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Comment by throwawayacc2 | Hacker News Reader

Have I missed anything? I don’t think the discussion is about vaccines. For what is worth, I think both the vaccines and ivermectin work. I just think multinational profit driven companies are more incentivised to promote vaccines, which generate a huge profit, over ivermectin which doesn’t make that much of a profit.

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If you think ivermectin works then you are essentially disqualified because as the article linked here nicely explains there are some hypothesis about how it might work if it works but there is no proof, in which case the medical establishment would be all over it, because they too want this pandemic to end asap.

Whether they could make more profit off this probably factors for some people but on the whole the medical profession is result driven.

Don't use the word "proof". That's a word that's only appropriate in deductive disciplines like mathematics.

Also let's accurately represent what the article is saying:

"Again and again, more people are surviving (or avoiding complications) when they get the drug. It’s a pattern strong enough to common-sensically notice. But there isn’t an undeniable, unbreachable fortress of evidence."

This to me reads consistent with "ivermectin has a reasonably good chance of working a little bit but it isn't conclusive.", which is in contrast to your statement that thinking ivermectin works is equal to quackery.

Personally I think it's either a very small effect or no effect at all, but I don't think the quackery designation fits for people who simply believe that there's some small benefit there (although I do think that label fits for those that think it can replace vaccines)

You can think ivermectin works just fine. But what you shouldn't do is pass that on to others as fact in a game of Chinese whispers that ends with 'MSM and big pharma are in cahoots to deny us this cheap medicine that really works against COVID to protect the profits of big pharma'.

And that's exactly how it goes.

Quackery: "dishonest practices and claims to have special knowledge and skill in some field, typically medicine."

You don't have the knowledge, you don't have the skill, so don't go around giving advice about non-proven cures (or in fact, about any cures).

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