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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Wanna say I don't know less? Listen to stuff you should know more. Join host Josh and Chuck on the podcast packed with fascinating discussions about science, history, pop culture and more episodes. Dive into topics like was the lost, city of Atlantis Real? And how does pizza work? Say goodbye to I don't know. Because after listening to stuff you should know you will listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioral discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to behind the ******** the only podcast where the host, Robert Evans, could easily, and I mean easily, defeat LeBron James at basketball. Not a problem. Not even a challenge. Everyone knows it. Everybody agrees. Let's just move on. Having made the point, this is, of course, I've seen your dunk. I've seen your dunk reels on Tik T.O.K, you're very good. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, unparalleled. Some would say, yeah. Now jamad. Thinking is Jamie Loftus how, how are you? Yeah, Jamie Loftus. I'm so, I'm so I'm. I'm all over the place, but I'm good. I'm alright, all things considered. I brought my cat on an on a cross country flight yesterday, so I'm ohh. That's always fun to do. Was he good? What was the vibe? Did he have drugs? He was good. We were we were sitting like I was in the two rows. I was the only person that wasn't on the way to celebrate someone's 30th birthday. Yeah, but they really took to the cat. They were we. We were all an emotional support unit. They were all watching Naruto on iPads. I was listening to an Amityville Horror audio book and just reaching down and petting my cat for six hours. It was a it was a real treat. How are you, Robert? I'm good. By which I mean terrible, by which I mean normal. OK, so nothing's changed since we last spoke. That's confusing. Flu, too. I was in Texas for my brother's wedding, and so I was. I got to be as I was when I left Texas there the day a new ****** law came into being because, OK, you need to stop going back. You're a jinx. Yeah, I mean, when I moved to LA, I had just like immediately was immediately after I attended the protests for Wendy Davis at the Capitol over the over abortion. So that's just me and Texas baby. Bad company, Robert, what is your what is I'm? What is your vibe at a wedding? I can't picture you at a wedding, so I need to know. Have trouble picturing me too at a wedding, Jamie? But I was there wedding too. It was very Catholic. What did you get to eat? The tiny bread? No, no, no, I don't. I don't take. I love the tiny bread. It tastes so good. But there was a there was involved too. I had to wear a tux. I have the pictures. I felt bad about killing the photographer, but I just couldn't let there be a chance of. Those photos getting out. So send me a pic of you. Would I have to do? Are you smiling with teeth in the pics? No, no. But I did get extremely drunk at the IT was thankfully it was a it was a Catholic wedding, but it was also a Mexican wedding, so the food was incredible. I was able to get very drunk afterwards, so that was nice. I can't believe you smiled with teeth in your tuxedo. Also, my brother's happy. I guess that's important, too. Yeah. Yeah. Who gives a ****? I don't know. Your brother, allegedly. Allegedly. Whatever, Jamie. What? How do you feel about the death of all hope? I feel. I feel, I feel very numb to it. Yeah, that's a good way to feel about the death of all hope. Jamie, today I'm going to tell you a story, and it's a story about the end of the world. Now, this story doesn't involve a nuclear Holocaust or global war. The culprit for our incipient apocalypse is the modern information ecosystem, which has doomed us all and cannot be reformed. Now, to make it clear why I'm going to tell you a story about ivermectin. I'm gonna guess you've heard a lot about ivermectin in the last couple of days, haven't you? Yeah, sure have hmm. Horse paste. That tends to be how people talk about it on social media. These idiots are taking horse paste. Which is, it's one of those things where people who love horse pace will be like, we're not taking horse pace is there's a bunch of different formulations. There's even human versions and that's true. They're like a horse pace is the meanest possible I've I've seen versions of that. Like saying it's horse paced is a little bit inaccurate if you're writing and then they say something else scary. I mean actually taking sheep dip. But a lot of people are taking the human version of ivermectin too, particularly like we talk about Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan isn't going to a feed store in getting Apple flavored horse paste. He's getting ivermectin prescribed him by a doctor because he's rich. And ivermectin is very much kind of a miracle medicine, just not in the purpose of being used for. It was discovered in 1975 and went on sale widely in the early 1980s. And it is still today one of the most potent anti parasitic medications in existence. It is effective in livestock and also in humans. It is credited with curing a once devastating illness called river blindness, which I feel like the name describes more or less the problem. I don't agree. What is parasites from unclean water make you blind and ivermectin stops that. OK, just read. It's good. It's very, it's very good stuff. The scientists who discovered it won a Nobel Prize and in 2015 it was even found that the anti parasitic drug is also effective at disrupting the transmission of malaria, which is great and when taken as directed ivermectin is extremely safe with minimal side effects. And it is cheap enough to produce that you can find it all over the world. Or you could anyway before about like 6 this month, 6:00 or so months ago. Every McDonald's developed I think are really toxic fan base and it's the Rick and Morty of anti parasitic drugs. Yeah, sure. Umm. And like Rick and Morty, it will. Stop herds of horses from ******** worms out. It actually, yeah, people, they they have horses watching early seasons of Rick and Morty all the just to see what will happen to their bodies. You give a horse season four, it'll keep ******** worms. So in September of 2020, Australian researchers found that huge doses of ivermectin when administered in a laboratory setting, might stop or could stop replication of COVID in cell cultures in less than 48 hours. This was potentially a big deal for obvious reasons, but also these are cell cultures, right? This is not in the human body. These are in in in a very controlled laboratory setting. So this is a very useful piece of data and obviously follow-up studies were immediately commissioned around the world to see if maybe this might be something that could help with COVID now pre vaccine, doctors were looking at a wide variety of medications and treatment options that might act as stopgaps until there was a vaccine. One group of physicians who were doing this was the frontline COVID-19 critical Care alliance, or FLCC. This group had been formed by a number of critical care specialists with different medical backgrounds who wanted to try and hash together new ideas for treating the virus. Their first stab at this was to use corticosteroids to reduce mortality in severe COVID cases. Now, the man most behind this particular idea was a guy named Doctor Umberto Meduri. He's known as the guru. Of corticosteroids in lung disease. Conventional wisdom was a what an amazing. I hope there's a T-shirt for that. You hope there's at yeah, he should get. They announced him like he's a WWE wrestler when he comes out at medical conferences. I mean, **** it, I want him to get A2 Chainz album. Like, why not? I want to hook U with him. Why not? Yeah. So yeah, this guy has this idea that, like, hey, maybe corticosteroids might be useful in this situation. And that was very controversial at the time. Conventional wisdom was that steroids like that do more harm than good when treating a virus, like when treating a coronavirus. But Doctor Madduri and his colleagues were pretty sure that their solution would help. And they distributed a new hospital protocol called Math Plus for patients hospitalized with severe COVID. Hospitals began trying it out. Because, again, this is early in the virus. There's not, there's kind of like throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. And there's evidence that this seriously slowed down mortality. It seems to have worked. Hospital administrators noticed rapid slowdowns and mortality when they adopted this specifically for people who were very sick. So this is what happens when you hire the guru. That's great. You bring in the guru. So, yeah. And there was, of course, you know, they they kind of started adopting this before there was a huge body of science, but a body of science was built. As they started adopting this, and a large UK patient study in June of 2020 showed that steroid treatment that the FLCC suggested really worked, the math plus protocol was greenlit and hospitals around the United States. Praise flowed in for the FLCC, who at this point looked like hard working doctors, doing their damnedest to find creative ways to save lives in an incredibly challenging situation. Wait, were they not? Well, this is not an easy answer to that question, Jamie. OK. Because they definitely did a good thing there and saved a lot of lives with that. They've also gone on to do some sketchy things. And I I don't have an easy summary for you of like, the FLCC is like, they're horrible grifters or their, you know, decent medical, you know, people who got something wrong or they're their truth. That, like, I don't. I don't have an easy answer for you for what these people are, but things take a turn at this point. So one of the doctors, one of the cofounders of the FLCC. The guy named Doctor Pierre Corey, now Doctor Corey was not the brains behind Doctor Madduri corticosteroid plan, but he did helped found the FLCC he was very interested in the early in the early data that started coming out about ivermectin in October of 2020, he and other FLCC doctors noted that there had been several small successful trials using ivermectin as a preventative measure. These studies were not large or particularly high quality. We'll talk a little bit about them later, but in those pre vaccine. There's a case could be made that they were not being irresponsible by adding ivermectin to their math plus protocol, alongside a new preventative protocol called Eye Mask Plus. There's not vaccines yet. The pandemic October is kind of at the ******* worst it's been, right. And you know, you could also say, like, well, they kind of took a little bit of a stab on corticosteroids and that wound up saving lives. Might as well give it a shot with, especially since ivermectin, when taken in quantities for humans as prescribed by a doctor, fairly minimal. Risks, right. I've never known anyone who's had river blindness. So yes, exactly, exactly. You don't and I spray you with a lot of contaminated river water, Jamie, you do. You've been doing a lot of experiments, but I I do believe when you say it's for the greater good of something, trust you sure. So these guys are kind of operating off of the the goodwill of having been semi successful before to experiment with and they're they're also operating you do have. To acknowledge the situation when you're dealing with a pandemic of this severity, you can't necessarily wait like you have to make. You have to kind of triage when you wait to try something. And I can see in the case of ivermectin being like, look when you when taken, when when giving people like normal human doses of ivermectin, very minimal risk of side effects. If it might help, it's worth trying. You know you, you can you can make that case and that's the case these people. We're making it at this point. They're not being ******** that I can tell. And they were not sure they're making a **** load of money. Also. Would that be incorrect? I don't. I don't have that information, Jamie. Some of this. So one of the troubles with this, this is going to be a little bit of a mess here because a lot of this is still breaking. And in fact, one of the studies that I was talking about earlier, an article just dropped today, kind of talking about it. So I I think that we will learn more about the FLCC in time as a result of some of the things we'll talk about. I don't know. The extent to which people are making a profit off of it. I don't know enough to allege any that kind of fiscal wrongdoing, but there's something weird here at some some. That's what you get for being on the cutting edge, as usual. Robert. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you. I am on the cutting edge like I am in the cutting edge of basketball strategies. You're in the cutting edge of weddings on the cutting edge of COVID analysis, on the cutting edge of smiling with your teeth in pictures. Thank you. Thank you. You know, I invented. 4 pointer. Recently, no one had ever done that in basket. No kidding. Wow. That's right. That's right. Make me fire you again. Yeah. Alright. So at this point, it's also important to note that the FCC, they're saying we're adding this might, we're we're recommending this in certain situations for people who are sick and as a potential prophylactic to prevent COVID, they were not billing ivermectin as a replacement or an alternative to the vaccine and in fact, their early advocacy of ivermectin. Discussed it purely as a stopgap. Vaccines are not available at this point. There's some evidence that this might help stem the tide of infections and we are at capacity in hospitals. So this might reduce infections, it might improve outcomes. We are going to recommend people take it until there's a vaccine, right? And I'm going to quote from Yahoo News here to talk about some people who did use it in that situation. In a February local news segment, a Midland, TX woman describes how she learned about ivermectin backed in October from the Internet, and she and her family had been taking it in animal form ever since. Though she wasn't taking the tablets for humans, as the FLCC recommends. In a way, she was taking it as intended as a bridge to the vaccine. I just got my first vaccine shot a few days ago, so no more horse paste, she told the reporter. So that is I I do want to acknowledge here. That's not being unreasonable. Like, right? Maybe I would recommend get the human version. You can, but whatever people, I, I know a lot of poor people in the country. Sometimes you take veterinary medicine because it's what you can afford. Sure. I mean the the turn of phrase. So no more horse paced alone. But yeah, I'm not gonna say this is the most responsible decision a person could have made. But she got her vaccine, right? And she right there was I I want you to, I want you to type FLCC into Google and pull up their web page and take a look at it. Because when she says she found it on the Internet. And because this person took the vaccine, I that could mean a lot of things. That can mean somebody's like seeing someone on Reddit talk about taking random medication, or like on Facebook. But if you look at the FLCC page, this doesn't look like criticalcare.com. Is that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a very reputable looking website. These are real *** doctors with real Jamie backgrounds. Lakes Community College pop up for you 20 times and then it gets to the collection. Ohh, this had to have been an SEO disaster for the finger Finger Lakes Community College. Sorry, I forgot I had a picture of. I forgot I had a picture of Joe Rogan in a tab and I just like it was like a jump scare. OK, COVID-19 criticalcare.com. This does look like how I picture a medical website to look like, OK? And you can you can see how a concerned parent in the middle of a horrible ******* plague could come to this and be like, OK, well this seems like a reasonable. Thing to do for my family until I can get the vaccine, like, avoid censorship, connect to FLCC alliance here. Yeah, there's definitely, definitely. And that I think is, is newer. Like, you can see some kind of griffier things getting in here, right? But you can also see how a perfectly reasonable person just trying to, like, do what's best for their family could be like, OK, well, I'll give it a shot. Right? And that's where we are fast, too. Like everything is moving from very quickly. In February that you know, you you October to like January, October 2020 and January 2021. People. I can see people just being like, OK, well, this seems like it might help. I can't get a vaccine. So far, so good, right? So far, the FLCC I can't. I'm sure. I'm sure there are things doctors could could quibble or complain about here. There's definitely a debate to be had about this sort of stuff. Pleasure. But yeah, there's no perfect choices you can make in a ******* pandemic, either. That said, while they haven't really gone off, they haven't broke bad yet. There were early signs that something was awry. In December of 2020, Doctor Pierre Corey testified to a Senate panel about ivermectin, which he called a wonder drug now. When you hear the term wonder drug, and they are not talking about Dilaudid, the only wonder drug, which I call a wonder drug because it's wonderful, what is that? That ah, you know, I don't know what a drug is, Roger. What is that? Dilaudid is the Toyota Tacoma of opiates. It's it's liable. It's hard working. It's comfortable. Oh my God, it's so good. Like I used to drive. Oxy is a Ford Fiesta. Yeah, yeah. Because ****. Oxy, Dilaudid, baby. It's all about Dilaudid. OK? That's good information for when I begin taking opiates. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody needs good information. And that information is tried to laugh. It sponsors of the podcast, by the way. Wait, no, he called it a lot. A wonder drug to the Senate, which is not in court. He called it a wonder drug. OK, that doesn't sound good. That doesn't sound good. That's not very especially since there is data in December of 2020 that suggests this might be a useful and it's perfectly it would have been perfectly reasonable said, hey, we've got some data. This might help. Here's the situations in which the data suggests it might help. This is my recommendations. That might be how a responsible doctor would say it. Don't call it a wonder drug doctor Oz rhetoric. Exactly. This Supreme Court, yeah, yeah, well, with the Senate and so the number one he, this Senate panel was a Homeland Security Senate panel, so I don't know why the **** they're talking about that. None of you people like you're not even good at Homeland Security. Why are you talking about ******* COVID-19 just killing time? That's so bizarre. Happier now. The panel was chaired by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson because of the NFL flag. That's a real red flag right there. No? OK, now the problem is that because of the FCC's reputation with corticosteroids, Dr Pierre Corey isn't doesn't seem when he's coming up front. He's not just some Yahoo. He is a real doctor working with an organization that took a very bold stab early in the pandemic and was very right about it. Like and which is then immediately Joker ified themselves and then they went Joker. Yeah, exactly. But like, you can see why this is so dangerous, right? Right. And I also understand, I mean, with Ron Johnson, there's no excuse for anything he does. But I, I I understand from like a regular, like a person consuming this media with not a lot of information. Why it might have seemed like not the worst, most dangerous thing in the world to do. So at this point, there's some shady stuff going on that Senate testimony is questionable, right? But there's also not really anything to suggest that the in the 2020 that ivermectin is about to become a public health problem. And in fact, while the US started ramping up and distributing vaccines at the tail end of 2020 and early 2021, huge chunks of Latin America started adopting ivermectin as a standard treatment protocol. And the reasoning for this is as bleak as it is understandable. Latin America has some of the worst COVID death rates on the planet. Widespread poverty meant that while the vaccine was starting to get rolled out in the United States, it was not going to be anywhere in the near future for millions, 10s of millions of people in Latin America. So while the wealthy countries hoarded vaccines for their own people, doctors in South and Central America looked at the early evidence on ivermectin and said, this is the best we can ******* do and we can afford it, you know? Which is very sad. That's extremely bleak. Yeah, it's real ******* bleak. Yeah. And Peru included the drug in its basic treatment guidelines. And one health minister in the country told Nature Magazine that clinical trials investigating the drugs efficacy had trouble recruiting control group participants because there were so many people already on the drug. Basically, they recommended people take this and then they had trouble studying it because they couldn't find people who weren't taking it. Wow. OK. So it just it and was this like a very fast process like it went yeah, is there OK? And it's, it's fast in part because, you know, unlike when hydroxychloroquine, which we'll talk about a bit later, kind of went viral, there's not a lot of that **** right? It's not just like an OTC thing, like people had to get it prescribed. You don't just walk into a CVS and you could walk into stores down the corner and pick up ivermectin because especially in like, rural Latin America, any rural place, there's a **** load of animal feed stores. It's all over the place. Anybody over the counter veterinary drug? Yeah, yeah, it's over the counter veterinary drug. It's not super. You do have to get it. Scribed for a person, but I think most of these people are taking the veterinary version. But even the person version, it's extreme, especially since a lot of Latin America, a lot of huge amount of parasites. So a lot of people are taking this anyway. It's available is is the point. It's available and it's cheap. So it's once these people here, this might protect your family from COVID. They actually have the ability to get this stuff immediately. In Bolivia, healthcare workers pretty much instantly distributed 350,000 doses. Ivermectin also grew popular in South America. For the same reasons, poverty and desperation. So, from the website Pharmaceutical technology quote, the Pro Ivermectin Campaign has taken a particularly stronghold in South Africa, where coronavirus infection rates are among the worst in the continent. And the vaccine program has yet to cover all the country's most vulnerable. Some doctors have been prescribing the worm drug to COVID-19 patients, claiming anecdotally that it alleviates virus symptoms. Despite the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority warning against its use, ivermectin is also thriving. In the country's black market, where one tablet can sell for as much as £25 and sales of veterinary forms of the drug have skyrocketed, grassroots collectives such as the ivermectin interest Group, formed of South African health practitioners, public health experts and medical scientists, have campaigned for approval of the drug, while civil rights group AFRIFORUM earlier this year filed a court case against Safra, which is the the South African health products regulating authority to have the treatment approved for COVID-19 patients after initially allowing. Controlled compassionate use of the drug in an attempt to curb illegal sales, the health agency this month received a High Court order to permit the off label prescription of ivermectin by doctors. Huh? OK, ivermectin also took off in the Philippines, where viral social media posts sent the product flying off the shelves of veterinary suppliers. One doctor was found to have printed 8000 ivermectin pills using his own recipe. The Philippine FDA. Yeah, the Philippines FDA attempted to rein this in and issued warnings that were not heated. But they also approved 2 limited studies on the use of ivermectin and hospitals admitting that they had been pressured to do so by sheer public demand. So when we talk about curious about like how this information, because you're saying like that there were like viral posts that got the word out very quickly, were they just post from regular people that were taking off where they're like groups that were posing like, how was this information? So here's the way we're going to talk about this more, but. You have at the top of the list you have actual scientific studies, right? We're going to analyze a little bit, some of which are sketchy, some of which are real, some of which show a potential benefit. Those filter down to the FLCC and some a couple other similar groups who are made-up of doctors and start advising people to take ivermectin. That filters down to influencers, to people in media figures and whatnot who start advising people to take it, and that filters down to like, Facebook groups and ****. Where people start spreading memes and the basis the basest area of the human psyche. Hidden Facebook groups. OK, yeah, and that's how you get from the FLCC saying doctors should consider prescribing this too. I'm going to buy horse paste and give it to my children. So it's just like the most sinister game of telephone ever plays. A note as we as everybody continues laughing at the the ******* stupid *** Americans who could easily get a free vaccine and take ******* horse paste. Most of the people taking this stuff in mass have no options and are incredibly poor and live in the periphery in in countries where this is like, what else are they gonna ******* do? Doctors are telling them there are a lot of doctors and again, they're very shady doctors, usually working off of very bad scientist, but they're ******* doctors and they're telling these people this could help your family. And they can't get a ******* vaccine. They have no options, right? Like, what are they right? You're not dumb if you're in the Philippines, if you're in Latin America, South America, you're like, this is what else am I gonna ******* do, you know? Right? If it it's the only option, there's there's, it's so urgent that there's no, I mean there's no time to get. That's the, that's what is like sticking out to be here is like, especially frustrating is there are very few options and like no time to get better information. So it is you're saying, what are you going to do? And it's also important to note that a lot of these people and a lot of these communities and their communities, I grew up in a community that like not on like this. In the US there's a decent chunk of of veterinary medicines that work just as well on people and are cheaper and more available and sometimes poor people do that because again. What the **** else do you want me to do? Like, my kid is sick and it doesn't like, it's not always a bad idea, like, it's never the thing that doctors are recommending, but ******* people do it. And there's things that it can work on because, like, what else are you gonna ******* do? Right? There's different. Anyway. I don't. I'm not advising you to go by veterinary medicine for your family. I'm saying people have done it for a long time and it's not always a bad idea. And that's part of why people are like, well, sure, you know, I've taken, like, I had to give my kids some ******* antibiotics or whatever like that. Got from a, you know, like, or ivermectin because you got a ******* uh, because he got a ******* parasite. And I gave him, you know, a small dose of horse pace because I couldn't afford to go to a doctor and get it prescribed. I'm sure a number of these people, like, again, these are not dumb people. I I just really want to because so much of the discourse around this is like making fun of the idiots in America who do it. And a lot of them are very dumb and **** a lot of those people because they could be getting a vaccine. But like, most of these people just don't have an option. Right, which like trickles down in so many different ways of like how broken the healthcare system is like this, that wouldn't even be a necessity. You wouldn't need to make that judgment call if if there were actual, you know, more viable options made available. But you know what viable options everyone has, Jamie. What to engage with some light product and services. Ohh, some light or some heavy, you know, you can, you can stick it, you can just kind of go just the tip of the products and services or you can go all the way in. That's your business, you know. Yeah, yeah, we don't, we don't judge, we don't ask questions. We just we just sell people products and occasionally services. Wonder products, wonder services. Yeah, wonder products and wonder services. All right, here's an ad. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for. None of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family, and it meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twist at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com slash. Behind seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at mintmobile.com/behind. My name is Erica Kelly, and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world, and if you can give a voice to them, you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day. It was incredible. Always felt like an ambassador for speaker. But that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with speaker and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle. The hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's SP. RE aker.com get paid to talk about the things you love with speaker from iheart this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Ah, we're back. And boy, I don't know about you, but all of my depression, thinking about the desperation that would lead people. In. Cash poor nations to self medicate because wealthy nations have hoarded the vaccine, in many cases for profit. I don't know where I was going with this. I was trying to make a products and services joke, but now I'm just sad again. How are you doing, Jamie? Yeah, you know, talking about pharmaceuticals under capitalism. I I I'm flying high. I feel incredible. I don't have a problem in the world. Everything is perfect and great. Yeah, I want to. I mean, I don't know where, what, we're 1/2 hour into the episode. I absolutely want to, you know, just walk into traffic, Robert. Is that what you want to hear? Because that's where I'm always at at this point in the episode. That's where we're at. That's where we're at, so we're at Jamie. You like science? Yeah, sure. Yeah. I've nothing against silence. I got nothing against science. I don't know what? Do I have a brain for it? No. Does it make sense to me? No. No, of course not. And I'm glad people do it 100%. Also know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is my way of saying I hate science. We're gonna talk a little bit about, we're gonna talk a little bit about. ******* uh. One of the problems that science has, which is so the basic idea behind, you know, doing science is, is you you conduct studies to test hypothesis and you publish those results. And generally you do small studies at first to kind of see if if there's anything further to investigate or in, you know, those small studies, if if they're promising, kind of lead to larger studies and eventually you build a body of evidence that leads you to one. Conclusion or another, right. That's the the broad idea of how to say that's the kind of science you learn in when you're in first grade. Yeah, that's the flow chart, is that all that **** gets published. And oftentimes it means that these tiny studies are getting published and then people just assume, well, that's a study and it says this is good, so I'm going to do it. And then whole industries crop up around that while scientists are still trying to figure out if it works. And then another shady thing about it is that there's places that let you publish studies before the studies have been peer reviewed. Which has some benefits. I found some writing is the people say why that can be useful, but it also means that shady people who build themselves as scientists can put up a study that isn't really a study and hasn't been peer reviewed and has massive flaws and make it look like there's evidence supporting something when in fact there is not. And that's we're going to talk about now. So right, Peru was, as as far as I found, I think, the First Nation to include ivermectin in its national coronavirus treatment guidelines. This was based on findings in a preprint of a study by health analytics company Surgeon Sphere, and again a preprint not yet peer reviewed. So they're they're sticking their rough draft up, right, you know, but if these are publicly, I do think that it's like that is like a A. An ethics thing. Like, no one knows what preprint means, so it's like, you have to make I I I wish that that was made clearer to I don't know, I don't know what I'm saying. It's really like, I understand that if you're a scientist, you know what a preprint means, and you know that this cannot be taken at face value. This is preliminary **** but I feel like you need to make that as readily apparent to the the layman as possible. Yeah, Umm and I don't know. It's. So let's talk about that surgery for your study. So before we talk about that, I do, I want to talk about surges sphere a little bit because they've been involved in a controversy over the last medicine that wasn't really a medicine that went viral over COVID-19, which of course is hydroxychloroquine. Now if you've forgotten, Hydroxychloroquine was a medicine that doctors briefly thought based on some early studies might have efficacy in treating COVID-19. Those early studies, while they were still trying to figure out if it actually did have efficacy, were turned into a magical cure, all because Trump started tweeting about them. He was desperate to open the country back up and to get the economy back on track in time for the election. Several people died trying to treat themselves with hydroxychloroquine or drugs they thought were hydroxychloroquine. All, the controversy over this drug obscured the fact that serious scientists were actually trying to understand if it might be useful for COVID in mid-May 2020, The Lancet published an article suggesting that it was. Dangerous for patients with COVID to take hydroxychloroquine this study was almost immediately retracted because the authors were unable to independently verify their data set, which had come from a large proprietary collection of electronic health records analyzed by surge asphere. So Serge Asphere had put together these health records that they were using to make claims that Hydroxychloroquine was dangerous for certain patients. But when they attempted to verify, the data set surges, fear said. We can't show you the health records, we can't actually show you the records themselves. Which led the study being retracted because they can't verify it. Yeah. Now it might not seem like a problem because again, as we now know, hydroxychloroquine is not helpful in treating COVID-19. So the fact that, I mean, which is like luck of the draw, but that's so that's so it's not bizarre that you can get that far into publishing something because they're like, oh, I don't know what you want. Really, luck of the draw, because that thing doesn't seem to have been true. And when the study got retracted, that just fueled paranoia that there was a conspiracy to trick people out of taking hydroxychloroquine. The next month, June, another paper was retracted, this time from the New England Journal of Medicine, due to unverifiable data from Serge Asphere. That study had found that a variety of heart of heart medications had no safety concerns when administered to COVID patients. The fact that these papers. Were being retracted after many doctors had taken action based on their findings was disastrous in the midst of an already chaotic time. I encourage an Australian bioethicist called it catastrophic quote. It is problematic for the journals involved. It is problematic for the integrity of science, it is problematic for medicine, and it is problematic for the notion of clinical trials and evidence generation. This write up from nature explains exactly why Serge Aspheres data was problematic. Quote both papers relied on proprietary. Data analyzed from electronic health records that were apparently gathered from hundreds of hospitals around the world by search isphere. But after critics raised questions about the studies, the firm did not make its raw data available to third party auditors for validation, according to the retraction notice in The Lancet surges fear was concerned that transferring the data would violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements. Since we do not have the ability to verify the primary data or primary data source, I no longer have confidence in the origination or and veracity of the data, nor the findings. They have led to, said Mandeep Mehra, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA, who was the lead author on both studies. So. This is. And again with Serge Asphere, there's something going on here and I I don't know what it is with these guys, right? It's it's do you have any inkling of it? It just sounds like the sort of thing where it's like what, what is the end game for doing that? It may be as simple as there, just kind of a shady company. Is not very good at uh, who who is trying like that. There. They were trying to like make a quick buck providing these records to research scientists, but had weren't actually able to give the scientists as much information as they would need to be able to use that kind of stuff. Are you short sighted? Like, yeah, yeah. That sounds very bizarre. Yeah. And it's it's a bunch of **** like that. And it's coming in like you're getting like one of the problems with this is that they they approve a study like or sorry, they. So the the when the Hydroxychloroquine article comes out saying that it's dangerous to give to certain patients, they stop a bunch of studies to trying to determine whether or not hydroxychloroquine works, and then they have to restart those studies later. After it's retracted, which slows down the period of time after which we get concrete evidence that it doesn't work. So again, even though, like, it might not seem like that's a bad thing, it actually slows down the process of figuring out that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work. It's all part of this problem that yeah, that makes total sense. God, I'm so, I'm so naive in these areas and I'm like, wait, that would **** things up. OK, yeah, I I'm up to date. Now, one of the coauthors of both retracted studies was a guy named Sapan Desai, and he's the founder of Surge Asphere. So he's founds the company and is also one of the authors of both of the studies that get retracted. And while his coauthors kind of all come out and say, hey, we're we, we no longer stand by these studies because of issues with the data, he's notably quiet. For the most part. I think he agrees to attract one of them and not the other. Now in 2001 or 2021, suppon. This I was the co-author of another study using data from his company Surge Asphere, which claimed to find a large reduction in COVID mortality when patients were given ivermectin. It was first published to the social sciences preprint server SSRN on April 6th, and a second version was posted on April 19th. And this is what caused Peru to add ivermectin to their national standards of care. So this guy whose record couldn't be shadier visa vie COVID-19 studies. Puts out another preprint, so not peer reviewed, not a finished thing on a server, because it immediately shows like, look COVID, ivermectin reduces COVID-19 deaths and whole nations start taking action based on this. Now that is. So can't they, like, I'm trying, I'm like trying to. Can't they just put his credibility on? I mean, he doesn't have any credibility, obviously, but just like, can't. How can you continue to publish preprints when your track record is that horrific? Like how? How? Yeah. That's why ****. OK, so, so that preprint comes out and that that is what? Like result in ivermectin taking off. Yeah, that's what results in it taking off in Latin America. The FLCC, I think is much more of a job of it take, but this this feeds into that too, because it's one of the studies that they're citing. So one of that studies authors, again, Sapan Desai, has coauthors on these studies who are more credible people. And one of the studies coauthors pulls it from the preprint server because as he told nature, he did not feel it was ready for peer review. So it does get pulled, but the damage is done by that point. He's already. Convince the Peruvian government to add it to their official like, COVID protocol. And Bolivia followed soon after. Now, when the study was like the pattern with these, with this, right. It's just like you put something out, you say, oh, sorry, never mind, that information's terrible, but it's too late because the information is already had consequence. There's again, when you look at, like the way the disinformation spreads, it's a lot like how COVID spreads like you you have, they're both, they're both spreading. It's like a person ***** up and walks into a room. Without a mask on, not realizing he's been exposed and he might realize an hour later, but by that point he's already passed it on to four people who then all go to the grocery store. Whatever. Like, it's it's the same way with disinformation. It it spreads like a ******* virus, and it's like, just, yeah, so it just takes like, one bad actor intentionally doing it to Jesus Christ. I think it's often a mix of bad actors and people who are acting in good faith but aren't quite careful enough. Now. So the good news is that perum removes ivermectin from their treatment guidelines as soon as the study gets pulled. But by that point, other South American nations have started using it, and they don't all stop. And again, even outside of that, regardless of what the state health authorities are saying, people are now taking it in mass, right? So back in January of 2021, the NIH, the National Institutes of Health in the United States had changed its guidance on ivermectin for the COVID treatment from against to, neither for nor against. So there's enough data. By January 2021, they say we're not against this anymore. We're hedging our. But it's complicated. Yeah, exactly with ivermectin. OK, got it. Now, in a reasonable world, this would not have counted as a positive endorsement, but we don't live in a reasonable world. The NIH made this change after. Doctor Corey from the FLC and WHO consultant Doctor Andrew Hill presented data to the NIH treatments guidelines panel. That same month, Doctor Cory released a study with the FLCC cofounders and several other doctors that they believed would convince the CDC and FDA to approve ivermectin for use against COVID. Now, by this point, Doctor Corey had become convinced that ivermectin was a bonafide wonder drug, as he told the Senate, but the people he asked to publish? The study, the study that he thought was going to convince the FDA to approve it for COVID, we're less convinced. Frontiers is an Open Access platform for peer reviewed science journalism and they investigated the integrity of the study and announced on March 2nd that they were rejecting the article for quote, a series of strong, unsupported claims based on studies with insufficient statistical significance and at times without the use of control groups. Oh my God, this guy's going to have to start publishing in like highlights magazine. This is so ridiculous. Now, I'm not a scientist, Jamie. I'm in fact legally opposite. Yeah, but I know that control groups are important. If you want to know if a thing does something, you need a group of people who aren't doing the thing. And it's supposed to be the same circumstances before they can come out, much less ******* pharmaceutical. Like that's absolutely, yeah. So by this point, vaccines were increasingly available in mass around the United States in December. It. It made sense that ivermectin had been on the FLCS protocol because kind of a desperate time. But by March, ivermectin is still part of their protocol. But none of the vaccines had been added to their recommended preventative protocol. So this is the point where they're very clearly doing something shady. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. ******* December. People can't get vaccines. There's evidence ivermectin, right, might help. It's debatable whether or not it's responsible to put it on there, but, like, still, completely, it's still debatable. Chris, there's an argument more sense to make, to attempt to make that argument. By March, yes, ************* are walking into their CVS and getting vaccinated and they still haven't added that to their protocol. But the horse paste, I mean, again, they're not telling people to take the horse, telling people to get it prescribed, but whatever, I'm gonna call it horse pace sometimes. So yeah, Doctor Corey also grew more compact, combative from this point forward, telling the Huffington Post quote, when I came out and told the world that corticosteroids were critical to save lives, I got crushed for that. Until the recovery trial came out and it became the standard of care worldwide overnight, which is true that corticosteroids that use was criticized and they wound up being helpful. But also wasn't your idea, Brahim? What do you is that actually his voice or is that just you just made him Ben Shapiro? Everyone's Ben Shapiro. Sophie OHS supposed to say, like, what is it? I was like you just wanted to sound like a dork and then I found out that was your Ben Shapiro voice. OK. That all tracks. That's that's just a flow chart probably, right? Yeah, if I hate them there. Ben Shapiro. That's the way it works. Again, I'm just like, what is the end game? There's no end game, Jamie. Joker ****. I hate his joker ****. It is joker ****. It's it's. And you know what's Joaquin Phoenix got to say about any of this? That's what I wanna know. Jamie. I don't know. He's like 5-6. I can't hear him. Oh, OK, so I I forgot you're a you're a you're a height chauvinist. So. The other thing about corticosteroids, while he's right that people were like, I don't think this is a good idea and were proven wrong when the FLCC embraced corticosteroids, corticosteroids were also very quickly shown via extremely reputable studies, to be useful in COVID treatments, right? It it actual science backed it up, and the same unequivocal evidence did not come out for ivermectin. Well, we started to get some data, right? Yeah. At this point, yeah. And and so we have not, especially by March. Again, it's still a mix of small studies that shows not all of which suggests that it works, some of which are shady, whereas. By March there's ******* excellent data that the vaccines are very effective. So it it's not the same thing, you know it it just isn't he's trying to he's trying to make that that claim because the it's it's his organizations claim to fame, but like it's not the same situation. There were quickly studies that backed up the corticosteroids saying there aren't isn't the same body of evidence for ivermectin and there's a lot of evidence for vaccines and you're not telling people to take vaccines. Yeah. It's ****** **. Yeah, this is absolutely ****** **. Hmm. So when he was asked why he's not telling people to get vaccinated, Dr Pierre Corey said most of what we feel, and especially me, is that the data on vaccines is moving so fast and it's non transparent. I just really don't know what to say about these vaccines. I just don't feel comfortable with the kind of data that we're getting. Again, the big ivermectin study must be more specific about this at this time. The data is not transparent enough. Well, what about the ******* surges fear study showing ivermectin is useful, that they had to get pulled because they wouldn't give anyone access to the ******* medical data anyway. In February of 2021, YouTube pulled 2 videos from the December 8th Senate hearing where Doctor Corey called it a Wonder drug. Specifically, they pulled the portions discussing ivermectin, and this included part of Doctor Corey's testimony. Ron Johnson, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, immediately took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to author an Op. Dead titled YouTube cancels the US Senate. God, every word of that sentence is the biggest loser **** I've ever heard of my life. Absolute virgin stuff, right? Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. So quote and this is from Ron Johnson. Doctor Corey is part of a world renowned group of physicians who developed a groundbreaking use of corticosteroids to treat hospitalized COVID patients. His testimony at a Mason Adhearing helped doctors rethink. Treatment protocols and saved lives. At the December hearing, he presented evidence regarding the use of ivermectin, a cheap and widely available drug that treats tropical diseases caused by parasites, for prevention and early treatment of COVID-19. He described a just published study from Argentina in which about 800 health care workers received ivermectin and 400 didn't. None of the 800 contracted COVID-19 58% of the 400 did. So here's the thing about that. Here's the thing about makes you think what Ron Johnson said. You're telling me there's going to be holes in this? This is the one that like just today they there's a great BuzzFeed news article about that Argentinian study, which is super inconsistent. One of the problems with it is that depending on like where you read, like what part of the study you read, it gives you different numbers of how many people were actually part of the test group and control group. Like it's it's it's just not a well conducted study and there's actually debate and there's actually a serious question as to whether or not the study was conducted at all. So yeah, again, this just came out, so I'm going to Scroll down to to the relevant point here. Yeah. Meanwhile, the clinical trial database stated there were 229 participants, but other things didn't add up. It said the control group had 72 women in 26 men, even though the paper said 51 women and 48 men. The age is also seemed mathematically improbable. The paper states that nearly 70% of participants taking the therapy were underage. 40 Despite this, the clinical trial website states that the median age, the age at the midpoint of the group was 42. Those might have been errors, Carvalho conceded in the interview, which would, which is one of the study authors, which was largely. Those are large errors. We are not a statistical people, he said. We are not statistical people, he said. Which is like, if you're doing a study you you should be someone in the study should be a statistical person because you're using statistics to try to show that a medicine works. Yeah, it's. Wow. OK, OK, so this is just a ******* disaster. Yeah, they're doing such a terrible job at, like, even PR cleanup is just, like, nonsense. It's just words. Yeah, and it's the journal charges like they BuzzFeed found that the journal, which is a very new journal, charged $2000 almost to publish the article. And then after BuzzFeed asked about the fee, they dropped the price on their website. Carvallo admitted this. The study author admitted that local drug makers had covered the expense of publishing the study, and that he and his colleagues had paid the rest out of pocket. There's a bunch that's weird here. And it's it's what isn't weird yeah there's it's we're gonna talk about a lot of other. Sketchy ****. And one of the problems is that, like at least one of the hospitals where the study was supposedly conducted denies that it was conducted there. So there's a lot that's wrong with this study. They like the study that Ron Johnson, again, is what Doctor Corey cited in the Senate and was what Ron Johnson points out is like, look what he's being cancelled for, sharing science. Well, cancel culture is toxic, especially with that. I mean, it's like. That truly wasn't even something that would have occurred to me that the study didn't even happen, like they couldn't be bothered to create a fake ******* study. It's not the only time. That, and it seems more likely that, like there were some places where they did a study and did it kind of poorly because like also large parts of it, like the control group stuff was taken on the honor system. So you shouldn't do that with science. It's a bad study. This is this is the most opposite in terms of stakes comparison. But I've been deep in hot dog culture for the last couple of months, and there was a study that was released last week saying that every time you eat a hot dog, you lose 36 minutes of your one human life, which is such a wild and bizarre claim to make. And if you bear it out, it's very like anyone can publish a study. And it's, and I feel like anytime, and obviously it's like ivermectin is kind of that at the highest level and the highest stakes possible. But whenever something gets published, it's just like people are going off of the headline of like, well, if a study says it, it must be true. And there's very little, well, who is conducting this study? What are their qualifications? Do they have any reason to have ill intent or whatever like? All that to say, this study is ******** and I firmly believe the hot dog 36 minutes study is ********. I'm sick of having presented to me I yeah, because clearly each hot dog takes 90 minutes off of your life. Were true, Robert, I would be rocketing backwards in time. Right now. I would be in 17 something. I would be wearing ******* 500 petticoats. Thing I don't, I don't know where it would be. I would not be. I would not be alive, and I would be transcending dimensions in time. It's just, I just feel like it's demonstrably untrue. Also, being happy makes you live longer, so I am. Very least it evens out. Debate dogs make people happy. Well, it is my potential. It is my, it is my stance that hot dogs do kill people and that that's not a bad thing because climate change, baby, we gotta reduce emissions. Do you like hot dogs, Robert? I love hot dogs, Jamie. How what's your weight? What's your what's your like? What's your go to? What's your breath? Literally any hot dog, and I throw everything on it. But the best hot dog I've ever had, Jamie, and I guess we can argue as to whether or not it's a hot dog. I was in Lisbon and I was at this street market and it was the bun was black because it had squid ink in it. And instead of a hot dog, it was an octopus tentacle. And there was like some sort of weird creamy salad on. It was incredible. It was so ******* tasty. Oh my God. So I have to tell you, Robert, and this is going to be really hard to hear. What you ate was not a hot dog. It was a piece of an octopus. I think it's a hot dog. If it's on a hot dog bones, like it was literally an amazing day for you. If it's a hot dog that's not a hot dog bun, it's a hot dog. You have the gall to log Jamie to zoom, dot US and tell me octopus is hot dog. I can't believe that you can claim to be a hot dog lover and say that it is possible to discriminate about what is or isn't a hot dog based on the kind of meat involved. Look, a hot dog is a mixture of garbage. You can do it in a way to put scissor just ocean trash. But that one piece of ocean trash, you need the different butts of 500 things in there. But it's probably filled with plastic because of the poison that we put in the outside. Vegetarian hot dogs are made out of different vegetable trash. So it's like, I'm sorry, I'm gonna take this debate offline. You listen to these products and services. Nosebleed. She and I prepare to engage in a traditional traditional. Knife fight of our people. Over hot dogs, I liked Brett Hudson, New Jersey. So it there, enjoy your products and services. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. 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You get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker from iheart this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or? Could have asked you like to add that seems relevant. You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. We're back, and I'm livid at Jamie, livid. But we have to put our differences aside, bleeding to talk about. Ivermectin, the hot dog of. Antiparasitic medications. I mean, that's an accurate comparison. Hot dogs get hot dogs get bad enough Rep, but, you know, but I remember that's getting an unfair Rep, too. It saved a lot of lives before you know this. Before? Yeah, before it got cold before. Found YouTube. Yeah. We're not canceling it. If you get a parasite, please take it. If you go into the river and start feeling blind, take some ivermectin. That you know that you can't deny it. You can't deny it. It's proven. River blindness is just. That's gonna stick with me because I just didn't know. Stay the **** away from rivers, Jamie. It's like all those people in Philadelphia so far. Jumping in the flooded streets, it's like I've walked down the street in Philadelphia. I've smelled the sewers. You should not be in that water, guys. You really should not. God, yeah. The the subways in New York. It's just wow. To to be alive at the end of the world. It's it's amazing. No fun. It looks way more fun in movies. Yeah, because it seems like you were going to fall deeply in love and then the world was going to end. It turns out that's not how it goes. And also, in the movies, every single person doesn't have a UTI. But it turns out when the world falls apart, everybody starts getting Utis. The UTI on Splash Mountain once. That was my worst UTI, yeah. I'm surprised that you don't hear about that more every time I tell the people to talk about it. People should talk about their Utis. They're very uncomfortable and I feel like if I knew I've had. Have you ever had a conversation with someone in after? They're like, I had a UTI when we hung out that day and that's why I was being very bizarre in my behavior. I feel like you should, we should just normalize telling each other we have UTI. So then if you're being. A weird hang. There's context we could get, like a necklace of some sort or a bracelet. So you have like a swingers party, yeah. So Umm yeah. Johnson talking about this Argentinian study is is full of **** and an idiot. Absolutely. **** yes. And **** him. I should also note that even even based on the inaccurate. Uh, like even like the study itself is bad, but even based on what the study said, he got it wrong. Like the study claims to have had. He claims that the study had 800 participants had had 300, which means that even based on his own claims, he got the study wrong by 1/3. Said he's like, I mean, look, these guys aren't stats guys, there's there's science guys and science famously doesn't involve numbers or accuracy. So I should also note that there was a follow-up study in Argentina released in July of 2021 that showed, quote, no significant effect on preventing the hospitalization of patients with COVID-19 that goes against the claims of prophylactic effect. And this gets us how many demonstrative evidence against this at this point, like on multiple, we haven't even gotten into the worst. One, but again, it's all part of the same problem where it is not bad and it is fact, in fact a necessary part of medical science to do a series of small studies and to whether something might work before you do larger studies that are more robust. The problem with that. Is idiots and grifters who will take this study on 30 people that may one day be useful it eventually arriving at a treatment and instead say, start buying up all of this **** that you can and take it. And if anyone tells you not to, it's not because the science isn't ready yet. It's because they're trying to stop you from taking control of your own health and they don't want you to. Yeah, they want to. But a microchip in your body and your yeah. As a threat to your independence? Yeah. If you're a threat to your imperial listen to me about your health care. I did. MMA. I hate anyone who did MMA. There's certain things I will listen to people who did MMA about, like for example, MMA if Joe Rogan. If I have a problem getting someone in a headlock and Joe Rogan offers me advice, I will take that advice. ************* pretty good at that. I'm not gonna take Joe Rogan's advice about whether or not vaccines are legitimate. Well, look, I'll, I'll, I'll meet you. I'll meet you there. If if I needed to learn how to look sweatier than anyone's ever looked in a fully air conditioned room, I would ask Joe Rogan. Because that he is. He has done the Gladwell hours for that. He's done it for over 10,000 hours. He's he's the best looking sweaty in the small room. He's incredible at it. A virtuoso. He's got the money. It's it's there's. Real thing, man. Like what are what is wrong with you anyway? I I believe that because the the in in his art. So that first of all, it's performance art. No, it's but the the guest is never sweaty. I think that he is. The room is 42 degrees and he's just sweating, sweating, sweating because of all of the random pills he takes that Alex just gives it. His brain is under an intense amount of pressure from all of those pills. God, what a ******* loser. OK, sorry. It's amazing. It's amazing that he's the most single most influential person in global media. Looks like a stick of salami. He looks like a thumb. ****** a hot dog. Looks like a thumb ****** a hot. Again with the hot dog. Slander. Look, they're the same shade of red Jamie. Yeah, so? Yeah. And again, one of the other problems with this. So again, one problem is that you get a bunch of small studies, people will pick and choose and grab studies that really may not be as as it because they're not super scientific literate. They may think that that study says more than it does. Another problem is that when you have a bunch of small studies you might get, it's very common. You can have five or six small studies that are all good studies. And I'll tell you opposite things because they're small and when you have a small study, minor. Variables can throw off your results, which is part of why, again, science is an iterative process, but the way publishing works, all the studies are just getting shotgunned out into the public sphere. This is not an issue with obscure topics, because researchers are the only ones looking at the data and they understand how this stuff actually works. But it's a problem with these epidemics because, again, there's all these ******* grifters out there looking for alternatives to the deep state vaccine. And then of course, there is the other another issue, which is that not every scientist involved in the research process. Is acting in good faith. You have guys like Doctor Desai and Serge Asphere putting out shady data for unclear reasons, but probably with some financial benefit. And then you have people who put up studies in public repositories that have not been peer reviewed, and they know that most of the public won't know the difference. They'll just see that it's a study. And you have guys like Doctor Pierre Corey, who, when he was criticized for his sketchy Senate testimony, said, I still stand by it and I think history will prove it to be true, even though it history didn't. So by early 2021, nearly all of the studies that purported to show a benefit from ivermectin use were small. There was one hugely influential exception, a November study published by Doctor Ahmed Elgazzar of Binha University in Egypt. It claimed to be a randomized control study that had found early ivermectin. Use not only reduced transmission of COVID, but reduced mortality by as much as 90%. If true, this would have been huge, world changing news. This would have meant that. A cheap, widely available anti parasitic was as effective as the best vaccines. The fact that this study was so large, again there's like 400 people I think in this study had impacts that rippled out far and wide because most of the studies are smaller. In cases like ivermectin, when researchers are analyzing a bunch of far-flung little studies to try to determine whether or not something works, they like to bunch all of those studies together and do something called a meta analysis. To explain what a meta analysis is, I'm going to quote from a write up by epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz Katz, who again is an epidemiologist and who like and analyzes scientific studies for a living and is thus the kind of person you would go to for information about this as opposed to a random pulmonologist. Anyway. Quote to solve the problem of multiple small trials, we conduct things called systematic reviews and meta analysis. These are scientific aggregations of research that pool all of the known studies on a topic into a single place and then combine them into a statistical model so we can see what the overall effect of a drug might be. Instead of a dozen small studies, we get one big aggregated estimate, which in theory is the final word on whether or not a treatment is effective. The only problem with these analysis is that if a single study has a large enough number of participants or a huge effect, it can sway the overall trend into something positive, even though on the whole the studies have not found a result. Now generally this isn't a huge issue, but it does mean that you sometimes have an entire body of literature saying that something works using the gold standard aggregation of many studies that is actually based on the results of a single piece of research. Uh. Yeah, you see how this could be a problem? How, Jamie, this, I, you know, I'm starting to get the picture of how this **** and what is. I mean it's what is the ******* solution to this, you know that that is the thing. The problem is very clear to me, the way that the way that we have, the way that medical scientific studies are released and shared and that this information like it does not work with the way the modern information. The system works right? And that is a problem I if you're looking for a solution, I'm not a scientist, I'm not your guy, I am a disinformation. Study or professionally and I can tell you where the problem is coming in, right, right. The problem, I mean, the way you just laid it out, the problem is extremely clear, but yeah. The actionable solution is it's gratingly not at all. It's a mix of thing, you know, it's not just that this stuff gets published early and people cherry pick studies. It's also this problem of, like, some of these studies are sketchy. Some of these places allow you to publish things before their period. Like there's a number of problems, but the problems are clear, the solution less so. So, and the consequences are extremely clear. Yeah, too. And the stakes are extreme, are really high. OK, so in June, the first large this is what it feels like to have Joe Rogan's. Brain. It just feels like really tight and it like it might. How sweaty are you right now, Jamie? I'm ******* I'm ******* drenched and I'm sitting in a meat freezer, so I feel like I might feel like he feels now is your best friend, an incredible jiu jitsu expert who also believes the moon landing was fake and the earth is flat because if so, you might actually just be Joe Rogan. Wait a second. That would explain so much of you do hang out with Eddie Bravo a lot. So. I keep screaming to for comedians to move to Austin and then they hate it, and then they leave, cause it's a terrible place anyway. So in June, the first large meta analysis of ivermectin studies was published in the American Journal of Therapeutics. It found, quote, moderate certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Now, that kind of wording in a meta analysis published in a reputable journal, had huge reverberations by the end of June. Gynexin was being discussed on our friend Joe Rogan show in its first ever emergency episode. So, so important. He did an emergency episode giving all thoughts a chance. Robert, I don't know what's wrong with giving every thought a chance. I think he's vaccinated. He might be. We'll talk about Joe and we'll talk about Joe in part, too. I honestly, yeah, I know. In this emergency episode, Doctor Corey sits down, Joe Rogan, Dr Pierre Corey of the FCC, and Brett Weinstein, who we'll talk about in Part 2. That is a grifter. Uh, sit down to talk about how ivermectin is a ******* wonder drug. Now that episode dropped days after that first meta analysis was published. I cannot overstate the influence of having that big meta analysis, like, played on, kind of making this look more like a thing than it really is, Weinstein claimed. Quote, The censorship campaign obscuring ivermectin as a prophylactic against SARS Cove two and as a treatment for COVID-19 kills. Is it about shareholders and UA's? Now this discussion merged with Rogan's own worries about vaccine passports and whether or not young healthy people needed the vaccine. Ivermectin was now billed as a replacement to the vaccine, where six months before, Doctor Corey himself had pushed it as just a stopgap until the vaccine was ready. And for a while, that meta analysis and doctor Elgazzar study gave Doctor Corey and other ivermectin advocates a leg to stand on. They could point to this massive study and say, hey, why isn't the mainstream media covering this? It must be. Because ever mekton is a generic over the counter drug and so they're not. Big Pharma is not going to make money, so they're hiding it now. The reality is that ivermectin was ******* everywhere. It was all over alternative media like the Joe Rogan Podcast, which has a vastly larger reach than any mainstream news network. He gets like 100 million downloads in a month. Reputable reporter? Yeah, like CNN is not as ******* influential as Joe Rogan at this point. Reputable reporters were hesitant to write 2 favorably about ivermectin though, because as soon as that. Egyptian study dropped, there were questions about its veracity, and the study, of course, proved to be bogus, which, as we talked about earlier, throws the entire meta analysis into question. Gideon meyerowitz. Connor, whatever. Gideon MK is how he writes on the I've read his full name or whatever Gideon, that epidemiologist I quoted earlier? He has a hobby of analyzing bad scientific studies and pointing out why they're disreputable. He is an actual scientist and an actual epidemiologist. He's not a Joe Rogan refreshing. And unlike Doctor Corey, he specializes in a field relevant to talking about whether or not ivermectin ******* works. In July, he wrote a devastating piece about Doctor Elgazzar study, a number of his technical criticisms of the study. They're not things I understand, but this bit here should be clear to everyone. Quote the entire introduction appears to be plagiarized. Indeed. It's very easy to confirm this by copy pasted a few phrases from different paragraphs into Google and it is immediately apparent that most of the introduction has been lifted from elsewhere online without attribution or acknowledgement. So we hope it was like the first chapter of a babysitters club right off the bat. That's a problem. That's a little bit of a problem, right? That's a little bit of a problem. In touch. But what's worse is that the numbers in the study are frankly impossible, which has thrown considerable doubt again on whether or not the study was actually conducted at all. Quote tight. In Table 4, the study shows mean, standard deviation, and ranges for recovery time in patients within the study. The issue is that with the reported range of 9 to 25 days, a mean of 18, and a standard deviation of eight, there are very few configurations of numbers that would leave you with this result. You can even calculate this yourself. Using this tool developed by the clever fraud detectives James Heathers, Nick Brown, Jordan Anaya and Tim Vandersee to have a mean of 18 days consistent with the other values, the majority of the patients in this group would have had to stay in the hospital for either 9 or 25 days exactly. So a lot of like when you actually do the data weird **** somehow it gets even worse. It turns out that the authors uploaded the actual data they used for the study into an online repository while the data is locked. One of the like people in analyzing this managed to guess the password in the file, which was 1234, and gain an access to the anonymous patient level information that the authors used to put the paper together. Quote Jesus, I've got a copy and it's amazing how obvious the flaws. Or even at a casual glance. For example, the study reports getting ethical approval and approval and beginning on the 8th of June 2020. But in the data file uploaded by the authors onto the website of the preprint, fully 1/3 of the people who died from COVID-19 were already dead when the researchers started to recruit their patients, unless they were getting dead people to consent to participate in the trial. That's not really possible. Moreover, about 25% of the entire group of patients who were recruited for the support supposedly prospective randomized trial appear to have been hospitalized before the study. Even started, which is either a mind boggling breach of ethics or a very bad sign of potential fraud. Even worse, if you look at the values for different patients, it appears that most of group group four are simply clones of each other with the same or largely similar initials, comorbidities, lymphocyte scores, etcetera. So this is the worst side that I've ever heard in my life. Like we're recruiting ghosts, we're recruiting clones, we've got a lot of ghosts in the study. Big Pharma doesn't want you to know what ghosts have to say about medicine. So by the end of this essay, I will like Oh my God. The problem is, by the time you different mistakes that not mistakes, but like lies. Yeah, it's a lot of problems in Giddings, not the only guy breaking this down and blowing a number of people try to, but by the time this gets thoroughly debunked, it had been downloaded 150,000 times and cited in two different meta analysis that showed ivermectin is having a huge medical benefit. And it was the largest study in both meta analysis. So, again, when you've got a bunch of small studies and one big study, this one involved 400 test subjects. That large study can skew the results of a meta analysis, which is what happened here. Quote Yeah, if you look at those large aggregate models and remove just this single study, ivermectin loses almost all of its purported benefits. Take the recent meta analysis by Bryant ET all that has been all over the news. They found a 62% reduction in risk of death for people who were treated with ivermectin compared to controls when combining randomized trials. However, if you remove the elgazzar. Paper from their model and rerun it, the benefit goes from 62% to 52% and largely loses its statistical significance. There's no benefit seen whatsoever for people who have severe COVID-19, and the confidence intervals for people with mild or moderate disease become extremely wide. If you include another study that was published after the Bryant Meta analysis came out, which found no benefit for ivermectin on death, the benefits seen in the model disappear entirely. For another recent meta analysis, simply excluding Elgazzar is enough to remove the positive effect. Entirely. And so, in one fell swoop, the very best scientific case for ivermectin is a COVID treatment, kind of collapses. Within the medical field reaction to the work Gideon and others had done, busting this bad study was swift. The preprint server that had published Dr El Gazzar study before peer review pulled it due to ethical concerns. The meta analysis, though, are still out there and still being cited and. That's. I guess all we're going to talk about in part one. Oh, good. It's a real problem, Jamie sick. Yeah. This is this is this is so troubling. I mean, yeah. And it's, I mean, I knew this studies were going to be it was going to be bad for sure. Yeah. But this is like a level of disinformation and negligence that I had not anticipated. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. What a nightmare. Well. All right, Jamie, you got a. Plug things. Oh yeah, I could plug things. Here, here's a plug you listen to all of act cast out now? Yeah, which is my podcast about the history of Kathy's comics and 20th century American feminism yet? Or you could listen to the Bechdel cast, or you could follow me on Twitter or Instagram. And Twitter is Jamie Loftis help Instagrams Jamie Christ superstar? And that's all. I think that that's all I have to say. Oh, also also, I am still soliciting hot dog recommendations. I've been to a lot of places. I've tried, I think all the all the big dogs, all the places that are on the listicles. I've been to, all of those. But if there is an obscure hot dog place that you think I should try in the continental US, because I I cannot we we can't go anywhere. Let me know. I'm interested, yeah. Ohh there's a great there's a great hot dog place in Lisbon where you can get something that I will argue as a hot dog, where you can get a piece of octopus on a hot dog bun. If it's random, it's a hot dog. It's not random meat. If it's just one meat, it could be random. You could just stick your stick a knife in the ocean. Sometimes you're gonna get random. It could be wearing a Jack Skellington sweatshirt. That's not random, Jamie. That's a popular media phenomenon. I, I've, I I had a Jack Skellington hoodie before I had ever seen that damn movie, and then I watched it. Certain you did before or ring creepy. Yeah, I know. Before. Well, that's just if you want to be taken serious by the kids who play hacky sack outside, you gotta have a Jack Skellington T-shirt. That's just how the social climate was at that time. Well, there's some free advice if you want children to like you in 2007, in 2007, if you're traveling back in time in 2007. And it is critical that 14 year olds think you're cool. Jamie Loftus has. The I have a $30 solution for you. It's called the Jack Skellington hoodie solution. For you, $30 is more money back than though, so keep that in mind. Yeah, that's good. That's a couple weeks of allowance. Follow us side bashers pot on Twitter, Instagram or at Calzone Media. For all the things, we'll be back Thursday. Bye bye oh. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Want to say I don't know less? Listen to stuff you should know more. 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