Forgiveness In the Wake of Pandemic Madness: a Few Facets, Layers and Levels

 Forgiveness is a multi-faceted, multi-level issue. IMO, what it LITERALLY means is to get to a point from which you can once again GIVE to the person from whom you presumably were withholding something (good will, maybe? something you have that they actually do need?). For-give-ness is FOR being able to GIVE again, although that's merely the literal sense.

But Rogan's point is well taken: if we had never happened to be exposed to non-Pharma points of view, many of us might have joined in on the madness. In my case, if I had never gone to a deeply analytical grad school, I may not have ever been able to punch through that glass ceiling of ignorance & denial.--and I only decided to further my education because I happened to take one class--one--in my final semester that challenged my world view and left me wanting more. So...forgiveness is an invitation to some humility and gratitude--a there, but for the grace of God, go I sort of thing.

And, speaking of humility, I suspect most of us rarely, if ever, say the words, "You were right; I was wrong". I try to say it once a month; it's good for my character.

In some cases-- most?--when I need to forgive another, it is true that my own dysfunction played a part in the drama, and helped bring harm upon myself AND the other. Turns out I'm just that dysfunctional.  They may be unwilling to address their part, but I can make amends for my part. It's funny, but having made amends for my part makes me better able to forgive them for their part--whether they themselves make amends, apologize, or not. Something about that humility, again.  It also clears my vision of lingering guilt and shame, so I can see the harm I might cause--and that others might.  Christian scripture says, to paraphrase, "Don't condemn the sliver in your neighbor's eye until  you take the log out of your own!".  Point well taken.  But what it implies, without saying so outright, is that, once your own log is out, you'll start seeing others' slivers and logs for what they are.

Does for-give-ness mean any thing more than giving, humility, gratitude and clarity? What it certainly DOESN'T mean is a return to naiveté and passivity, or allowing the other's harmful behavior to continue (assuming it's in our power to do something about it). Should we 'forgive' a pedophile, and in so doing allow them back into our lives when that would mean giving them access to children? Obviously not. We should advertise their perversion, if that will protect children, notwithstanding it might frustrate them and hurt their feelings. Should we forgive Pharma, then fall for the next round of fearmongering and wallet-scouring?  Nay.  

 

Forgiveness, should you choose to pursue it, doesn't mean sticking your head back in the sand. It doesn't mean you need to stop protecting those who need protected. Au contraire, if forgiveness is serving its vision-clearing function, then it should make us more likely to effectively protect self and others.  Lack of anger in the face of harmful behavior is not normal or healthy, but a certain type and volume of anger may actually impede protectiveness, by creating a kind of static. For instance, we might guzzle a fear-anger cocktail for so long that we get literally tired of it, and perhaps uncomfortable with others' reactions to such a cocktail.  So we might "let it go"...without ever having clearly thought things through.  Or the cocktail may simply interfere with the calmheadedness that is required to respond in an inspired, decisive fashion.

It's an open question whether forgiving the unrepentant means TRUSTING them. Their very unrepentance implies that trust them you cannot, at least for the time being. It's charitable--assuming you actually are 100% right and good and they actually are 100% wrong and bad--to hold out hope that they might come around--not giving up on them might even encourage them to do so. But this is the charity of saints, which, as a flawed human, I may or may not be able to emulate. It may even do more harm than good to try. But as Rogan notes, if we do not at least attempt to forgive, and rebuild burnt bridges somehow (having to eat at least some of our own crow, I suspect), then we will be stuck in this binary, mutually antagonistic, tribal holding pattern indefinitely--as the Montagues and the Capulets were, leading to Romeo and Juliet, both young and both dead in a mausoleum. Or worse.

Many are confused between optimism and naiveté, passivity and service--this is by design. The propaganda systems, and acquiescence to them, has been the water we swim in for many long generations. Information needed to challenge the message and motives of the powerful is withheld or twisted, very deliberately, forming a universal, historical and cultural narrative--our mythology, if you will.  The resultant peer pressure is huge--and who among us hasn't caved?  Will we cast the first stone, or won't we?

 

Another facet to discuss about forgiveness (but not nearly the last) is that it cannot be forced. Forced is fake--and who wants to give or get fake forgiveness? It's a PROCESS, and you or I may be unable to simply will it to happen if the habit of unforgiveness runs too deep. It is my own belief that, taken as an end in itself, the drive to forgive leads invariably to the fake version. If, instead, we turn our efforts to HEALING THE HARM within ourselves, to the point where the hurt has abated--then forgiveness, of a sort, follows as a necessary result. In a word: If they can't hurt us anymore (because we have healed), then we won't be so angry and judgemental towards them, no matter what they keep doing or not doing. To take just one example, if the harm is in feeling inferior, then work on NOT feeling inferior!..Even if they came to you on bended knee, confessing all and begging forgiveness--you would still need to do that work, most likely, or the stinging aftertaste of inferiority would remain.

Remember, too: those who practice unforgiveness with others may, at the same time, be practicing unforgiveness against themselves. Judgementalism towards others, and judgementalism towards self, are the same exact action--just turned in a different direction. Do you BELIEVE in punishment, as a principle...really?

Like I said, multifacted, multileveled.

One last: it's a choice. The pursuit of forgiveness brings pros and cons like any other choice. The path of unforgiveness--who knows?--might lead to insight that forgiveness itself would have missed. Just as with taking a vaccine, you do the cost-benefit analysis, and choose accordingly--and everyone has the right to evaluate the results of their choice--just as in good science--and perhaps change their mind.

TRANSCRIPT: Jeffrey Sachs on COVID origins, the Grayzone interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=morj-3rdWwM&ab_channel=TheGrayzone

well you Professor Jeffrey Sachs you are the chair of lancet's covid-19 commission and recently in Spain you commented that you believed that the that covid-19 or SARS Kobe 2 originated due to blunders of U.S biotech I wonder if you could expand on that and discuss the role of the Eco Health Alliance which was a channel for usaid and Pentagon DARPA funding to the Wan Institutes of virology which remains a key culprit in the origins of covid

Sachs: yep basically the virus SARS Cove too that causes covid-19 disease is a cervical virus a bat virus that is also called a sars-like virus because it's  the same sub genus as the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003-2004. but there's a piece of the Genome of this virus that makes it really infectious and that is called the cleavage site that sits on the spike protein that we all learned about and that allows the spike protein to be cleaved or divided and thereby enter human cells much more easily SARS does not have this kind of cleavage site SARS-CoV2 is the only virus of this bat family cervical virus family or sars-like virus family that has a proteolytic cleavage site and the specific cleavage site is called the furin cleavage site and it's four amino acids that make this thing so infectious that it became a global disaster with 18 million deaths the operative question is where did that come from given that it is the only  if you're in cleavage site in this family or sub-genus of viruses well they didn't tell us at NIH but we found out through leaks and lawsuits and all the rest and by  because insiders knew about this that one of the  projects of NIH funding was to insert furin cleavage sites into sars-like viruses they thought that was a good idea to make construct viruses that would be more dangerous

why

Sachs: not sure but  one possible reason is for making vaccines against dangerous SARS like viruses or  potential use of this class of virus as a bio Warfare we don't know we just don't know but what we do know is that there was dangerous research underway and we also know that when this virus first showed up in Wan and people said whoa what is this and the virologist looked at this in the NIH group National Institutes of Health Group out of Fauci's shop they said whoa look at that if you're in cleavage site what is that doing there and how did that get there and on February 1st 2020 there was a secret call it's not secret anymore because of Freedom of Information Act but there was a call where a group of virologists said whoa 80/20 just came out of a lab another one said I can't even think of how nature could have done this one another said 50/50. now four days later NIH oversees a draft paper that says definitely natural and I call that definitely weird and people should go to the website of the US right to know which has done a terrific job in these lawsuits and Emily Kopp a fantastic investigative reporter has laid out this remarkable week where inside they say natural and a few days later they I'm sorry inside they say lab and a few days later they say natural not that they learned anything over those three days but they decided to tell us a narrative this is how government works it creates stories it doesn't search for the truth that doesn't aim for the truth that doesn't tell the truth it creates stories and for weird understandable reasons that Noam Chomsky and others have talked about for decades the big media go along with these stories but they're very dangerous because these are stories this is not real investigation or or reality so let me say clearly we don't know exactly where this virus came from but whoa there is a lot of weird stuff and a lot of bad behavior by NIH and very interestingly the head of the Centers for Disease Control in 2020 Bob Redfield said inside hey this really could have come out of a Lab and what did Fauci do he cut him out of all the process and so he played the bureaucratic heavy and out came a narrative and the head of CDC with a lot of expertise in this area was completely shut out because he said you know there's another side to this story we need to look at it so what the Lancet commission concluded because we don't have the lab notebooks we don't have the lab records but what we can see is there is a pathway by which this could have come out of the laboratory for sure there's absolutely nothing even remotely close to definitive that it came out of the marketplace that's been much talked about there's so many holes and flaws and gaps in that story that it it's nothing close to being definitive and perhaps is just a place where sick people went and sneezed on on cages and because of what's called ascertainment bias that's where they looked in the in the beginning because they thought maybe they thought or they decided that maybe it came from the marketplace but the point is we have two viable hypotheses and we need to know and one of the reasons we don't know about the lab is that the U.S government Fauci shop has not told us the truth about what they were doing what the risks are what they thought and how this group made these early decisions and because we don't know we also don't know what else is going on what other research is still going on what other dangerous stuff is going on probably I don't know I shouldn't say probably I don't know but what I do know is nobody knows  except the inside of the inside and that is not a that's not a safe situation for this world

well presumably Anthony Fauci knows  we know  that after 9/11 his  National Institute for allergic and infectious diseases NIAD received billions from or under the watch of none other than Dick Cheney to conduct what we're seen as biodefense programs but would you have just acknowledged could also be bio Warfare programs

Sachs:  yeah and but either way what is what is not evident to a lot of people is that Fauci's shop is the biodefense shop of the US government it's it's where the defense dollars go and you know maybe make this virus but they don't want us to know what's going on and that's—

let's drill this down  in April 2020 promoted a nature magazine article which claimed that covid originated from nature and through FOIA requests the public learned that Fauci was involved in at least corresponding and collaborating with the virologists who put together that article  he he probably was involved in the creation of that article itself and this was a cheneyesque act it was like Cheney trying to sell the Iraq War so the question here is  what what role do you think Fauci played not only in the cover-up but possibly in the origins of covid-19 and to what extent can he be held accountable

Sachs: first of all that article is an awful article it's it's called the proximal origins of SARS-Cov2 it appeared in nature medicine in  March 2020  and when I read it the first time I said oh okay this is natural you know they explain it and when I went back after I you know began to get what was going on because I didn't get it at the beginning… the most remarkable thing in that paper it it just makes your eyes bulge in the moment they say it couldn't have come out of a lab because after all this is this new virus is unlike any previously reported virus is is the line in there then the footnote to that which is footnote 20 is to a 2014 paper—what a joke! they're talking about an outbreak in 2020 and they say it couldn't have been from the lab and they cite a 2014 Authority for that most crucial claim?! and if this were in the least an honest paper the scientists would have said we don't know because we haven't seen the lab books we don't know what the research was, but this is not an honest paper; it was a designed narrative now what really happened we don't know except that there was a lot of dangerous research funded by the U.S government including NIAID and they were quite gung-ho on this gain of function work and the technology to make a SARS-CoV2 virus was pretty plain and we have very clever  bioengineers in the United States that charted this out in a 2017 proposal to the defense department page 10 says we have 180 previously more than 180 previously unreported viral strains and on page 11 it says we're going to look for proteolytic Cleavage sites and where they don't exist we're going to insert them and you say holy hell you are thanks for telling us except they didn't tell us that had to be leaked from inside the US government for us to know about that so they charted out the handbook of how to make SARS-CoV2 and then with the straight face they just ignored that the whole time even till now these same scientists that reached the conclusion in March 2020 couldn't have come out from a lab now they're told well there were more than 180 previously unreported strands that comes out do they change their mind do they say oh we didn't know about that no they just carry on straight face this is not science this is a concocted narrative what it means I don't know but it needs an investigation which is what I've been calling for

and and on that investigation  Sam husseini who's a friend of the gray Zone veteran researcher on U.S bioweapons helped publicize and expose the role of the US NGO Eco Health Alliance as a channel for USAID funding for gain of function research and we know that Eco Health Alliance was helping to direct the research at the Wan Institute to virology  dazek when you appointed him to chair the task force you ran for Lance it was already on the World Health Organization commission he signed and organized the letter dismissing the lab origin as a conspiracy theory he obviously had a conflict of interest because of the funding of the Wan Institute severology even though he ridiculously denied there was a conflict there  so I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the role of Eco Health Alliance and how Peter Daszak wound up under your watch as the chair of the task force didn't just waste a lot of time and who who initially put him forward to chair the task force

Sachs: it's a very simple story  in early 2020 I believed the natural  hypothesis because that's what the scientists were saying and I didn't have any reason to question that and I didn't know about the research that was going on and then I was asked to chair the Lance in commission and I thought well who's the guy that knows about zoonotic spillovers who knows about what's going on with the viruses so I asked dashing no one no one put them forward there was no ulterior thing there was just my naivete  in that first six months so I asked him to organize this thing then I learned he's not telling me the truth and he thinks and it my own eyes opening up and being briefed by a number of scientists and being guided: “Jeff look at this understand this this is how this works this is the research that was underway” you know I had a two-year crash course in virology that was quite wonderful with a lot of very generous scientists helping me to understand this but what I did know and I know a lot about government because I've worked with a lot of governments over the last 40 years I knew that there was lying going on and the more I looked into it the more the lies and so that's after at one point I said to Daszak “show me your project documents” he said, “I can't” I said, “what do you mean you can't?! you're you're on a commission that's a transparent commission to get to the bottom of this you show them to me.”..”I can't, my lawyers say I can't”… “oh your lawyers say you can't well you can't be on the commission anymore” okay so that was the first step then the rest of the scientists all attacked me  you know you're  attacking science and so forth then the next Freedom of Information Act lawsuit dropped the next piece and then I found out the one that was attacking me the most for dismissing dashing was a co-investigator with dashik so I saw I wasn't getting it

who is that?

Sachs: that's Jerry Kirsch at Boston University  and  somebody I was friends with for a long time but he went after me and then I find out you know he's they're all one way or another not letting on and it's by the way it's not a big group it's a pretty small group but it's the inside group they have the inside track on NIH it's a small group that has talked to each other since the beginning it's a small group that was assembled to write this stuff and it was pretty unpleasant  and  and I saw that you know this is not this isn't about science this is about transparency this is about finding out what's really going on NIH you know in the lawsuits releases redacted documents meaning blanked out of one of them is the 2020 review of its research on these viruses and it's 290 blank pages and then they want trust from us come on if you want trust from us show us the document not blank pages so this is why we need an independent investigation

let me ask a related follow-up taking this back to Ukraine as we wrap we've seen these allegations or rumors of U.S biological weapons Labs that speculation was fueled earlier this year when Victoria Newlin was asked about it by Marco Rubio but didn't give a direct answer: “does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons”…Newland: “ Ukraine has a biological research facilities which in fact we are now quite concerned Russian troops Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of”… do you think there's any Merit to these rumors or allegations that the U.S has been involved in a biological weapons program inside of Ukraine

Sachs: Merit, that we need to find out we have a system of government which in principle if you're in seventh grade civics or at least when I was 50 years ago or it was more than 50 years ago we learned that there were congressional committees that would oversee the behavior of the executive branch that's what we need right now I don't know the answer to this but I know we need oversight and what I know for sure is we have not had transparency on these key issues and sad to say really since 1947 with the National Security Act and the creation of the CIA our government when it comes to issues like this operates in secrecy we say that we're a democracy but the public doesn't know we're not told when I was young a long time ago the New York Times actually used to do investigative reporting you'd be surprised  they they  they didn't believe what Johnson was saying and Nixon was was saying about  about Vietnam and they were right and there was the Pentagon papers and there was Watergate and when I grew up it was normal that a reporter on the New York Times would actually look into something now it's like a different world. and so the impunity from the mass media is absolutely stunning that's why you know what we're talking about and what you're doing is so important because we're not getting it from the sources that are, quote “the  the authoritative sources”; what we're getting is the government line well it's Aaron and I Aaron and I grew up in the Judith Miller era maybe yeah there you go it's incredible it's the opposite yeah I grew up in the Seymour Hirsch era, yes where I love these reporters and you know and their idea was bust these government officials for lying to us and they don't have that view right now well

now we're a conspiracy theorists if we follow inside hersh's footsteps

Sachs: oh I I was attacked that way today yet again by colleagues you know colleagues and it's just they don't understand  I mean many people probably really don't understand what this consistent  narrative creation lying falsehoods misdirection really is when it comes to all of these sensitive issues and these issues are life and death issues for us

well it's remarkable that more peop more of your colleagues it just seems remarkable to me that more of your colleagues don't speak out more and they did seem to be more outspoken at least within liberal circles during the bush era when the Iraq War started to go bad but now it seems that they've all adopted this mentality in favor of endless escalation I don't know if you can speak to that

Sachs: I don't know you know I'm not  I mean I'm I vote Democratic but  I I don't feel that we're functional as a democracy and and the last two democratic presidents launched a lot of wars and engaged in a lot of secret operations and I don't like it at all. and I think our foreign policy has basically been run by the neocons for 30 years, and Victoria Newland seems to be in every Administration. and so to my mind I don't like this partisan game well this is on our side you know Fauci's our guy we can't attack him and so on come on it's not these are not partisan issues these are issues about life and death that we need to know about and  a lot of people still have a kind of partisan mentality that if the Democrats are in don't attack you know you're be you're part of the team but I don't feel that this is the right approach

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the center for sustainable development at Columbia University president of the UN sustainable development Solutions Network and served as chair of the Lancet covid-19 commission Jeffrey thank you so much for your time and insight yeah great to be with you thanks a lot thank you thanks for what you guys are doing English (auto-generated)

Dr John Campbell on meta-analysis of studies done on Ivermectin for COVID-19

 

Well, welcome to today's talk it's  thursday the 24th of june (2021). Now the best meta analysis so far on the efficacy of  ivermectin has been published so we're going to look at that now. I know looking at these studies aren't for everyone it's it's a bit scientific and it kind of journal reading stuff so i'm going to give you the the the headlines and the or the bottom line really on this. Now now this study shows that Ivermectin probably reduces deaths by 62% and possibly reduces transmission by 86 percent, and you notice i said probably reduces deaths by 62 and possibly reduces transmission by 86—so that's the result from this meta analysis which we're now going to look at in detail. And i'd love you to to stay it is pretty interesting actually. 

Now this is the publication here just came out on the 17th of june so it's a few days old now  “Ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of covid19 infection” we see the authors there and Tess Lawrie of course we've had the  enjoyment of  interviewing twice on this channel and during that time Tess did give us a lot of this information that's in this  before it was published. But the big difference now it's published  it's in this it's in this journal the american journal of therapeutics and and it's peer reviewed so this is peer reviewed and this is particularly important because a meta-analysis as you know is looking at the results from many different trials combining those reanalyzing that data and reinterpreting that data and that is intrinsically quite a complicated thing to do, so you need good quality peer review to make sure that this technique that this methodology was correctly followed. And given it has been published i think we can asses that it was correctly followed. It certainly looks good to me in fact parts of it are beyond me actually but  i think i've worked out most of it and we'll go through it now so “ivermectin for the prevention treatment of covered 19 infection a systematic review meta-analysis and trial sequential analysis to inform clinical guidelines”…so  background to this now the  the anti-parasitic agent ivermectin with antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties has now been tested in numerous clinical trials so here they're clearly saying that it's got antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, the question is to what degree are they efficacious?  Now 2018 application for ivermectin used for scabies gives a direct cost of $2.90 for 112 milligram tablets—i mean this is an incredibly cheap drug. It's off license, it's generic, it can be manufactured in huge amounts in india—remarkably low cost. So if it did work it would be really good because it's a very very cheap  intervention low-cost therapeutic, because that's particularly useful in countries where they've got very limited resources. Now most trials were registered self-funded and undertaken by clinicians, so these are not trials done by large pharmaceutical organizations they're not trials done by governments, they're trials mostly done by the actual clinicians the doctors and their assistants who were actually working in the field. And very often they've done this research as well as their day job, so they were largely self-funded by the clinicians themselves rather than officially sponsored. Now we this is we assess this is the team  from the meta analysis “efficacy of ivor mectin treatment in reducing mortality and chemo prophylaxis as a prevention of covid19 and preventing cross-infection spread of infection”… now data sources that they used in this up to the 25th of april 2021…now this is quite important because recently there's been some international studies which indicate  possible to probable preventative effects in mexico, peru, a couple other places i can't remember from around india of course, but from from around the world that indicates  possible to probable prophylactic effects in terms of preventing people contracting covid 19 in the first place , but you've got to have a cut off somewhere, and this one was on april the 25^th. Because this is a complex analysis to calculate and indeed to write up so the team these are direct quotes in italics system sifted four studies extracted data and assessed risks of bias meta-analysis were conducted and certainty of evidence was  assessed. That's what they do now  we're gonna look at what they did in a minute but just interesting to note here they use what's called the grade approach and the grade approach here is on the  this is on the cochrane training site and it's the grade approach so let's look at what this is:  so that's the cochrane training site there that's a good article in bmj on the grade approach grading of recommendations assessment development and evaluations the grade approach. Now i obviously knew about this but  when you look at this there's actually whole training packages and textbook sort of things on it so it's a whole field in its own right actually so  for the serious students plenty there on that on that cochrane review training site. Needless to say we're not going into it  but the point to notice is it's it's this method is reproducible and transparent framework for grading certainty and evidence. So how sure are we that the evidence is giving evidence for what it says it's doing? This is about validity the degree to which something does what it says it does. So if it says beans on the tin and you open the tin and it's got peas inside that's a non-valid claim isn't it? But if it says beans on the tin you open the tin that's what you get you get beans and that's a valid claim. It really is as simple as that, but of course there's degrees of validity  in this  in these meta analyses. 100 organizations officially endorsed grade and as we saw the cochrane the main uk one  uses that  methodology. Now, what this does it it is reproducible, now it's not saying it's completely objective, it's not a mechanical process, it's not—there is subjective assessment in it, but the subjective assessment is carried out by people with a lot of research analysis experience and the peer reviewers in this case will have carried out their own grade analysis. One would like to think and come up with  the same conclusions, otherwise it wouldn't be a proper peer review. So basically grade has four levels of certainty of evidence how sure are we what is our certainty and it can either be very low low moderate or high so very low level of certainty, low level of certainty, moderate level of certainty, or high level of certainty—that's what this grade thing does now things that would decrease confidence making things either sort of go down from moderate to low to very low risk of bias. In the study, imprecision in the studies, inconsistency in the studies, indirectness (that something isn't actually assessing what it's supposed to assess)—and publication bias (things that are published and indeed not published), that's the hardest one to assess, so that would tend to put things down into lower categories. But increasing confidence is a very large magnitude of effect, so if lots of people survived in one group, and lots of people died in another group, for example, clear dose response gradient, so the more of the good thing the the more the better effect. And the third criteria there is residual confounding is likely to decrease rather than increase the magnitude of the effect. So anything that gets in the way, that clutters up the result is likely to decrease rather than increase the magnitude of effect. Of course if you've looked at previous videos on there you'll recognize these from the austin bradford hill criteria, so it's not entirely new, but it's been revamped and and updated so that's kind of what they're doing. So recognize methodology that can be analyzed and reproduced by others’ data sources: 25 randomized controlled trials, number of patients in in the studies collectively 3,406 participants, right. Ivermectin reduced risk of death compared with no ivermectin. Now the meta-analysis here was 15 trials that contained the mortality data and in these 15 trials there was a total of 2,438 patients, and the average risk ratio was 0.3, in other words 62% reduction in deaths. If you were given the ivermectin your chances of dying were 0.38, 62% reduction in the probability of dying. So that is kind of the headline figure that we gave at the start, and it's it's it's quite a reasonable figure. Now the level of certainty here is moderate certainty evidence. So that's the second highest or third lowest level of evidence depending on how you look at it, so if that's the lowest second, third, fourth, there you go. So that's where it is, it's at the moderate level of certainty. Now when we talked to tess about this, actually we did,  i was quite impressed with the fact that she was very conservative. She wasn't making assumptions about how valid her data was, or how certain she was, and it appears the peer reviewers  agree with that. So moderate certainty evidence, a bit disappointing to be quite honest if i'm being honest. I am disappointed that it wasn't high level, but of course we know that these were mostly based on small-scale studies carried out by the clinicians themselves, self-funded, and of course clinicians are good at clinical work they are not necessarily absolutely brilliant at organizing clinical trials. It's not really their day job. But because there is no big pharmaceutical companies or governments involved in this, this is what we've got. So it's not surprising really, that's kind of where we ended up. So we can have moderate certainty that this is an accurate reduction  in deaths of 62 percent, the average risk ratio 0.38.

 

Now i'm not going to go into these,  to tell you the truth i don't fully understand them, but these are other ways of assessing the validity of that data other than the grade so the  dersimonian-laird method and the biggerstaff-tweedy method, so basically it checked out, in other words what  the team authors are saying here as well as using grade they triangulated the grade results—grading of recommendations assessment development and development and evaluations—they triangulated those with other methodologies and they got the same,  at least the same direction of results. So so that's good, they've used different methodologies, and tell you what, if you actually look through this paper,  it really is it really is quite a a detailed impressive piece of work.  But it's a very detailed study with lots of fairly precise methodological information in it,  so that was that result: 62 percent protection.

 

So ivermectin versus no ivermectin in hospitalized patients: the ivermectin group, the total mortality was 2.3 percent, the patients died; the no-ivermectin group, 7.8% of the patients died in hospital.  So we see quite a nice bit of clear water between those two figures, really indicating the likely, with moderate certainty, likelihood that ivermectin is being  efficacious. So the 62% protection, 2.3; versus 7.8.

 

Now, moving on to ivermectinus prophylaxis, which we've recently seen for example in india, peru , mexico.  Did we look at study in chile as well? We looked at a few studies about this, and it does look remarkably promising from population-based data, but we're only going from what is three trials analyzed by the trial authors. In this one,  the average reduction in transmission was  86 percent in prophylaxis reducing covid 19 infection, but this was low-certainty evidence. Now the reason it was low certainty evidence— of course, it wasn't very low, it was low—is due to study-design limitations, and “few included trials”. But what they did find clearly favored ivermectin used to bring about improvement in patients’ condition and prevent deterioration, that was another thing the trial or the meta-analyses authors concluded.

Adverse events, rare among treatment trials, evidence of no difference was assessed at low certainty. In other words, they couldn't really tell from the data they had  they couldn't really give a definitive answer to the  severe adverse events, how different they were between the two groups. But again,  other studies, and we know ivermectin's been used extensively for parasitic infections which we've looked at, but this is only looking at what this is looking at, so evidence of no difference was assessed as low certainty, so they couldn't say for sure there was no difference, which is is the honest opinion, now the conclusions from the study authors now put these all in inverted commas because i think it's quite important to to get them right these are all direct quotes “moderate certainty evidence finds that large reduction in covered 19 deaths are possible using ivermectin”. Okay so that's one conclusion. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce nbers  progressing to severe disease. Certainly consistent with what dr nair was doing in india when we interviewed praveen now a few weeks ago. “the apparent safety and low cost suggests that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the sars coronavirus 2 pandemic globally” is the conclusion of the study authors. So that's that it's not as convincing as we would like, but largely due to the limitations and the clinician-run nature of the trials, but the team clearly the meta-analysis team clearly feel that they have collected enough evidence to indicate efficacy and clinical use. Now of course i'm not prescribing anything, this is purely for educational purposes. Read the paper yourself and see what it says but that that was what they say the apparent safety with low cost suggests that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on this highest coronavius 2 pandemic globally. And it would certainly have been good if we did have an effective prophylactic agent because that could have curtailed things things like the delta variant couldn't it? Because the vaccines don't work straight away whereas the the idea is that a therapeutic would work within probably within oh i don't know within a few hours anyway within a few hours.

 

Now  let's just compare this with other agencies at the moment for balance. Now  this is from the national institutes of health from the united states of course and they have their statement here any  national institutes of health  covered 19 treatment guidelines and fairly well known now they say there is insufficient data for covid-19 guideline pane,l to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin is their conclusion. Now, of course we know that the world health organization has come out against ivermectin except in clinical trials, whereas national institutes of health in the states has kept this neutral response, and that has been their position since february i think yeah 11th of february, that's been their position since then. So direct quote “there's insufficient data to recommend either or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of covidd 19. Okay,  now the reason that they give for this that they can't be more definitive, is the sample size of most of the trials were small. Okay, some were a few hundred, but yeah, we accept that point.  “various doses and schedules of ivermectin were used”—well, of course, this was done by different clinicians around the world. Some of the randomized controlled trials were open-label, in other words, there could be placebo effects. They weren't all double-blind, which of course is a legitimate critique.  Patients receiving various  concomitant, potentially confounding, medications such as doxycycline, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, zinc and corticosteroids, so these could have confused the picture,  meaning that it's hard to say whether it was these or the synergistic or the inhibitory effects of these with ivermectin that gave the results. So they are saying they are confounding, casting uncertainty on the dependent variable which is the potential efficacy on the severity of covid 19 in the study. Participants were not always well described. Okay, again, fair critique and the study outcome measures were not always clearly defined, again,  now, had these trials been done by a large pharmaceutical group who are used to doing this, or had that been done by government  with large sponsorship, then these probably wouldn't have occurred, but again this is largely clinician-led research, so again these limitations aren't surprising. But it is frustrating that this definitive answer is just that little bit out of reach, although this 62% efficacy is probably the best thing we've got so far.  So that was the national institutes of health on that one.

Now, the sort of definitive guide for these things in the uk is the  cochrane library:  “trusted evidence, informed decisions are better health” is their motto. So  “ivermectin for preventing & treatment of covid 19,” this was written on april 2021. Now, what they've written here is a very detailed proposal for the study, not the study itself. Now, this proposal for the study is probably the best proposal i have ever read for a meta-analysis. It really is quite excellent. So it's got ivermectin… people that are doing it, objectives… “this is a protocol for a cochrane review intervention, the objectives are as follows”. But this is what they plan to do, so description of the condition which is very well and concisely done.  Description of the ivermectin which was well done… how the intervention might work, all well done. But it's all saying what they plan to do, so the objective is to assess the efficacy and safety of ivermectin, and compar it to standard care placebo or any other proven intervention. Again, we will include randomized control trials, so it's not done yet. So this was back in  april and this is the cochrane institute, which is like the new uk national flagship, so you've got to—i mean, they've given themselves a very complicated job, but  you would have thought given the evidence that we appear to have they might have given this a slightly higher priority. But let me show you the state of play: so cochran reviews on this subject,  zero.  Cochrane protocols, that's what we've just looked at one, so they've got the protocol which is good. They're aware of 112 trials. They've written no editorials, no special collections, and no clinical answers. In other words, that is completely useless at the moment, which is a bit surprising, as i've said. So the evidence from this meta-analysis, again, i would reinstate release date demands, some form of  response from dr fauci or chris whitley, because there's sufficient evidence there to merit a response, even if it's to say this trial's rubbish,  forget it, and  we're not going down that route. But as we've said before the silence is deafening.

 

So they there you go. I must say i've been looking forward to this matter of analysis for a long time and i'm a bit disappointed, but having having read it i can understand why  the result is more limited and less definitive than we would like. So there we go, that is my understanding of the ivermectin situation at the moment:  62% probable reduction in death with moderate certainty evidence; and with low certainty evidence  86% protection against  spread and effectiveness as a prophylactic agent, and that's basically the best we've got at the moment. But this is  by far the best meta-analysis so far that i'm aware of so that really is our current definitive state of knowledge on this subject. Remember that was educational purposes only, don't take any medicines based on what i say.  It's always a difficult subject, but more to come on this, and that there are other trials ongoing and planned. And i'm hoping that quite a few countries like india mexico chile peru are going to start writing up definitive papers on their population level studies, which of course involve millions of people and the effect particularly on prophylaxis. So we look forward to more definitive answers in the future, so on that slightly frustrating. End. Thank you for watching this video.