Alex_Krycek

Hawke basically resorted to a "nuclear option" to override the courts. You seem to be in favor of politicians ruling by unilateral mandate, which I don't agree with. This is the disingenuous argument being promulgated. "We're not going to force people to get the vaccine, we'll just limit what they can do in society to such an extent so as to effectively remove them from the populace. We're not going to force Djokovic to get the vaccine, we're just going to ban him from the country for 3 years and work to exile him from all tennis tournaments." You keep repeating this illogical premise (above). If you have access to vaccine, the unvaccinated are not doing you any harm. Full stop. They are perhaps putting themselves in more jeopardy, but in a free society that is their choice. Your purported pretext for dictating the health choices of others based on your perceived risk is grossly miscalibrated. Actually the Republicans are already working to implement that example I gave, so neither. Reinforce the argument that the government can mandate your health choices and don't be shocked when an administration ideologically opposed to you tries to do the same. Vaccines do work. That point is not at issue. As Beecee pointed out, "Australia has in excess of 90% vaccination rates, NSW and Victoria are approaching 95% rates." So based on this, Djokovic posed no reasonable threat. As Beecee also pointed out, Australians endured very strict and draconian lockdown restrictions, so the public fury regarding Djokovic was extreme. Additionally, the explicit reason stated by Hawke in his submission to the courts for unilaterally revoking Djokovic's visa was he might inspire more anti-vax sentiment and protest. See below. Excerpt: In a 10-page report, Hawke said he was concerned that Djokovic, whom he regarded as a "high-profile unvaccinated individual," would foster "anti-vaccination sentiment." Djokovic's lawyer called the claim "illogical, irrational or unreasonable. https://www.newsweek.com/fear-novak-djokovic-would-stoke-anti-vaccination-sentiment-led-deportation-judge-1671229 It was a political decision, not one based on sound health policy.

You seem to have conveniently overlooked the courts and judicial system. In a constitutional, multi-cameral, multi-party Republic, elected officials don't get to dictate policy unilaterally, especially when a judge already ruled on the matter. I'm confident you already knew that though. If the argument is self evident, which you agree it is, there is no need to elaborate further. Granting the government the power to mandate an individual's public health decisions sets a dangerous precedent. An individual's health choices are not something that should be determined by any administration. A Republican administration might determine that "it's a woman's own good to not get an abortion", or Big Pharma might effectively lobby to get a medication forcibly administered to high schoolers based on some dubious, self funded research. There are too many opportunities for politicians to abuse such a power for their own ends. Don't create a straw man. I never said that vaccines don't reduce deaths, and I clearly stated why I am against universal mandates.

The numbers could always be higher, depending on who you ask. Who gets to make that determination? The fact is the vaccine is readily available to those who want it. Mandating that everyone get the vaccine in the name of public safety is a slippery slope, in my view. Those who want it can get it. This is how things are supposed to work in a free society. Simply put: because there was no rational or legal basis for their actions, other than to deter others from abstaining from the vaccine, which was entirely political. If you can link to conclusive studies concerning this point, please do so.

I agree that the public benefits if a higher percentage of people are vaccinated, but that is already the case in Aus, is it not? The minority who choose to remain unvaccinated are not stopping others from getting the vaccine. The vaccine is readily available to those who want it. Forcing every single person to get vaccinated is not something I agree with. TMK Australia does not have vaccine mandates in place for their own citizens, so requiring all foreign visitors to be vaccinated strikes me as incongruent. Further, those who are vaccinated can still spread the virus, so there isn't any argument for keeping the unvaccinated out, not in a country that respects individual liberty, that is.

I find the Australian government's position entirely illogical, to be honest. Coronavirus can still be spread even if a person is vaccinated. Those who are vaccinated face drastically reduced chance of hospitalization or serious illness. Further, Djokovic had previously been infected with coronavirus, so there is the natural immunity factor to consider. Ultimately, what is the logical reason to demand that Djokovic (or any other traveller, for that matter), be vaccinated? He's only putting himself at risk, which is already substantially low anyway. To me the move by Alex Hawke to use his "Godlike Powers" and overrule the court's decision was purely political, and not based on science. Additionally, the explicit reason Hawke gave to support his unilateral banning of Djokovic was that Djokovic could somehow rally anti-vaccine sentiment in Australia and people might protest more, should he be allowed to compete. So to summarize, you have a politician overruling a judge out of fear of more protest and speech the current administration doesn't like, with the aforementioned lack of scientific justification. That should trouble anyone who supports constitutional government.

Distrust and skepticism are the only things separating science from dogmatic religion. Science is not an unimpeachable monolith; it's a community of fallible human beings whose results should never be trusted, but rather constantly vetted and cross examined.

Excellent review by George Monbiot from the Guardian. Hits the nail on the head. Watching Don’t Look Up made me see my whole life of campaigning flash before me George Monbiot Excerpt: No wonder journalists have slated it. They’ve produced a hundred excuses not to watch the climate breakdown satire Don’t Look Up: it’s “blunt”, it’s “shrill”, it’s “smug”. But they will not name the real problem: it’s about them. The movie is, in my view, a powerful demolition of the grotesque failures of public life. And the sector whose failures are most brutally exposed is the media. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/04/dont-look-up-life-of-campaigning?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Neat app from NASA/JPL. It allows you to simulate the parameters of a NEO (Near Earth Object) and a hypothetical intercept (vehicle, number of launches, time before impact, etc). https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/nda/nda.html What, real scientists don't have salacious affairs with talk show hosts? I think McKay (and probably Lawrence and DiCaprio) were trying to "get through" to as many people as possible with this film. Hence the lack of subtlety and simple plot.

Perhaps watch the film for yourself, instead of letting others make conclusions for you.

I watched this over the weekend. Overall I thought it was a humorous, provocative, and scarily accurate depiction of what happens when human beings are confronted with a dire threat (in this case an extinction level event arising from a direct hit by a 5-10 km wide comet). Meryl Streep's character, President Orlean, was very well written. She's basically the female Trump, governing an administration infested with nepotism, corruption, and private donors. Interestingly this film was panned by critics - perhaps because it's message about the superficiality of the media hit a little too close to home. Synopsis from IMDB: "Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) make an astounding discovery of a comet orbiting within the solar system. The problem - it's on a direct collision course with Earth. The other problem? No one really seems to care. Turns out warning mankind about a planet-killer the size of Mount Everest is an inconvenient fact to navigate. With the help of Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), Kate and Randall embark on a media tour that takes them from the office of an indifferent President Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her sycophantic son and Chief of Staff, Jason (Jonah Hill), to the airwaves of The Daily Rip, an upbeat morning show hosted by Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry). With only six months until the comet makes impact, managing the 24-hour news cycle and gaining the attention of the social media obsessed public before it's too late proves shockingly comical - what will it take to get the world to just look up?" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11286314/

Interesting video by Dr. John Campbell on the current state of affairs with Covid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL8QnUM81Wo

I think it's understandable in this context when considering this particular demographic. If parents are faced with a choice: vaccinate your child (which puts the child more at risk for myocarditis than actually becoming ill with Covid according to this study) versus leaving them unvaccinated for the time being and letting them make their own decision when they turn 18, I think it would be very reasonable if they choose the latter option (especially considering that vaccinated adults can still pass on the virus, even though they themselves are at a very low risk of hospitalization).

That's called confirmation bias. It also includes not considering / dismissing new information that may diverge from or challenge one's established way of thinking.

Here's the direct link to the study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v1

Recent study on Pfizer side effects in males aged 12-15: Boys more at risk from Pfizer jab side-effect than Covid, suggests study US researchers say teenagers are more likely to get vaccine-related myocarditis than end up in hospital with Covid "Healthy boys may be more likely to be admitted to hospital with a rare side-effect of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine that causes inflammation of the heart than with Covid itself, US researchers claim. Their analysis of medical data suggests that boys aged 12 to 15, with no underlying medical conditions, are four to six times more likely to be diagnosed with vaccine-related myocarditis than ending up in hospital with Covid over a four-month period. Most children who experienced the rare side-effect had symptoms within days of the second shot of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, though a similar side-effect is seen with the Moderna jab. About 86% of the boys affected required some hospital care, the authors said." Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study

Just pointing out that there's more noise than signal these days, and supposedly reputable outlets aren't immune from the fray. It's easy to get caught up in the tribalism and name calling. If they're presented with information that refutes the veracity of the story, they should retract the story, not leave it up as a clickbait headline. You can't have an entire article portraying the situation in a particular light, based on facts that are then completely undermined with an update appended at the end of the article. Disingenuous. I wrote to The Guardian this morning to request a retraction. As a paid subscriber I expect better of them. I'm interested in any information about the efficacy of Ivermectin, for treatment of prophylaxis. I doubt it, but not many people have access to remdesivir, or the other treatments currently available or in the pipeline. If people who need a treatment option now can use Ivermectin safely and effectively, why not? All reasonable options should be on the table.

Here's an example of some recent misinformation about Ivermectin in the media. Rolling Stone, CNN, The Guardian, Fox News, and several other media outlets ran a story about an Oklahoma ER at the NHS Sequoyah hospital. The source was Dr. Jason McElyea, supposedly an ER doctor at the facility. Mr. McElyea's statements and portrayal of the situation were refuted by the hospital on their website. Here's the headlines that The Guardian and Rolling Stone went with: It turns out that Dr. Jason McElyea hasn't worked at NHS Sequoyah in months, and the hospital issued a formal correction on their website, to counter the false headlines: Sources: https://nhssequoyah.com/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/04/oklahoma-doctor-ivermectin-covid-coronavirus https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/gunshot-victims-horse-dewormer-ivermectin-oklahoma-hospitals-covid-1220608/

Interesting article about Covid progress in Australia. They're using a new drug called Sotrovimab, which is a type of monoclonal antibody treatment. “Sotrovimab is an antibody treatment, and one that’s been shown in good clinical trials to have a dramatic impact in reducing people’s probability of progressing to severe disease,” Griffin said. “If there’s someone who’s high risk at developing severe symptoms, it can be given to them. It does need to be given early, before people are very unwell, but in those people it stops very significant progression through to severe disease.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/04/covid-treatment-improving-as-doctors-learn-to-fight-the-disease-and-access-new-drugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotrovimab

This issue will go to the Supreme Court in the US, in my view. Too many legal principles at stake that need to be sorted out.

The media in the US is corporate in nature, driven by profit and special interests. Would anyone have a problem criticizing the media's deceptiveness regarding the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq? Probably not. We all recognize the influence that the military industrial complex and defense contractors have on Washington legislators and the corporate media. It would no doubt be much more acceptable to you to criticize the media if we were discussing those topics, but if one implies that there is some selective messaging going on with respect to Covid, then suddenly criticizing the media is off limits. Why can we criticize the media in some areas but not others? I find this inconsistent. The Pharma lobby is one of the most powerful in the US. Of course it is plausible that the corporate media would engage in some selective messaging to turn people away from possible cheap alternatives to Covid, as they turned people towards the idea of WMDs in Iraq, or away from the Public Option (it would run insurance companies out of business, right?), and as the media seeks to shape the narrative around a myriad of other issues (universal healthcare, UBI, certain political ideas that fall outside of the status quo, etc). It's "manufactured consent", as Noam Chomsky puts it. The narrow dialogue and fixation on classifying Ivermectin as only a horse dewormer is reflective of this. The corporate media rarely mentions that Ivermectin is a safe drug that has been used worldwide for decades, nor will they mention the study that I had to proactively search out to begin to understand the full picture. Instead, the media hypes up the cases of people who misuse the drug, which is a small minority. Omit any news about Ivermectin to the contrary, and voila - manufactured consent. It's selective and self serving messaging, with an obvious objective of tarring as fringe elements those who might want to discuss Ivermectin. This in turn gives license to those who blithely follow this narrative to ridicule those who they perceive as ignorant and uninformed. In the context of what they have been led to believe, this self righteous condescension is logical, but they're missing the bigger picture. These are the sections from the study that I found most relevant: 1. Ivermectin is a well-known medicine that is approved as an antiparasitic by the World Health Organization and the US Food and Drug Administration. It is widely used in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to treat worm infections. 2,3 Also used for the treatment of scabies and lice, it is one of the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines.4 With total doses of ivermectin distributed apparently equaling one-third of the present world population,5 ivermectin at the usual doses (0.2–0.4 mg/kg) is considered extremely safe for use in humans. 6,7 In addition to its antiparasitic activity, it has been noted to have antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, leading to an increasing list of therapeutic indications.8 2. A review by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance summarized findings from 27 studies on the effects of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection, concluding that ivermectin “demonstrates a strong signal of therapeutic efficacy” against COVID-19. 9 Another recent review found that ivermectin reduced deaths by 75%. 10 3. Ivermectin has exhibited antiviral activity against a wide range of RNA and some DNA viruses, for example, Zika, dengue, yellow fever, and others. 13 Caly et al 14 demonstrated specific action against SARSCoV-2 in vitro with a suggested host-directed mechanism of action being the blocking of the nuclear import of viral proteins 14,15 that suppress normal immune responses. 4. Developing new medications can take years; therefore, identifying existing drugs that can be repurposed against COVID-19 that already have an established safety profile through decades of use could play a critical role in suppressing or even ending the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. Using repurposed medications may be especially important because it could take months, possibly years, for much of the world’s population to get vaccinated, particularly among LMIC populations. 5. All-cause mortality: Meta-analysis of 15 trials, assessing 2438 participants, found that ivermectin reduced the risk of death by an average of 62% (95% CI 27%–81%) compared with no ivermectin treatment [average RR (aRR) 0.38, 95% 0.19 to 0.73; I 2 5 49%]; risk of death 2.3% versus 7.8% among hospitalized patients in this analysis, respectively (SoF Table 2 and Figure 3). 6. The effect on reducing deaths was consistent across mild to moderate and severe disease subgroups. 7. The cumulative z-curve in Figure 8 crossed the trial sequential monitoring boundaries after reaching the required IS, implying that there is firm evidence for a beneficial effect of ivermectin use over no ivermectin use in mainly hospitalized participants with mild to moderate COVID-19 infection. 8. The findings indicate with moderate certainty that ivermectin treatment in COVID-19 provides a significant survival benefit. 9. In addition to the evidence from systematic reviews, the findings of several controlled observational studies are consistent with existing evidence and suggest improved outcomes with ivermectin treatment.55,57,59 Similarly, with respect to ivermectin prophylaxis of frontline workers and those at risk, controlled observational studies from Bangladesh and Argentina (the latter which involved 1195 health care workers) have shown apparent reductions in COVID-19 transmission with ivermectin prophylaxis, including in some reports total protection (zero infections) where infection rates in the control group exceeded 50%. 122, 10. There is also evidence emerging from countries where ivermectin has been implemented. For example, Peru had a very high death toll from COVID-19 early on in the pandemic. 128 Based on observational evidence, the Peruvian government approved ivermectin for use against COVID-19 in May 2020. 128 After implementation, death rates in 8 states were reduced between 64% and 91% over a two-month period. 128 Another analysis of Peruvian data from 24 states with early ivermectin deployment has reported a drop in excess deaths of 59% at 30+ days and of 75% at 45+ days. 129 11. Certain South American countries, Indian states, and, more recently, Slovakia and other countries in Europe have implemented its use for COVID-19. 129,131,132,133,134 12. Given the evidence of efficacy, safety, low cost, and current death rates, ivermectin is likely to have an impact on health and economic outcomes of the pandemic across many countries. Ivermectin is not a new and experimental drug with an unknown safety profile. It is a WHO “Essential Medicine” already used in several different indications, in colossal cumulative volumes. Corticosteroids have become an accepted standard of care in COVID-19, based on a single RCT of dexamethasone. 1 If a single RCT is sufficient for the adoption of dexamethasone, then a fortiori the evidence of 2 dozen RCTs supports the adoption of ivermectin. 13. Ivermectin is likely to be an equitable, acceptable, and feasible global intervention against COVID-19. Health professionals should strongly consider its use, in both treatment and prophylaxis.

Somewhat of an odd analogy, but anyway. Are you calling these authors "uninformed uneducated cranks? Andrew Bryant, MSc,1,* Theresa A. Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD,2 Therese Dowswell, PhD,2 Edmund J. Fordham, PhD,2 Scott Mitchell, MBChB, MRCS,3 Sarah R. Hill, PhD,1 and Tony C. Tham, MD, FRCP4 Should their research and subsequent conclusions not be considered? Again, this discussion is about Ivermectin and research pertaining to it - not us getting emotional and calling each other names.

Some interesting research reported on the NIH website: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248252/ Conclusions: Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248252/

FYI - This isn't about you. This thread is about debating the efficacy of Ivermectin.

Do you have links to those studies? Probably a small minority. But as usual, the outliers seem to get all the attention in campaign to dismiss the entire group. Post links to those studies please. Which is why more studies should be conducted. Or it can be used as an alternative treatment for breakthrough infections, until other treatments that are in the pipeline make it to market. I think its fully justifiable for a member of the public who was repeatedly told that vaccines will protect them from Covid and then becomes infected again to consider all possible options. I disagree. There's a lot we still don't know about how to treat Covid. Treatment and prevention are both crucial. Yes, take the vaccine if you have access to it: 100%. However, many do not have access and need something that works in the meantime. In the near future, there may be a vaccine that offers no immunity from a new variant. That is an entirely plausible scenario based on recent events. So the vaccine may not end up being a panacea; all options should be considered. I don't think it's that esoteric. I see it more as group think on both sides. The entire discussion is extremely emotionally charged and polarized, and there isn't much room for nuanced debate. I'm not interested in your emotional outbursts, or being told to "shut up". If you have something to contribute to the debate, do so.

This type of response is exactly what I'm talking about. Thanks for proving my point. https://www.science.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-vaccination-blunts-does-not-defeat-delta