Federal appeals court revives lawsuit against FDA over COVID-19 ivermectin messaging

[KCfromNC]

Let's evaluate:
Both pertained to addressing covid
Both were based on misinformation about covid
Both caused people to do stupid things in the name of covid that had consequences

I mean, sure, they both have to do with covid. A lot during that time did. That still makes it quite a stretch to pull out of thin air to try and minimize how dumb the "take horse medicine for covid" talking points were.

Both were the result of people (who the two respective factions) looked to as "Thought leaders" espousing inaccuracies about the nature of covid.

Can you quote these alleged prominent "thought leaders" advertising that covid had a 50% death rate?

For example, a hypothetical:

I'd prefer to find out if the claims above are reality before descending further into fiction.

It's supposed to highlight the fact that misinformation from the overly cautious perspective can have externalities just like the misinformation from the slapdash perspective.

Can is a long way from the actual problems being actually addressed by the actual ads in this thread addressing the actual actions of actual people.

Meanwhile "Kids lost 1-2 of learning and social developmental skills, 700,000 businesses went belly up, 9 million people lost their jobs, and we spent trillions paying people to stay home because a bunch of people were scared into thinking covid was on-par Tuberculosis or diphtheria in terms of hospitalization and case fatality rate".... never gets talked about it.

To be fair, some groups talked about the relative death rate of covid. For example : COVID-19 was third leading cause of death in the United States in both 2020 and 2021.

But sure, all of the people who were worried about the 3rd leading cause of death in the US were simply overreacting, you know, because we need to manufacture something, anything, to make it look like the people advocating taking horse de-wormer were the reasonable ones.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I mean, sure, they both have to do with covid. A lot during that time did. That still makes it quite a stretch to pull out of thin air to try and minimize how dumb the "take horse medicine for covid" talking points were.

I'm not minimizing how stupid it is for people to take horse medicine. Simply pointing out that it wasn't the only kind of misinformation that had negative consequences.

Can you quote these alleged prominent "thought leaders" advertising that covid had a 50% death rate?

They may not have used those exact words, but that ended up being the takeaway.

If the messaging from public health experts was accurate and measured...how did 41% of Democrats, 22% of Republicans, and 26% of Independents get it in their head covid carried a hospitalization rate of over 50%?

If you have any other theories as to how they landed on that conclusion (if not for public health experts and pundits putting disproportionate focus on the extreme outlier cases), I'm willing to entertain them.

Until I hear an alternate theory, I'll stick with the theory that it was due to the fact that every time you turned on the news and/or browsed a news site in mid-late 2020, there was at least 2 or 3 stories/headlines about "34 year old thought covid was no big deal and went to a party, now they're on a ventilator" or Chris Cuomo going on air from his basement describing his "harrowing" experience while having the virus (with Don Lemon getting teary eyed) while on camera (meanwhile when the cameras went off, he had been going out on bike rides while he was supposed to be quarantining.)

To be fair, some groups talked about the relative death rate of covid. For example : COVID-19 was third leading cause of death in the United States in both 2020 and 2021.

But sure, all of the people who were worried about the 3rd leading cause of death in the US were simply overreacting, you know, because we need to manufacture something, anything, to make it look like the people advocating taking horse de-wormer were the reasonable ones.

Pre-vaccine, those concerns were more valid. There were still people demanding "social distancing" business rules, remote learning, and wanting to continue to collect relief funds because they were afraid to go back to work clear into late 2021/early 2022 despite the vaccine being available, and everyone having plenty enough time to get it if they wanted.

My stance was, as soon as the vaccine eligibility became available for everyone 30 and older and everyone has had a month or two to schedule an appointment and get it, from a public policy & restrictions perspective, we're done here.

Barring any sort underlying immunocompromising conditions, if you're a 30+ who's had two doses, there was no reason to stay locked away in your house anymore and be afraid to go to work or have your kids to back to in-person learning.

...but people were, likely due to the outsized fear they had about it. A high profile instance would be when the Chicago Teachers union opted to do a walk-out because they wanted to do remote learning (out of a stated concern about covid) in 2022.

 

[Pommer]

View attachment 335889

What an odd metric.

 

[Pommer]

Federal appeals court revives lawsuit against FDA over COVID-19 ivermectin messaging

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over its campaign against the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 can continue, reversing a lower …

thehill.com

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over its campaign against the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 can continue, reversing a lower court decision.

Three doctors sued the FDA last year claiming that the agency’s anti-ivermectin campaign went too far, overstepping its authority and acting more as a medical body than a regulator.


A district court ruled that the suit could not continue, but the 5th Circuit Appeals Court revived the doctors’ hope in its Friday ruling, sending the case back to a lower court where it will be reconsidered.

“FDA is not a physician. It has authority to inform, announce, and apprise — but not to endorse, denounce, or advise,” Judge Don Willett wrote for the appeals court. “The Doctors have plausibly alleged that FDA’s Posts fell on the wrong side of the line between telling about and telling to.”


I've been clear about my position that I don't think Ivermectin was a suitable treatment for covid, nor do I think it was a valid replacement for the vaccine in terms of a prophylactic measure. However, I agree with the court's ruling on this one. Putting out misleading messaging about the nature of the drug, combined with trying to smear anyone who promoted it, did step over a line.

I am still unclear what the “injury” to the plaintiffs were?

Did these doctors sue for the “right” to be incompetent quacks!?

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I am still unclear what the “injury” to the plaintiffs were?

Did these doctors sue for the “right” to be incompetent quacks!?

I believe some doctors had their licenses yanked (maybe one of these 3 did as well)

Actually, doctors have sued in the past for the right to be quacks, so there is some precedent for it.

1986 is when Chiropractors filed a suit in order to become recognized by the AMA as "real doctors" and be allowed to get reimbursed by Medicaid and insurance companies.

They've been grifting people out of their money (and some of ours, if we pay taxes and insurance premiums) for decades and virtually nobody has said a peep about it.

Same with "Naturopathic Doctors" in some states.

In the grand scheme of things, doctors prescribing off-label ivermectin to people (who weren't going to get vaccinated anyway) is much less concerning than the millions of people per year going to chiropractors, and being told to go off their necessary medications because getting adjusted to remove the "subluxations" (not a real thing) would solve their problems

 

[ThatRobGuy]

What an odd metric.

Odd as in the metric itself? Or odd as in "it's surprising that so many people ended up with such a wildly inaccurate conclusion"?

 

[Pommer]

Odd as in the metric itself? Or odd as in "it's surprising that so many people ended up with such a wildly inaccurate conclusion"?

The “risk of” “unvaccinated” by “political party” yes, is a whacky subdivision of the population.
It is real, is it also useful?
What does it intend to show insofar as allowing us to draw conclusions from it?

 

[Hans Blaster]

I believe some doctors had their licenses yanked (maybe one of these 3 did as well)

Then they should sue the licensing boards that yanked their licenses.

Actually, doctors have sued in the past for the right to be quacks, so there is some precedent for it.

Do we have the right to *call* them quacks?

1986 is when Chiropractors filed a suit in order to become recognized by the AMA as "real doctors" and be allowed to get reimbursed by Medicaid and insurance companies.

There are two kind of chiropractors - ones that just adjust joints and ones that "cure" diseases by adjusting joints. The later are scammers and should be treated as such.

They've been grifting people out of their money (and some of ours, if we pay taxes and insurance premiums) for decades and virtually nobody has said a peep about it.

No insurance plan should reimburse chiropractors for anything not related to bones and joints.

Same with "Naturopathic Doctors" in some states.

Strait up scammers and dangerous, just like homeopaths.

In the grand scheme of things, doctors prescribing off-label ivermectin to people (who weren't going to get vaccinated anyway) is much less concerning than the millions of people per year going to chiropractors, and being told to go off their necessary medications because getting adjusted to remove the "subluxations" (not a real thing) would solve their problems

Or about even, or slightly more concerning, but only because unlike those other things, ivermectin has actual side effects while doing nothings. If the FDA can prohibit that off-label usage, they should now at this time as the studies are clear that ivermectin does nothing for COVID.

But.. this case is about some FDA tweets about "horse medicine" which they absolutely should have done. Those messages weren't about off-label prescriptions, they were about self-medication using mis-sized doses that were dangerous. There is *no one* that should have standing against this. Not the doctors with the off-label prescriptions as they weren't the target, not the farm supply stores that were selling it as they weren't behind it, and not the manufacturers of the veterinary versions. The suit should be tossed. It is some deficiency of the current moment for our federal judges that they don't just toss it.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

The “risk of” “unvaccinated” by “political party” yes, is a whacky subdivision of the population.
It is real, is it also useful?
What does it intend to show insofar as allowing us to draw conclusions from it?

The sample audience they were polling asking isn't what the unvaccinated designation was referring to.

They were polling people (by political party) to ask what they thought the risk of hospitalization was for an unvaccinated person.

41% of democrats answered that they thought the risk of hospitalization >50% for an unvaccinated person.


What is shows is that both forms of misinformation have consequences.
If a person thinks that a magic ivermectin cure for covid, they're more likely to have engaged in otherwise riskier behaviors.

If a person thinks covid carries a 50% hospitalization rate, they're more likely to demand stronger (and more economically and socially disruptive) public mitigation measures (like school and business closures), when they otherwise wouldn't have if they had an accurate view of the hospitalization rate (<1%). In fact, if you read the follow-up question where they asked the same question, but asked people about the risk for the vaccinated population, a substantial portion of people still estimated way too high. (with 30% of democrats thinking the hospitalization rate was 5% for vaccinated people)


Now, the latter aspect maybe more of a result of misleading rather than straight out misinformation (I haven't personally heard anyone suggesting the hospitalization rate was nearly that high), however the end result is the same if that was the takeaway for such a huge swath of the population.

 

[Pommer]

The sample audience they were polling asking isn't what the unvaccinated designation was referring to.

They were polling people (by political party) to ask what they thought the risk of hospitalization was for an unvaccinated person.

41% of democrats answered that they thought the risk of hospitalization >50% for an unvaccinated person.


What is shows is that both forms of misinformation have consequences.
If a person thinks that a magic ivermectin cure for covid, they're more likely to have engaged in otherwise riskier behaviors.

If a person thinks covid carries a 50% hospitalization rate, they're more likely to demand stronger (and more economically and socially disruptive) public mitigation measures (like school and business closures), when they otherwise wouldn't have if they had an accurate view of the hospitalization rate (<1%). In fact, if you read the follow-up question where they asked the same question, but asked people about the risk for the vaccinated population, a substantial portion of people still estimated way too high. (with 30% of democrats thinking the hospitalization rate was 5% for vaccinated people)


Now, the latter aspect maybe more of a result of misleading rather than straight out misinformation (I haven't personally heard anyone suggesting the hospitalization rate was nearly that high), however the end result is the same if that was the takeaway for such a huge swath of the population.

Oh okay, thank you for the explanation.
What was the “correct” hospitalization-rate?

 

[zippy2006]

The stuff that the general public was purchasing from veterinary supply-houses was the substance in question...

If so, then sure. The problem is that the situation on the ground was in no way limited to such purchases, and the same sorts of organizations were fighting against the equivocal sense of ivermectin.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Oh okay, thank you for the explanation.
What was the “correct” hospitalization-rate?

In summary:
Using the adjusted figures, we calculate that the hospitalization rate for the vaccinated population is 0.01% (or 1 in 10,914), and the rate for unvaccinated adults is 0.89% (or 1 case in 112 people).

Unless you're looking for the more long-winded version per the poll author:
The correct answers to hospitalization risk can be calculated using data from the Department of Health and Human Services (via HealthData.gov) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

A simplistic analysis of these numbers would yield hospitalization rates of 0.005% for the vaccinated population (1 case in 22,118) and 1.6% for the unvaccinated population (1 case in 62), but those numbers exaggerate the benefits of the vaccine because the unvaccinated population confronted many more days of risk, since vaccination was gradually rolled out starting in December of 2020. For that reason, we take the average population totals over the relevant periods for each population (March 1, 2020-Aug. 9, 2021 for the unvaccinated population and Dec. 15, 2020,-Aug. 9, 2021, for the vaccinated population). The adjusted population of vaccinated people comes to 83 million and 295 million for the unvaccinated population, since the entire U.S. population was unvaccinated -- except a small number of participants in clinical trials --up until December of 2020.

Using the adjusted figures, we calculate that the hospitalization rate for the vaccinated population is 0.01% (or 1 in 10,914), and the rate for unvaccinated adults is 0.89% (or 1 case in 112 people).


Whether you use the raw figures, or the adjusted figures, both are very different than the impression some people had, which assumed that if you caught covid while vaccinated your risk of hospitalization was 1/20, and also assume that if a person was unvaccinated, it was a heads or tails on whether or not they'd need hospitalization.


Which, to be fair to the people who believed that exaggerated risk percentage... If I sincerely thought the risk of the virus was that drastic, I would've been in favor of New Zealand style lockdowns too.

 

[Pommer]

In summary:
Using the adjusted figures, we calculate that the hospitalization rate for the vaccinated population is 0.01% (or 1 in 10,914), and the rate for unvaccinated adults is 0.89% (or 1 case in 112 people).

Unless you're looking for the more long-winded version per the poll author:
The correct answers to hospitalization risk can be calculated using data from the Department of Health and Human Services (via HealthData.gov) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

A simplistic analysis of these numbers would yield hospitalization rates of 0.005% for the vaccinated population (1 case in 22,118) and 1.6% for the unvaccinated population (1 case in 62), but those numbers exaggerate the benefits of the vaccine because the unvaccinated population confronted many more days of risk, since vaccination was gradually rolled out starting in December of 2020. For that reason, we take the average population totals over the relevant periods for each population (March 1, 2020-Aug. 9, 2021 for the unvaccinated population and Dec. 15, 2020,-Aug. 9, 2021, for the vaccinated population). The adjusted population of vaccinated people comes to 83 million and 295 million for the unvaccinated population, since the entire U.S. population was unvaccinated -- except a small number of participants in clinical trials --up until December of 2020.

Using the adjusted figures, we calculate that the hospitalization rate for the vaccinated population is 0.01% (or 1 in 10,914), and the rate for unvaccinated adults is 0.89% (or 1 case in 112 people).


Whether you use the raw figures, or the adjusted figures, both are very different than the impression some people had, which assumed that if you caught covid while vaccinated your risk of hospitalization was 1/20, and also assume that if a person was unvaccinated, it was a heads or tails on whether or not they'd need hospitalization.


Which, to be fair to the people who believed that exaggerated risk percentage... If I sincerely thought the risk of the virus was that drastic, I would've been in favor of New Zealand style lockdowns too.

Here’s a poser, the hospitalization rate was 0.89%, and we know that the death rate was about 0.36% so (almostj three times as many people were hospitalized as died and not all of the dead had been hospitalized.
How many ham sandwiches are sold on a Tuesday?

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Here’s a poser, the hospitalization rate was 0.89%, and we know that the death rate was about 0.36% so (almostj three times as many people were hospitalized as died and not all of the dead had been hospitalized.
How many ham sandwiches are sold on a Tuesday?

I think it's likely a scenario where it was something like

10,000 people get covid
89 get hospitalized
36 died

Many of the 89 hospitalized people recovered and were released, some died
Of the 36 who died, some were stubborn and to their dying breath said "It's just the flu, I'll be fine"

Hospitalization statistics, on their own, can be a tricky metric to work with simply due to the fact that it can range from "life or death situation", to "person who has health anxiety, and is paranoid so they go in". If you know any hypochondriacs, you know what I'm talking about.

Personal Anecdote, my brother can tend to be a bit of a hypochondriac (he's 31 with no comorbidities and pretty fit)... one of those guys who immediately concludes that he has cancer after a WebMD search, he went to the ER twice for the same case of covid during in a 5 day time window due to being paranoid about his symptoms. The first time, they only kept him in ER for an hour and sent him home after an hour and told him they didn't see any reason to be alarmed, the 2nd time he sort of "exaggerated" his symptoms because he wasn't satisfied with the first visit, they kept him for around 4 hours, ran some tests, and then sent him home with an Rx for some prescription strength ibuprofen. (likely just to get him out of there and free up space for a person who actually needed it)

 

[KCfromNC]

If the messaging from public health experts was accurate and measured...how did 41% of Democrats, 22% of Republicans, and 26% of Independents get it in their head covid carried a hospitalization rate of over 50%?

Great question - for a thread where it is even remotely relevant.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

The Ivermectin being sought during the pandemic was often veterinary formulations, so it's not wrong to describe ivermectin as a veterinary medication, because it is.

Just like many other drugs, it ALSO comes in forms for animals, however Ivermectin is actually a safe and longstanding WHO "Essential Medicine" for humans.

 

[FireDragon76]

Just like many other drugs, it ALSO comes in forms for animals, however Ivermectin is actually a safe and longstanding WHO "Essential Medicine" for humans.

For protazoa infections, not viruses...

 

[Hans Blaster]

For protazoa infections, not viruses...

You remember the big breakout of CoProD from Coronaprotazoa in 2020, right?

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

For protazoa infections, not viruses...

Many drugs are routinely used off label. Not an issue. Until this time, when there was expensive brand new product with no long term data to move.