A Different Thread ... from the "mask or not" when riding thread

Now this reply came from gionnirocket
"But what you the Winner doesn't seem to be able to comprehend is that the medical field does not turn to social media to disseminate practical and credible information.
But I am not trying to win or inform you.... I really could care less what you think or do as it's quite apparent that you are a lost soul and cause.
But you do give me the occasional laugh and help burn some covid/winter downtime so I thank you."

I never suggested the medical field or government did turn to social media to disseminate practical and credible information.
But since he was so kind as to mention it, we really should examine what he believes is delivering a mortal wound, right?

I'd first point out how easy it is to show that government does precisely that.


Are there any official government social media accounts that disseminate medical information?

And what you said wasn't logically following anything I had had claimed, to begin with, rocketdude, but that was helpful of you.

I had spoken of doctors being censored. Medical field turning to social media/doctors being censored on social media...there's a difference there that does take some discernment. Good luck.
ciao
 
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I really hate getting sucked in to these arguments but somehow I can't stop. Glutton for punishment I guess. Horribly addicted to "doom scrolling" these past few months probably. Uncontrollable urge to say my piece, likely.

Handlebars. Going on social media to complain about censorship on social media is an exercise in futility. Social media companies are privately owned and have a right to censor anything they feel like. In this instance Ivermectin, a potential drug used for treatment of covid-19. I did some digging regarding this topic (not in social media for obvious reasons).

The group of doctors who formed the FLCCC, whom have been advocating for the use of Ivermectin have what I believe to be the best possible intentions at heart. The problem lies in the research. The universally agreed upon methods of testing efficacy of drug treatments in the medical field is through RCT (randomized controlled trial). These types of tests require lots of data from large numbers of test subjects, half of which get the drug in question and the other half get a placebo. The doctors of FLCCC did not perform these large scale RCT tests and have instead relied on numerous smaller observational studies from around the globe (some were RCT but with very small numbers of patients, not enough to be conclusive for widespread use). Their reasoning is that there is no time to do things the normal way because people are dying now (I'm paraphrasing). It's admirable that they saw what they believed to be promising results and wanted to push to use them.

Without proper testing the FDA will not sign off on it. Hospitals won't take the risk of allowing their physicians to administer it because there is liability if it turns out it does more harm than good (which turned out to be the case with hydroxychloroquine). More testing is being done and data is being collected as we argue. I would also like to bring this back to the original thread topic and say the FLCCC strongly stands behind the use of masks as the best means of daily protection from contracting the virus.

On a personal note, my 2 year old son was forced in to a 2 week quarantine because his daycare teacher tested positive, everyone in her household tested positive. My son and the teacher are together in a room for 8 hours a day so transmission potential was very high. Thankfully they adhere to a very strict mask policy there and as a result my son was spared from contracting the virus.

This virus caught everyone by surprise and because we knew nothing about it there was an obvious rush to learn more and get ahead of this. The medical field requires very stringent guidelines regarding testing and approval of drugs for anything obviously including deadly viruses. Ivermectin may prove to be useful in treating the virus. I personally believe it would be irresponsible to rush through any drugs without proper vetting. Good news is that this vetting process is in the works. Let's all hope that it turns out to be a proper means of treatment. Until we know for sure, let's continue with our best form of protection in masks and distancing.

And about social media. I only use it as a means to see what everyone is talking about. It should be on everyone else to go from there and find the best sources to form their own conclusions. Relying mainly on social media for your information and subsequent opinions on the subject only result in heavily biased uninformed stances on the subject matter. Censorship is here to stay. They are private companies and agreeing to their terms of use puts you at their mercy. As far as why they censor this particular subject, I can only speculate it has to do with our major institutions saying Ivermectin is not proven effective by their standards. Same reason why we don't want people thinking injecting bleech can cure or prevent covid-19.

Well I don't know about you but I am exhausted. I hope to converse more with you guys on other areas of this site. I'm weeks away from finally getting my ebike and look forward to getting back to the core sections of EBR. Happy riding guys. And stay safe. 👍
 
s*it I really hate myself right now but I will hate myself even more if I don't mention this one seriously important aspect of social media.

Algorithms. They basically run everything regarding your experience on the internet and they are specifically designed to get and keep your attention. Search for one video on youtube about censorship and you will be inundated with recommendations of more videos of people complaining about censorship. It will reach a point where your video feed is 80% videos complaining about censorship to the point where it looks like that is all anyone is talking about. You hear about people sticking to their social or political bubbles because that's exactly what the algorithm is doing whether you notice it or not. When you look at your feed on any social network it's important to stop and ask yourself why. Why am I seeing so much of the same content? It could be because you have become fixated on something and the algorithm is exploiting it for better or worse.

If I can recommend one thing to everyone (or just the few people that happen in to this thread), it is to watch the documentary on Netflix called The Social Dilemma. It interviews the creators of many of the top social media networks and why they chose to abandon the very tools they created. Interlaced in this documentary is a scripted dramatization of the negative effects social media can have on the "every family". It is a seriously powerful and enlightening documentary that I believe should actually be required viewing for everyone with a social media account. Please do watch it. It may put a lot of our current political and social problems in to perspective.

Ok that's it. I promise. I am done.




.....for now.
 
Thank you for your clear critique, voided warranty.

"Handlebars. Going on social media to complain about censorship on social media is an exercise in futility. Social media companies are privately owned and have a right to censor anything they feel like."

Quite right in one aspect, wrong in another.
I don't believe I did that. I didn't complain about social media being able to censor whatever they like.
There is, however, a good argument that censoring things that are not illegal makes the companies not merely platforms, and that in turn, I believe, means they should not have protection as such when they are not such.
That aside, my contention is only that the resulting lack of awareness of good safe treatments being available now has hindered pressure from forming to demand much more investigation and implementation of treatments that have already shown good promise.
That hindrance of medical information spread is harmful, in my opinion.
Complaining to others on social media can spread awareness of the problem, and so help to bring pressure for the betterment of lives due to treatment availability.
It's complaining on social media, but not about social media.

The complaint is about therapies not being taken up. Social media does attempt to hinder spread of awareness, but ultimately doesn't control therapies in use.

"The problem lies in the research. The universally agreed upon methods of testing efficacy of drug treatments in the medical field is through RCT (randomized controlled trial)."

It is the gold standard for TRIALS.

"These types of tests require lots of data from large numbers of test subject"

How many people need to be involved in a trial for it to reach that universally agreeable number?



"Their reasoning is that there is no time to do things the normal way because people are dying now (I'm paraphrasing). It's admirable that they saw what they believed to be promising results and wanted to push to use them. "

Ivermectin is a safe medicine and billions of doses have been taken worldwide. So safe that even illiterate tribespeople are trusted to administer it with simple instructions.

"there is liability if it turns out it does more harm than good (which turned out to be the case with hydroxychloroquine)."

I don't believe there is reliable evidence to support that statement. There were data fraud based studies that were allowed to stand in the top medical journals well after the journals were aware of the impossibility of the data not being fraudulent, and they let the studies stand as damage was being done to research worldwide. There has been a political push against it.
That being said, please reference the universally agreed upon standards with many subjects RCT studies you believe showed harm from HCQ use. The purpose of HCQ in treatment here is to transport zinc. Studies done where the researchers did not understand even that much are probably dubious in value to say the least.

Thanks! very nice work.
 
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"The medical field requires very stringent guidelines regarding testing and approval of drugs for anything obviously including deadly viruses. "

Do you believe that the Australian vaccine which caused people to test HIV positive was
thoroughly trial tested in that manner?
 
@Handlebars
point noted regarding complaining about censorship on social media. Defining the platform is up for debate. I would consider the platform to be the internet, not the company. With a little extra effort you can create your own blog site and post whatever you want. In chosing to use a private companies tools you would be subject to their terms. No different than Wal-Mart's right to refuse you entry without a mask. Private company, their rules.

Forgive me if I'm jumping around, hydroxychloroquine has shown serious problems with heart rhythm while showing no benefits in the studies performed by the NIH. FDA removed its authorization for emergency use after those studies concluded.

I am not in the medical field so I have no idea and would not care to venture a guess as to what constitutes a large enough study to be considered appropriate. I can only trust that well established organizations like CDC, NIH, and FDA have their requirements and they know what they are doing.

I understand Ivermectin is relatively safe, it's really just a drug for helping the body rid parasites. I will amend my postulation that it may be harmful until I hear more data
 
Handlebars said:
"The medical field requires very stringent guidelines regarding testing and approval of drugs for anything obviously including deadly viruses. "

Do you believe that the Australian vaccine which caused people to test HIV positive was
thoroughly trial tested in that manner?
Click to expand...
I have only heard about this as a headline so I don't want to comment too much but my first impression was that was a mistake on the testing side and not the actual vaccine. None the less I am a pro vaccination and that gave me some pause when I heard that.

Edit.
Ok since you brought it up and I had admittedly forgotten about that headline I looked in to it a little more and found this

"The vaccine contained small fragments of an HIV protein, which helped stabilize the vaccine. Some of the participants developed antibodies against these fragments, and these antibodies triggered false positive results on some HIV tests.

It's important to note that there is no way for the vaccine to cause an HIV infection, because it contains harmless fragments of the virus."

That was copied from livescience.com. Forgive me it's late and I'm doing all this from my cell phone while my wife asks why the hell I'm still up. That's a pretty wild situation that is on some levels a little scary but also pretty fascinating.

It is worth noting that the participants were informed that these fragments were being used in the vaccine however it was thought that due to the very miniscule amounts it wouldn't show up on an HIV test, they were wrong and rightfully pulled the plug. Still I will admit the idea that someone figured out that trace fragments of HIV could be used to stabilize the vaccine is very interesting. If only chocolate worked better.
 
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BTW, any study done where they gave near lethal amounts of HCQ to sick people, are not what I consider as evidence.
voidedwarranty said:
@Handlebars
"point noted regarding complaining about censorship on social media. Defining the platform is up for debate. I would consider the platform to be the internet, not the company. With a little extra effort you can create your own blog site and post whatever you want.
Click to expand...
Agreed. However, I do not believe that creating a blog site of my own would be more effective than using such sites.

voidedwarranty said:
Forgive me if I'm jumping around, hydroxychloroquine has shown serious problems with heart rhythm while showing no benefits in the studies performed by the NIH. FDA removed its authorization for emergency use after those studies concluded.
Click to expand...
That it has those problems with heart was very well known before any of this.
If you look at the medical info sites for HCQ recommendations from BEFORE covid, you can see that the warnings about heart were there very much like for any medicine. Look for the disease such as lupus, RA (arthritis), malaria to see about how HCQ dangers were treated.
Safe for pregnant women and children.
Not a big deal, just watch out for heart problems in people with that condition. Only after political pressure was it posed as such a danger.
 
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@Handlebars
Yes the heart rhythm effects of HCQ (btw that is so much better than typing out the whole name) were known before Covid. What wasn't known in the beginning of covid was the effects it had on the heart. Initially it was thought to be just respiratory. It wasn't until later we learned of its affects on the heart which would make heart complications from HCQ more exasperated.
 
voidedwarranty said:
I have only heard about this as a headline so I don't want to comment too much but my first impression was that was a mistake on the testing side and not the actual vaccine. None the less I am a pro vaccination and that gave me some pause when I heard that.

Edit.
Ok since you brought it up and I had admittedly forgotten about that headline I looked in to it a little more and found this

"The vaccine contained small fragments of an HIV protein, which helped stabilize the vaccine. Some of the participants developed antibodies against these fragments, and these antibodies triggered false positive results on some HIV tests.

It's important to note that there is no way for the vaccine to cause an HIV infection, because it contains harmless fragments of the virus."

That was copied from livescience.com. Forgive me it's late and I'm doing all this from my cell phone while my wife asks why the hell I'm still up. That's a pretty wild situation that is on some levels a little scary but also pretty fascinating.

It is worth noting that the participants were informed that these fragments were being used in the vaccine however it was thought that due to the very miniscule amounts it wouldn't show up on an HIV test, they were wrong and rightfully pulled the plug. Still I will admit the idea that someone figured out that trace fragments of HIV could be used to stabilize the vaccine is very interesting. If only chocolate worked better.
Click to expand...
It is interesting that it's being said to produce false positives, but they are not false positives as in how some covid tests are said to produce false positives.
They are testing HIV Positive, which does not mean infection, it is only a positive to that test. There is no error in the test from setting over-sensitivity. Also as you'd know, there is no "False Positive" result from the test.
That is just to take note of the spin being put out about it. :)

That HIV parts combine with SARS virus is actually several years old research in Gain Of Function, where scientists from USA and China combined the two in order to achieve a virus with new functionality in order to produce something that would be a huge threat to humanity for the proposed purpose of being able to then study to be able counteract the huge threat. That was circa 2015 I believe.
I'll find gain of function research and pinpoint the HIV/SARS combo stuff.
And the astounding pronouncement the lead researcher ( Bat Lady of the Wuhan lab) is quoted as saying in Chinese news.

A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence - PMC

Ralph Baric, Vineet Menachery and colleagues characterize a SARS-like coronavirus circulating in Chinese horseshoe bats to determine its potential to infect primary human airway epithelial cells, cause disease in mice and respond to available ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
...sorry for the late edits to include more info...
 
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Handlebars said:
It is interesting that it's being said to produce false positives, but they are not false positives as in how some covid tests are said to produce false positives.
They are testing HIV Positive, which does not mean infection, it is only a positive to that test. There is no error in the test from setting over-sensitivity. Also as you'd know, there is no "False Positive" result from the test.
That is just to take note of the spin being put out about it. :)

That HIV parts combine with SARS virus is actually several years old research in Gain Of Function, where scientists from USA and China combined the two in order to achieve a virus with new functionality in order to produce something that would be a huge threat to humanity for the proposed purpose of being able to then study to be able counteract the huge threat. That was circa 2015 I believe.
Click to expand...
The Australian department of health is categorizing the HIV tests as false positives because the participants don't actually have HIV, their bodies developed antibodies for HIV due to the fragments.

Honestly I tried wrapping my head around PCR and rapid testing and results and false positives and by the end I needed a few advil and a glass of water.

I was unaware of these tests you mention back in 2015. Very interesting.
 
Oh and one last thing about HCQ. The political pressure to authorize it for emergency use came from Trump who continued to pressure the FDA about it after they deemed it ineffective and potentially unsafe.
 
voidedwarranty said:
@Handlebars
Yes the heart rhythm effects of HCQ (btw that is so much better than typing out the whole name) were known before Covid. What wasn't known in the beginning of covid was the effects it had on the heart. Initially it was thought to be just respiratory. It wasn't until later we learned of its affects on the heart which would make heart complications from HCQ more exasperated.
Click to expand...
The warnings to watch for heart problems from HCQ in susceptible individuals was well published LONG before covid.
 
Handlebars said:
The warnings to watch for heart problems from HCQ in susceptible individuals was well published LONG before covid.
Click to expand...
Yes I agreed to that when you already stated such. I'm sorry I'm confused as to why you are reiterating this point. I think maybe it was the way I worded my response. The effects covid had on the heart were not known in the beginning of the pandemic. It was originally classified as a respiratory virus.
 
I don't mean to cut this short but it is almost 1:30am here and as I had stated earlier I have a 2 year old in the other room which means I'm getting at best 5 hours of sleep, 4 hours at worst. You are a spirited debater and I certainly gained some insight from your posts.

do check out that documentary on Netflix if you can. Very eye opening.
 
voidedwarranty said:
I am not in the medical field so I have no idea and would not care to venture a guess as to what constitutes a large enough study to be considered appropriate. I can only trust that well established organizations like CDC, NIH, and FDA have their requirements and they know what they are doing.
Click to expand...

Designing a research project: randomised controlled trials and their principles | Emergency Medicine Journal

emj.bmj.com
"Having determined an appropriate sample to recruit, it is necessary to estimate the size of the sample required to allow the study to detect a clinically important difference between the groups being compared. This is performed by means of a sample size calculation.5 As clinicians, we must be able to specify what we would consider to be a clinically significant difference in outcome. Given this information, or an estimate of the effect size based on previous experience (from the literature or from a pilot study), and the design of the study, a statistical adviser will be able to perform an appropriate sample size calculation. This will determine the required sample size to detect the pre-determined clinically significant difference to a certain degree of power. "

I inquired of my researcher friend, about this "required minimum number of people" topic. It depends, as for in some aspects of our biology almost all humans share the same features, in other aspects not so.

Official agencies may set some standard number but I doubt it. Too small sample sizes then becomes a weak argument, especially if there are examples of studies not having large sample sizes which have been accepted, right? Even weaker because of the urgency and lack of real danger so long as you do not give it to heart patients.
Or severely overdose people already in deep trouble with covid heart symptoms...(ahem!).


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2876926/
 
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`
voidedwarranty said:
I don't mean to cut this short but it is almost 1:30am here and as I had stated earlier I have a 2 year old in the other room which means I'm getting at best 5 hours of sleep, 4 hours at worst. You are a spirited debater and I certainly gained some insight from your posts.

do check out that documentary on Netflix if you can. Very eye opening.
Click to expand...
I will, and thanks.
 
voidedwarranty said:
Yes I agreed to that when you already stated such. I'm sorry I'm confused as to why you are reiterating this point. I think maybe it was the way I worded my response. The effects covid had on the heart were not known in the beginning of the pandemic. It was originally classified as a respiratory virus.
Click to expand...
Sorry, yes indeed, I was reading that too hurriedly and mistook the meaning.
 
voidedwarranty said:
Oh and one last thing about HCQ. The political pressure to authorize it for emergency use came from Trump who continued to pressure the FDA about it after they deemed it ineffective and potentially unsafe.
Click to expand...
I agree that Trump applied pressure - there also was huge political pressure to dispose of it because of high visibility of the Trump support for it.
Let's leave that aside for now.
 
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