the fucking Surgis spear study showing ivermectin is useful. Things had to get pulled because they wouldn't give anyone access to the fucking medical

data anyway. In February, YouTube pulled two videos from the December eight Senate hearing where Dr Corey called it a wonder drug. Specifically, they pulled the portions discussing iver mecton and this included part of Dr Corey's testimony. Ron Johnson, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, immediately took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to author an op ed titled YouTube cancels the US Senate. God, every part of that sentence is the biggest loser ship I've ever heard

of my night. Absolute virgin stuff, right Jesus, Yeah yeah so quote and this is from Ron Johnson. Dr Corey is part of a world renowned group of physicians who developed a groundbreaking use of cortico steroids to treat hospitalized COVID patients. His testimony at a May Senate hearing helped doctors rethink treatment protocols and saved lives. At the December hearing, he presented evidence regarding the use of ivermectin a cheap and widely available drug that treats tropical diseases caused by

parasites for prevention an early treatment of COVID nineteen. He described a just published study from Argentina in which about eight hundred healthcare workers received ivermectin and four hundred didn't. None of the eight hundred contracted COVID nineteen fifty eight percent of the four hundred did. So here's the thing about that. Here's the thing about makes you think what Ron Johnson said, you're telling me there's gonna be holes

in this. This is the one that, like, just today there's a great BuzzFeed news article about that Argentinean study, UM, which is super inconsistent. One of the problems with it is that depending on like where you read, like what part of the study you read, it gives you different numbers of how many people were actually part of the

test group and control group. UM. Like it's it's it's just not a well conducted study, and there's actually debate, there's actually a serious question as to whether or not the study was conducted at all. UM. So, again, this just came out, So I'm going to scroll down to the relevant point here. UM. Yeah. Meanwhile, the clinical trial database stated stated there were two participants, but other things

didn't add up. It said the control group had seventy two women and twenty six men, even though the paper said fifty one women and forty eight men. The ages also seemed mathematically improbable. The paper states that nearly se participants taking the therapy were under age forty. Despite this, the clinical trial website states that the median age, the age at the midpoint of the group was forty two.

Those might have been errors. Carvallo conceded in the interview which was which is one of the study authors, which was largely conducted large errors. We are not a statistical people, he said. We are not statistical people, he said, Which is like, if you're doing a study, you should be someone in the study should be a statistical person because you're using statistics to try to show that the medicine where um, yes, it's wow, okay, okay, So this is

just a fucking disaster. They're doing a terrible job at like even pr cleanup is just like nonsense, it's just parts. Yeah, and it's the journal charges uh, like the BuzzFeed found that the journal, which is a very new journal UM charged two thousand dollars almost to publish the article. UM, and then after BuzzFeed asked about the feed, they dropped

the price on their website. UM. Carvallo admitted the study author admitted that local drugmakers had covered the expense of publishing the study and that he and his colleagues had paid the rest out of pocket. Um, there's a bunch shocked. That's weird here, UM, and it's it isn't weird. Yeah, there's it's We're gonna talk about a lot of other uh, sketchy shit. And one of the problems is that like least one of the hospitals where the study was supposedly

conducted denies that it was conducted there. Um. So there's a lot that's wrong with this study, Like the study that Ron Johnson, again is what Dr Corey cited in the Senate and was what Ron Johnson points out as like, look what he's being canceled for sharing science is toxic.

Especially that I mean it's like that truly wasn't even something that would have occurred to me, that the study didn't even happen, Like they couldn't be bothered to create a fake fucking study it's not the only time, and it seems more likely that, like there were some places where they did a study and did it kind of poorly because like also large parts of it, like the control group stuff was taken on the honor system. Um, so you shouldn't do that. This is this is the

most opposite in terms of steaks comparison. But I've been deep in hot dog culture for the last couple of months, and there was a study that was released last week saying that every time you eat a hot dog you lose thirty six minutes of your one human life, which is such a wild and bizarre claim to make, and if you bear it out, it's very like anyone can publish a study and it's and I feel like any time and obviously it's like I'm is kind of that

at the highest level and the highest stakes possible. But whenever something gets published, it's just like people are going off of the headline of like, well, if a study says it, it must be true, and there's very little Uh, well, who is conducting the study, what are their qualifications, do they have any reason to have ill intent or whatever?

Like all I have to say this studies bullshit and I firmly believe the hot dog thirty six minutes study is bullshit because clearly each hot dog takes ninety minutes off of your life. Um, if that were true, Robert, I would be rocketing backwards in time right now. I would be in seventeen something. I would be wearing fucking five D petticoats. I don't I don't know where it would be. I would not be I would not be alive, and I would be transcending dimensions in time. It's just

I just feel like it's demonstrably untrue. Also, being happy makes you live longer, so I very least it evens out people happy. Well, it is my potential, it is my It is my stance that hot dogs do kill people, and that that's not a bad thing because climate change, Baby, we got to reduce emissions. Do you like hot dogs, Robert? I love hot dogs, Jamie. How what's your weight, what's your what's your like? What's your go to? I mean, is literally any hot dog and I throw everything on it.

But the best hot dog I've ever had, Jamie, And I guess we can argue as to whether or not it's a hot dog. I was in Lisbon and I was at this street market and it was the bun was black because it had squid ink in it. And instead of a hot dog, it was an octopus tentacle and there was like some sort of weird creamy salad on. It was incredible. It was so fucking tasty. Oh my god. So I have to tell you, Robert, and this is gonna be really hard to hear. What you ate was

not a hot dog. It was a piece of an octopus. I think it's at that sounds like it was literally an amazing day for you. If it's a hot dog, it's a hot dog. It's a hot dog. You have the goll to to zoom dot you I am tell me octopus is hot dog. I cannot believe that you can claim to be a hot dog lover and say that it is possible to discriminate about what is or isn't a hot dog based on the kind of meat involved. Look,

a hot dog is a mixture of garbage. You can do it in ocean trash, but that's one piece of ocean trash. You need the different butts of five things in there were probably filled with plastic because of the post and then vegetarian hot dogs are made out of different vegetable trash. So it's like, sorry, I'm going to take this debate offline. You listen to these products and services. She and I prepare to engage in a traditional traditional knife fight of our people. I liked red huts in

New Jersey, so they're enjoy your products and services. We're back, and I'm livid at Jamie lived, but we have to put our differences aside. Bleeding to talk about ivermectin the hot dog of anti parasitic medications. I mean that's an accurate comparison. Hot dogs get cot talks, get bad enough rep but you know getting an unfair rep too. It's saved a lot of lives before. You know this before yeah, before it got before found YouTube. Yeah, we're not canceling ivermected.

If you get a parasite, please take it. If you go into the river and start feeling blind, take some ivermectin. But you know that you can't deny it. You can't deny it. It's proven. River blindness is just that's going to stick with me because I just didn't stay the funk away from rivers. Jamie. It's like people in Philadelphia so far jumping in the flooded streets. It's like I've walked down the street in Philadelphia. I've smelled the sewers. You should not be in that water, guy, you really

should not of Yeah, the subways in New York. It's just wow to to be alive at the end of the world. It's it's amazing. No fun. It looked way more fun in movies, yeah, because it seems like you were going to fall deeply in love and then the world was going to end. It turns out that's not how it goes. And also in the movies, every single person doesn't have a U t I. But it turns out when the world falls apart, everybody starts getting U t I s. I've got a U t I on

Splash Mountain once. That was my sound t I. Yeah, I'm surprised that you don't hear about that more. Every time I tell the ant people people should talk about their U t E s, they're very uncomfortable. And I feel like if I knew I've had have you ever had a conversation with someone and after they're like, I had a U t I when we hung out that day, and that's why I was being very bizarre in my behavior. I feel like you should we should just normalize telling each other we have U, T I S. So then

if you're being a weird hang, there's context. M we could get like a necklace of some sort or a bracelet like a swinger's party. Yeah, but so um yeah Johnson talked about this Argentinean study is full of ship and an idiot um um and fuck him. I should also note that even even based on the inaccurate uh like, even like the study itself is bad, but even based on what the study said, he got it wrong, like

the study claims to have had uh. He claims that the study had eight hundred participants, it had three hundred, um, which means that even based on his own claims, he got the study wrong by a third. Um well, he said, he's not like. I mean, look, these guys aren't stats guys. There's there's science, guys, and science famously doesn't involve numbers

or accuracy. So I should also note that there was a follow up study in Argentina or released in July that showed quote no significant effect on preventing the hospitalization of patients with COVID nineteen that goes against the claims of a prophylactic effects. And this is how many demonstrative evidence against this. At this point we haven't even gotten

into the worst one. Um. But again it's all part of the same problem where it is not bad and it is fact, in fact, a necessary part of medical science to do a series of small studies into whether something might work before you do larger studies that are more robust. The problem with that is idiots and grifters who will take this study on thirty people that may one day be useful and eventually arriving at a treatment, and instead say, start buying up all of this ship

that you can and take it. And if anyone tells you not to, it's not because the science isn't ready yet, it's because they're trying to stop you from taking control of your own health and they don't want you to. They want to but a micro chip in your body and your yeah, it's a threat. Here. Independence listen to

me about your healthcare. I did m m A. Anyone who did mm A. There's certain things I will listen to people who did m m A about, like, for example, m m A if Joe Rogan, if I have a problem getting someone in a headlock, and Joe Rogan offers me advice. I will take that advice. Motherfucker's pretty good at that. I'm not going to take Joe Rogan's advice about whether or not vaccines are legitimate. Well, look, i'll

meet you. I'll meet you there. If if I needed to learn how to look sweatier than anyone's ever looked in a fully air conditioned room, I would ask Joe Rogan because he has done the hours for that. He's done it for over ten thousand hours. He's he's the best looking sweaty in a small room. He's incredible at it virtue, so he's got the money. It's it's there's it's a fair conditioned thing. Man, Like, what is wrong

with you? Anyway? I believe that because the art episodes that first of all, it's performance, right, No, it's but the guest is never sweaty. I think that he's the room is forty two degrees and he's just sweating, sweating, sweatings because of all of the random pills he takes. That looks his brain is under an intense amount of pressure from all of those pills. God, what a loser. Okay, it's amazing. It's amazing that he's the most single, most

influential person in global media. Um, and he looks like a stick of salami. He looks like a thumb. Fuck to hot dog again with the hot dog slander. Think they're the same shade of red Jamie, So yeah and again. One of the other problems with this so again. One problem is that you get a bunch of small studies. People will pick and choose and grab studies that really may not be as as because they're not super scientific literate. They may think that that study says more than it does.

Another problem is that when you have a bunch of small studies, you might get It's very common you can have five or six small studies that are all good studies and I'll tell you opposite things because they're small. And when you have a small study, minor variables can throw off your results, which is part of why again, science is an iterative process. But the way put blushing works, all the studies are just getting shotguned out into the

public sphere. This is not an issue with obscure topics because researchers are the only ones looking at the data and they understand how this stuff actually works. But it's a problem with these epidemics because again there's all these fucking grifters out there looking for alternatives to the deep State vaccine. And then, of course there is the other another issue, which is that not every scientist involved in

the research process is acting in good faith. You have guys like doctor to Sigh and Surges Sphere putting out shady data for unclear reasons, but probably with some financial benefit. And then you have people who put up studies and public porpositories that have not been peer reviewed, and they know that most of the public won't know the difference,

they'll just see that it's a study. And you have guys like Dr Pierre Corey, who, when he was criticized for his sketchy Senate testimony, said I still stand by it, and I think history will prove it to be true, even though history didn't. So by early nearly all of the studies that purported to show a benefit from iver mectin use were small. There was one hugely influential exception, a November study published by Dr Ahmed el Ghazar of

Binja University in Egypt. It claimed to be a randomized control study that had found early iver met in use not only reduced transmission of COVID but reduced mortality by as much as nine If true, this would have been huge world changing news. This would have meant that a cheap, widely available anti parasitic was as effective as the best vaccines. The fact that this study was so large, again there's

like four hundred people. I think in this study um had impacts that ripple out far and minde because most of the studies are smaller. In cases like ivermectin, when researchers are analyzing a bunch of far flung little studies to try to determine whether or not something works, they like to bunch all of those studies together and do

something called a meta analysis. To explain what a meta analysis is, I'm going to quote from a write up by epidemiologist Giddy and my earrowitz Cats, who again is an epidemiologist and who like analyzes scientific studies for a living uh, and is thus the kind of person you would go to for information about this, as opposed to a random pulmonologist anyway. Quote. To solve the problem of multiple small trials, we conduct things called systematic reviews and

meta analyzes. These are scientific aggregations of research that pool all of the known studies on a topic into a single place and then combine them into a statistical model so we can see what the overall effect of a drug might be. Instead of a dozen small studies, we get one big aggregated estimate, which in theory is the final word on whether or not a treatment is effective.

The only problem with these analyzes is that if a single study has a large enough number of participants or a huge effect, it can sway the overall trend into something positive, even though on the whole the studies have not found a result. Now, generally this isn't a huge issue, but it does mean that you sometimes have an entire body of literature saying that something works using the gold standard aggregation of many studies that is actually based on

the results of a single piece of research. Uh, yeah, you see. And how this could be a problem this I you know, I'm starting to get the picture of how this ship. Uh and what is I mean, it's what is the fucking solution? I don't you know that? That is the thing. The problem is very clear to me.

The way that the way that we have the way that medical scientific studies are released and shared, and that this information like it does not work with the way the modern information ecosystem works, right, and that is a problem if you're looking for a solution. I'm not a scientist,

I'm not your guy. I am a disinformation study or professionally, and I can tell you where the problem is coming in, right, right, the problem, I mean, the way you just laid it out, the problem is extremely clear, but the actionable solution is not at all. It's a mix of thing. You know. It's not just that this stuff gets published early in people at cherry pick studies. It's also this problem of like some of these studies are sketchy, some of these

places allow you to publish things before the period. Like there's a number of problems, but the problems are clear, the solution less so so, and the consequences are extremely clear yea too. And the stakes are extreme, are really high. Okay, So in June, it's just what it feels like to have Joe Rogan's brain. It just feels like really tight, Like how sweaty are you right now? Jamie? I'm I'm sucking drenched and I'm sitting in me freezer. So I

feel like I might feel like he feels. Now is your best friend an incredible jiu jitsu expert who also believes the moon landing was fake in the Earth is flat? Because if so, you might actually just be Joe Rogan. Wait a second, that would explain so much of you do. Hang out with Eddie Bravo a lot. So I keep screaming to for comedians to move to Austin and then they hate it and then they leave because it's a

terrible place anyway. Um So. In June, the first large meta analysis of iver mectin studies was published in the American Journal of Therapeutics. It found quote moderate certainty evidence finds that large reductions and COVID nineteen deaths are possible using iver mectin. Now that kind of wording and a meta analysis published in a reputable journal had huge reverberations.

By the end of June, iver mecton was being discussed on Our Friend Joe Rogan Show in its first ever emergency episode was so importan and he did an emergency is just giving all thoughts a chance from her. I don't know what's wrong with I think every thought a chance. I think it's vacated. He might be. We'll talk about Joe, and we'll talk about Joe in part two. Honestly, YEA.

In this emergency episode, Dr Corey sits down Joe Rogan, Dr Pierre Corey of the f l C c C and Brett Weinstein, who will talk about in part two but is a grifter, uh, sit down to talk about how iver mectin is a fucking wonder drug. Now that episode dropped days after that first meta analysis was published. I cannot overstate the influence of having that big meta analysis like played on kind of making this look more

like a thing than it really is. Weinstein claimed, quote, the censorship campaign obscuring iver mectin is a prophylactic against stars cove two and as a treatment for COVID nineteen kills. Is it about shareholders in EU as? Now this discussion merged with Rogan's own worries about vaccine passports and whether

or not young healthy people needed the vaccine. Ever, Mecton was now built as a replacement to the vaccine, where six months before Dr Corey himself had pushed it as just a stop gap until the vaccine was ready, and for a while that meta analysis, and Dr Elgassar's study gave Dr Corey and other iver mectin advocates a link to stand on. They could point to this massive study and say, hey, why isn't the mainstream media covering this?

It must be because I ever, mecton is a generic over the counter drug, and so they're not big farm is not going to make money, so they're hiding it. Now. The reality is that iver Metton was sucking everywhere. It was all over alternative media, like the Joe Rogan podcast, which has a vastly larger reach than any mainstream news network. He gets like a hundred million downloads in a month. Reputable reporter, Yeah, like CNN is not as fucking influential

as Joe Rogan. At this point, reputable reporters were hesitant to write too favorably about iver mectin, though, because as soon as that Egyptian study dropped, there were questions about its veracity. And the study of course proved to be gus, which, as we talked about earlier, throws the entire net meta analysis into question. Gideon my Erowitz Coon or whatever Gideon MK is how he writes on the I've read his full name early whatever, Gideon that epidemiologist I quoted earlier.

He has a hobby of analyzing bad scientific studies and pointing out why they're disreputable. He is an actual scientist and an actual epidemiologist. He's not a Joe rogue, and unlike Dr Corey, he specializes in a field relevant to talking about whether or not iver mect and fucking works. In July, he wrote a devastating piece about Dr Elgasar's study. A number of his technical criticisms of the study are not things I understand, but this bit here should be

clear to everyone. Quote the entire introduction appears to be plagiarized. Indeed, it's very easy to confirm this. A copy pasted a few phrases from different paragraphs into Google, and it is immediately apparent that most of the introduction has been lifted from elsewhere online without attribution or acknowledgement. So I hope of it like the first chapter of A Babysitter's Right off the bag. That's a problem. That's a little bit of a problem. Right, that's a little bit of a problem.

But what's worse is that the numbers in the study are frankly impossible which has thrown considerable doubt again on whether or not the study was actually conducted at all. Quote in Table four, the study shows means, standard deviation, and ranges for recovery time and patients within the study. The issue is that with the reported range of nine to twenty five days, a mean of eighteen, and the standard deviation of eight, there are very few configurations of

numbers that would leave you with this result. You can even calculate this yourself using this tool developed by the clever fraud detectives James Heather's, Nick Brown, Jordan and Ia and Tim Vandersey. To have a mean of eighteen days. Consistent with the other values, the majority of the patients in this group would have had to stay in the hospital for either nine or twenty five days exactly. So a lot of like when you actually do the data

weird shit. Somehow, it gets even worse. Turns out that the authors uploaded the actual data they used for the study into an online repository. While the data is locked, one of the like people in analyzing this managed to guess the password in the file, which was one two three four, and gain an act access to the anonymous patient level information that the authors used to put the paper together. I've got a copy, and it's amazing how

obvious the flaws are even at a casual glance. For example, the study reports getting ethical approval and beginning approval in beginning on the eighth of June, But in the data file uploaded by the authors onto the website of the preprint, fully one third of the people who died from COVID nineteen were already dead when the researchers started to recruit their patients. Unless they were getting dead people to consent

to participate in the trial, that's not really possible. Moreover, about the entire group of patients who were recruited for the support supposedly prospecs perspective randomized trial appeared to have been hospitalized before the study even started, which is either a mind boggling breach of ethics or a very bad

sign of potential fraud. Even worse, if you look at the values for different patients, it appears that most of groups Group four are simply clones of each other, with the same or largely similar initials co morbidities, lymphocyte scores, etcetera. So this is the worst life. Like we're recruiting ghosts were recruiting clumps. We got a lot of ghosts in the study, the big farmaties. I want you to know what ghosts have to say about medicine, so I will like,

oh my god, mhm, problems that not mistakes but like lies. Yeah, it's a lot of problems. And getting is not the only guy breaking this down and blowing A number of people try to But by the time this gets thoroughly debunked, it had been downloaded a hundred and fifty thousand times and cited in two different meta analyzes that showed iver mectmus having a huge medical benefit, and it was the

largest study in both meta analyzes. So again, when you've got a bunch of small studies and one big study, this one involved foreign to test subjects, that large study can skew the results of a meta analysis, which is what happened here. Quote. If you look at those large aggregate models and remove just this single study, ivermectin loses almost all of its purported benefits. Take the recent meta analysis by Bryant at All that has been all over

the news. They found a sixty two percent reduction in risk of death for people who were treated with ivermectin compared to controls when combining randomized trials. However, if you remove the Algazar paper from their model and rerun it, the benefit goes from six to fifty two percent and

largely loses its statistical significance. There's no benefit scene whatsoever for people who have severe COVID nineteen, and the confidence intervals for people with mild or moderate disease become extremely wide. If you include another study that was published after the Bryant meta analyses came out, which found no benefit for iver mected on death, the benefits scene in the model

disappear entirely. For another recent meta analysis, simply excluding el Gazar is enough to remove the positive effect entirely, and so in one fell swoop, the very best scientific case for iver mecton as a COVID treatment kind of collapses within the medical field reaction to the word Gidding and others had done busting this bad study was Swift, the preprint Servery that had published dr Elgazar study before peer

review pulled it due to ethical concerns. The meta analyzes, though, are still out there and still being cited, and that's I guess all. We're gonna talk about in part one. Oh good's it's probably yeah, this is this is this is so troubling, I mean and it's I mean, I knew the studies were gonna be it was gonna be bad for sure, but this is like a level of disinformation and negligence that I had not anticipated. Wow, Wow, Wow, what name? What a nightmare? Um all, Jamie, you got

a plug things? Oh yeah, I could plug things. Uh here, here's a plug. You can listen to all of ac cast out now, which is my podcast about the history of Kathy comics and twentieth century American feminism. Uh yeah, or you could uh listen to the Bechtel Cast, or you could follow me on Twitter or Instagram and Twitter is Jamie left his help. Instagram's Jamie christ Superstar. And that's all. I think. That That's all I have to say. Oh. Also, also,

I am still soliciting hot dog recommendations. I've been to a lot of places I've tried. I think, all the all the big dogs, all the places that are on the listicles, I've been to all of those. But if there is an obscure hot dog place that you think I should try in the Continental us because I cannot

we can't go anywhere. Uh, let me know, I'm interested. Yeah, Oh, there's a great there's a great uh hot dog place in Lisbon where you can get something that I will argue as a hot dog, where you can get a piece of octopus on a hot dog bun. If it's random, it's a hot dog. It's not random meat. If it's just one meat, it could be random. You could just stick your knife in the ocean. Sometimes you're gonna get random. It could be wearing a Jack Skellington sweatshirt. That's not random, Jamie,

that's a popular media phenomenon. I look, I I I had a Jack Skellington hoodie before I had ever seen that damn movie. And then I watched it Certain Dido or Ring creepy. Yeah, I know. Before. Well, that's just if you want to be taken serious by the kids who play Hackey Sack outside, you gotta have a Jack Skellington t shirt. That's just how the social time it was at that time. Well, there's some free advice if you want children to like um in two thousand and seven.

In two thousand and seven, if you're traveling back in time in two thousand and seven, and it is critical that fourteen year olds think you're cool. Jamie Loftis has the I have a thirty dollar solution for you. It's called the Jack Skellington Hood solution for you is more money back then though, so keep that in mind. Yeah, that's good. That's a couple of weeks of allowance. Well, follow us a pasters spot on, turn Instagram or at cool Zone Media for all the things. We'll be back Thursday. I oh,