Covid19Crusher

Another signal of efficacy is visible in the Adverse Events analysis: there are less AE in the ivermectin arm (76.7 vs 81.3%)! How can there be so many and more in the placebo arm? Because Covid-19 strikes panic in patients and the many symptoms match fear symptoms.

Fear having a large impact on symptomatology means that the primary endpoint is soft, subjective and partially psychological. Notably, the data in non-hospitalized patients (nearly all of them) was collected through a phone survey without physical medical examination. Not good.

There might be only one indirect indicator on the viral course of the disease in the study: fever. Odds Ratio of 0.73 in favour of the ivermectin arm.

Very unusually, the study reports that the pharmacist provided the control arm with ivermectin for a while "by mistake". But what if that was intentional to torpedo the trial? Without serum testing, how to be sure that those and only those meant to obtain IVM got it? Red flag.

A strong hint that the lack of stat significance is due to sample size rather than drug efficacy is shown by the Odd Ratio of symptom resolution at day 21 with/without the control arm patients treated with IVM: • without (200): 1.23 [0.75-2.01] • with (275): 1.46 [0.91-2.34]

On the conflict of interest front, we have a full slate, with the authors getting money from: • Glaxo • Sanofi Pasteur (yes, the vaccine people) • Janssen (J&J vaccine partner) • Merck (ivermectin hater) • Gilead (remdesivir peddler) Really not looking good at all...

Sadly, the authors falsely state that: "preliminary reports of other randomized trials of ivermectin as treatment for COVID-19 with positive results have not yet been published in peer-reviewed journals" Another red flag.