But I think it is clear what the collective knowledge about Ivermectin was at the time. Whether we later learned (or will learn) that it actually works against Covid (or not) will not change anything about how justifies these attacks were.
We had a time when the best meta-analysis as evaluated on LessWrong was pro-Ivermectin and the institutions were anti-Ivermectin.
The question of whether to follow the highest quality published metastudies or the institutions in cases where those differ is an important one. If the highest quality published metastudy was right about ivermectin and the institutions wrong that's a lesson for the future.
If the institutions are wrong and generally suppress the use of generics for important illnesses that suggests we should invest more money into studying whether generics are useful for problems that arise.
Lastly, if Ivermectin works for COVID there's a decent chance that it also works for other viruses. If we have another pandemic it's important to know whether we should run trials to test whether Ivermectin helps or don't run those trials.
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Notes -
But I think it is clear what the collective knowledge about Ivermectin was at the time. Whether we later learned (or will learn) that it actually works against Covid (or not) will not change anything about how justifies these attacks were.
We had a time when the best meta-analysis as evaluated on LessWrong was pro-Ivermectin and the institutions were anti-Ivermectin.
The question of whether to follow the highest quality published metastudies or the institutions in cases where those differ is an important one. If the highest quality published metastudy was right about ivermectin and the institutions wrong that's a lesson for the future.
If the institutions are wrong and generally suppress the use of generics for important illnesses that suggests we should invest more money into studying whether generics are useful for problems that arise.
Lastly, if Ivermectin works for COVID there's a decent chance that it also works for other viruses. If we have another pandemic it's important to know whether we should run trials to test whether Ivermectin helps or don't run those trials.
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