 Anyway, one of the issues with ivermectin is, I mean, you've probably heard about Brett Weinstein, you've heard about a lot of people who have become, you've heard of what's with Joe Rogan, took ivermectin and a few others who have, Tim Poole, I think, who have recently had COVID, have taken ivermectin. And there is a whole network of doctors that are prescribing this, the amount of prescribed ivermectins from 2020 to 2019 has grown, I don't know, 10x, 20x, 30x, something like that. So a lot of doctors are prescribing ivermectin. Ivermectin is a drug, anti-parasite. So it's a drug that kills parasites, worms, different parasites you have in the gut. It's a well-studied medication. It has very, very few side effects. It does have some very, very rarely nasty side effects. We can get into those if you're really interested. They're pretty gross side effects. This is a pretty gross phenomena, but if you're interested in gross phenomena, I'm happy to tell you about it. But ivermectin, you know, is being suspected of having certain antiviral qualities. And as a consequence of that, as a consequence of that, there were a lot of studies early on in the pandemic and have been since about the efficacy of ivermectin. And you can go to a website, I'm not promoting this website, but it is a website, ivmmeta.com, which basically has a list of all the articles, all the studies that looked at ivermectin. Apollo, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Anyway, this is what Scott Alexander did. And it turns out a number of scientists have not done this. So Scott Alexander's not the only one there'd be now a number of physicians, doctors, scientists, statisticians who have done the same exercise. They've gone onto this website and they've taken a look at, they've taken a look at the list of all the COVID-19 early treatment studies, right? And then, and this is what's amazing about Scott. So if you look at these studies, the overwhelming majority of these studies, show a positive impact from taking ivermectin. I think there are four that show no results or negative results. And every other study, 20 something studies that show a positive response to ivermectin. So that's pretty impressive. And some of the results are very, as presented in the study, very, very strong. Granted, not all the results are statistically significant. Not all the results are statistically significant, but, right? But there are issues with statistical significance. So we're not gonna say that something is illegitimate just because it's statistically insignificant or though I could have never published a paper in a finance journal if my results were not statistically significant. All right, now, what Scott Alexander does is he takes every single study, reads it, looks at the data. We're looking, we're talking about over 30 studies. And actually writes several paragraphs explaining every study and what he thinks of it. And what he does is he basically starts excluding studies that are either frauds, where it's known that it's a fraud. People have already looked at it and discovered that it's a fraud. Or he can see looking at the data that it's nonsensical. Or where they've used just lousy econometrics, lousy statistical methodologies. Or where the sample size is just too tiny to be representative. So he basically puts every one of these studies. And you can read it. So if you don't believe him, you can read it. Through an analysis, a scientific, God forbid, a scientific statistical analysis of every one of these studies trying to figure out which ones are legit and which ones are not. And he trims it back quite a lot because the fact is that many of these studies are bogus, are just illegit. And illegit studies, some of them are not fraud. Some of this is bad stats. Some of them do things with statistics that just don't make any sense. And he covers everyone and he explains it and he gives graphs and charts and he gives tables and he does an amazing job. I mean, I read through not every single one of these but through most of them and it's impressive. And I've said this in the past about Scott Alexander irrespective of the ivermectin before this that he knows his statistics. He knows how to evaluate statistics. So in the end, if you remove all the fraud, all the methodologically unsouled studies, he puts together a table, right? And by the way, other scientists have done the same thing. Gideon Merkowitz Katz, who is another physician. And by the way, Scott Alexander is a psychiatrist. So he's medically trained and has taken many, many classes in statistics. So one of his areas of expertise is like statistical analysis of these kind of things. These other doctors have also looked at it. They've made calls on the studies. They're not always the same as what Scott Alexander's. So they've accepted some disapproved others, but generally there's kind of consensus around a certain number of studies that they think are good, that they think are good, right? So I think the final list of the studies, right, is about 11. 11 studies that they actually like, that they actually think are well done, right? There are lots of problems even there, probably, but 11 studies, they got rid of 18. So 18 were dropped because of statistical issues and because of fraud. I like this approach because it's rigorous scientific statistical based on knowledge, right? There are lots of bad studies. Some of them are just down-out fraud. There's a massive replicability problem in the sciences that has been documented over the last 10 years where scientists are producing studies that can be replicated. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that statistics is hard. Doctors might be good doctors, scientists might be good scientists, but they don't know statistics. Or they use them inappropriately. They use them badly. A lot of the studies as well get to. Most of the studies of Ivermectin were done in the third world. And many of the scientists, maybe not that good, maybe to get published need to embellish their results. But this is pretty typical. If you look at any area, if you look at, this is why every month you get a study it says this diet is better, this food is better. Don't eat this. Oh, you must eat this. All of these things, it's because this stuff is hard. Designing medical studies is really, really, really hard. And doing it right is really, really, really hard. And too many studies, particularly in medicine, but in the humanities generally, are just not well done. They're not well done. None of these studies were done in Japan, what a freedom. So I don't know what you've read about Japan, but none of these studies have been done in Japan. And I have not read anywhere that Japan is using Ivermectin. Anyway, but we will get to the possibility of why Japan is using Ivermectin. I think Adam noted this. I'll mention why, if Japan is using Ivermectin, why I think it's likely they're using Ivermectin. Anyway, we've got 11 studies, 11 studies, right? By the way, two of the 19 were eliminated for FOD, one of the 19 was eliminated for severe pre-registration violations, 10 for methodological problems, and six because the other scientists was suspicious of them. So they try to take the cleanest studies. Of the 11 cleanest studies, eight show strong support for Ivermectin. Eight show strong support for Ivermectin in terms of negative outcomes like death, right? In particular, there was a study out of, I think it's Bangladesh, or I think it's Bangladesh by Mahmood, the scientist Mahmood, which is a large study that was well done and that has statistical significance, and it's good. And these studies are showing significance. Now, a lot of these studies, other studies are small and so on, but creating a meta-study, which is what you do with, you have a lot of, is very difficult here. But look, the evidence, if we just stopped here, the evidence looking at all this, particularly at this Mahmood study, is that Ivermectin works. This is what Scott Alexander wrote. This is one of the toughest questions in medicine. It comes up again and again. You have some drug, you read some studies, again and again more people are surviving for or avoiding complications when they get the drug. It's a pattern strong enough to common sensical notice. But there isn't an undeniable unbreachable fortress of evidence. The drug is really safe, doesn't have a lot of side effects. So do you give it to your patients? Do you take it yourself? He keeps going. This is where I think it gets interesting. This is interesting, and this is a thought experiment for each one of you. Here, this question is especially tough because if you say anything in favor of Ivermectin, you will be cast out of civilization and thrown into the circle of social hell, reserved for clan members and the January 6th insurrectionists. All the health officials in the world will shout, hos di worma at you and compare you to jaws of Mengele. But good doctors aren't supposed to care about such things. Your only goal is to save your patient. Nothing else matters. I'm telling you that Mahmood et al is a good study and it got a P, P value, this is statistically significant, 0.003, very strong. In favor of Ivermectin, you can take the blue pill and stay a decent respectable member of society, or you can take the hos di worma pill and see where you end up. Now, this is why life's got an examiner because he lays that out. He lays it out. But then he goes on to explain why indeed you shouldn't be taking Ivermectin because one of the thing that is unique, remember, what is Ivermectin for? Ivermectin is for parasites, primarily worms, all kinds of worms, threadworms, hookworms, blood flukes, liver flukes, all kinds of these disgusting things. If you look at where the studies are done, the studies are all done in countries like India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Colombia. India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Colombia. What is common to all of those countries? What is common to all of those countries is they have some of the highest rates in the world of parasites. In almost all these countries, in almost all these countries, something like anywhere between a third to half the population have some kind of parasite in their guts. And it's interesting that all the studies in countries where parasites are high, and by the way, this is where wonderful women, I would include Japan, where they eat a lot of sushi. Sushi has parasites. You don't want to look under Microsoft before you eat that sushi, where there's a high level of parasites in the food. And this is why Japan is taking Ivermectin. All the studies where parasites in the gut are high, are the studies that show efficacy for Ivermectin. All the studies in which Ivermectin, only three, granted, does not show positive support or studies in countries that are low in Ivermectin. This has been now confirmed by a number of scientists, including a university in Minnesota, doctor by the name of Dr. Bitterman, David Beauvoir, who's also a professor of medicine. So there've been a number of now physicians that have looked at this. And this looks like there's overwhelming evidence that what is actually going on, is that if you have a parasite, there are kinds of ways in which that can inhibit your ability to cope with COVID. One of the main ways in which COVID is treated, one of the main ways in which COVID is treated, particularly among those who get into hospital, right? And this is about severe outcomes. So these are people who go into hospital, is by giving people, by giving the patients, like a cortisol, what do you call it, a steroid, a kind of steroid? This is the most effective treatment against COVID in severe cases. And what does the steroid do to worms and parasites? It encourages their growth. So it is likely that if you give courts a steroid to patients with parasites, the immune system will blow up. It won't do what it's supposed to do, which is suppress the immune system, because what it'll do is it'll cause all these worms to grow out of control, and you will actually die from this combination of worms and COVID. But if you give ivermectin, kill the worms, and then give them quarter steroids, the quarter steroids will work. By the way, today or yesterday, the Economist magazine published this as a main article. So this is, I can document after, Scott Alexander actually wrote this, but Jonathan, thank you for the support, really appreciate it. So you can find the headline of the Economist magazine is ivermectin may help COVID-19 patients, but only those with worms. So if you have a parasite, if you have a worm in your body, then yes, absolutely take ivermectin, then get the conventional treatment for COVID. But if you don't have worms, then it's still the case that there is no significant evidence, no statistically significant evidence. And I know a lot of people have made arguments against this argument. I've already read some of them. Scott Alexander's answered most of those. But there was no significant evidence to support the use of ivermectin. So I wouldn't take it. Now doctors are still prescribing it and doctors have not done this analysis and doctors have not read this article and doctors have not looked at this stuff because this is new. I'd love to see those doctors actually read through this and then evaluate it. There are lots of doctors who give lots of things that are useless to lots of patients. I don't know that Joe Rogan has a good doctor, bad doctor, mediocre doctor have no clue. I'm not saying Joe Rogan had worms, I'm saying Joe Rogan was treated as if he had worms. Now Scott Alexander says, look, I still think there's some probability that ivermectin does work. It's low. He thinks less than 10%. There's probably a less than 10% probability that a lot of things work. By the way, one of the things that is true I think of Joe Rogan is he didn't just take ivermectin. He took a whole cocktail of things, a whole assembly of things. And this is another article also by Scott Alexander that I thought was really cool. This is, he calls this Pascalian medicine. So let's say, let's say, you know Pascal's wager? Pascal's wager is basically, Pascal said, I choose to live as a Christian because this is the deal, right? I don't know if God exists or not. But if he exists, then if I don't live as a Christian, I'm gonna be in hell for an eternity. If he doesn't exist, eh, I live as a Christian, it's not that bad. So if the consequence are truly horrific, spending eternity in hell, then it's not a bad idea to take low probability events seriously, become a Christian. The probability that there really is a God is low. But if there is one, the consequences are so horrific. So there's evidence to suggest that vitamin D might help COVID. Although, again, it's probably less than 25% probability that it does, again, according to Scott Alexander. I've amectin' less than 10% probability. But there's also zinc, zinc, at least Alexander thinks there's a significant higher probability that it is actually good for you. And there are a number of different things. So you could say as a doctor, you know, why not take a bunch of things that have a very low probability of being successful? Maybe one of them helps. What the hell, right? All of them are well-studied. All of them have moderate side effects. All of them are not gonna do anything bad to you. So what's the downside of taking them in order to prevent some really, really, really bad outcome? So you could take a bunch of these. I mean, make sure that they really are no side effects and they really are safe. And you could do that. But that seems like a bizarre methodology. I mean, you could do that for everything. You could do that to prevent cancer. Take 25 different supplements, 50 different supplements. Indeed, Scott talks about the fact that, what is the name, Ray Kurzweil, who's a futurist, he used to take 250 different supplements every day. I used to have a friend who, every meal used to take a bunch of supplements. And this is his reasoning. He said, I don't know if they all work. My guess is a significant number of the supplements I'm taking here is shortening my life. And another significant is lengthening my life. And my hope is that more of them are lengthening my life than shortening my life. And that on net, my life is being extended. Kurzweil used to take 250 different supplements every day. Then he realized that was excessive. So he cut it down to only 100. I don't know. There was one medication that Scott Alexander, through his analysis, actually thinks shows promise in terms of COVID. And that was, let me see. Yeah, one of the advantages of taking a bunch of them is one of them might actually be good. Might actually work. Let me see where's the one that he, I'm trying to look for the one that he actually thinks is better. But I mean, you can find this on his blog post. So you could take a cocktail and see. And I guess that's why Joe Wogan did. It's low risk, probably very low return. Right? And probably a little silly, particularly when you consider that you can't live your life that way for every disease. There might be five things that would use the probability a little bit, but there's millions of diseases. You could take them all as a preventive. On the other hand, Pfizer and Mooc now have drugs that actually work, that I mean tested, that actually show results. That we don't have to speculate about. And that science, that's what we actually want a move. It's interesting, your honor, is the liberty ignoring the Israeli study done by Schwartz that showed increased virus clearing by taking ivermectin. Yes, but that was not done on patients. It was not done with a control group. It was shown theoretically that you could, that you would see a virus clearance. And that's why I said ivermectin showed some anti-viral qualities. That's why they did tests with real human beings with control studies. I've tried to look up Dr. Ellie Schwartz because I assume that he did some follow-up studies. The fact that he did not or has not published any follow-up studies because he did those studies a year ago, over a year ago, well over a year ago. The fact that he has not done any follow-up studies, that he's not done, that he's not published anything, that he's not promoted anything, suggests to me that he probably tried and didn't get the results, he was anticipated. Remember that a lot of studies are not gonna be published because they don't have results. That is, it's boring to publish a study that says, nah, we didn't find anything. And I think a lot of scientists give up if they see that they're not discovering anything, they give up on it. So I find it interesting that in the comments, you always assume that there's some malicious or weird reason why I'm ignoring something or not doing something. I can't cover everything. And I'm trying to cover as much as I can. And believe me that I wouldn't be talking about this because I haven't talked about Ivermectin much in the past, unless I'd done some reading and looked at different places and I read all the comments criticizing Scott Alexander from doctors and from Ivermectin fans and Brett Weinstein tweeted about it and so on. I'm convinced Scott Alexander's analysis is right. It is consistent with what I've seen. It was not done and it was not published as an actual study. But that's fine. I mean, you guys can believe what you want. I'm not here to convince you. The main reason I did this, because I think it's cool, I think this idea of the worms is cool. I also think that this is really interesting that there are people out there who actually go systematically and look at studies and do the work. I wish journalists did this. And actually, one of the things that Scott Alexander says is he was contacted by a journalist and they talked and he told about all the stuff that he discovered and she said, yeah, we know that. And he said, well, why don't you publish it? She said, yeah, people don't want to read that stuff. My editor wouldn't let me publish it. But there are thoughtful people out there doing thoughtful research. There's a reason why somebody like Amish Adulja would not prescribe ivermectin. I trust Amish more than I trust many of these doctors out there who are prescribing it. And anyway, I encourage you guys to look at this, study it. There's a lot of different things that supposedly study. If you go to this website, the ivermectin website that I mentioned in the beginning, you'll find 40 different things. And the problem is that, again, unless you do the analysis and go through every one of those studies, you should be skeptical about these kind of things. And there's a reason why, quote, the so-called evil establishment of scientists, doctors, private scientists, private doctors, researchers don't go for this. It's because they actually do the work and they're not hacks. Ivermectin is not commonly used in Israel for treating COVID. And if this doctor in Israel did this research and it was so successful on thousands of people, why are other doctors in Israel not prescribing this? Why is this not common practice in Israel? Why is it not all over the place? Almost nobody in Israel gives out ivermectin. My father's a doctor in Israel, right? A physician in Israel. It's not used by people. It's not, ivermectin's approved so doctors can prescribe it, but it's not a common practice in Israel in spite of the fact that Schwartz is doing this. Again, the evidence is just not there. If the evidence was there, it would be used. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com slash support, by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.