I have no proof (or way to test this), but I’ve thought for a while that some pathogen has infected a good number of people, and damaged their brains. I find it hard to understand many people’s transition into madness any other way.
I am not talking about “I believe bubble up economics you believe trickle down so you’re crazy” kind of disagreements, I mean stuff like “lizard people from planet nibiru are eating the children of flat earth which is why the shadow government is injecting you with 5g to make you magnetic” kind of stuff.
I have watched several seemingly normal people go more and more crazy, and a pathogen (or maybe long Covid?) seems like a possible reason.
It is possible they were always that susceptible(I suspect they were), someone just needed the means for mass delivery and when it was available(social media) they weaponized it at just the right time.
Anyone that has had to deal with any sort of customer support after Covid knows that things just aren’t right. It’s like talking to people from another planet. I don’t know if it is Covid brain or what.
It would be interesting to see the interplay of social isolation and the psychological impact of parasites/viruses. The history of population bottlenecks in humans (and other species) might be informative. Social isolation tends to increase when plague wipes out a good chunk of a population (e.g., the black death).
Fun thought: The toxoplasma gondii wants to spread, and it's gonna make its victim go out and socialize, even if that means breaking COVID rules. The more push back there is, the more reckless and crazy the victims get.
Have noticed that. Also, some agencies that are required to work with people (no way to automate that) remain incredibly under-staffed and/or have huge work backloads piled up. One told me the other day (after a two-hour phone battle to reach a real person) that there were no appointments available for 'over a month'.
I don’t think it’s new, just more visible than it used to be.
When I was a teenager, I took the New Age/occult section of the bookstore seriously[0]. It feels silly in retrospect, but it’s not really any weirder than the religious beliefs I was brought up with, nor the presence of horoscopes in all the newspapers and advertised elsewhere without getting banned under the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, nor the then-new National Lottery being shown with a regular segment by a fortune teller called Mystic Meg, nor the endless TV shows about ancient aliens and ghosts and telepathy, and you might be surprised how long people continued to say crop circles “had to be supernatural” after their secret was revealed to be two blokes and a stick.
Edit: Oh, and my mum insisted on handing out homeopathic sand and white paint pigment[2]. And the Bach flower remedies “for memory” (she got Alzheimer’s 20 years younger than her mum). Plus all the stuff about crystal powers, dowsing rods, the whole caboodle.
[0] So, naturally I tried the shape-shifting turn-yourself-into-a-werewolf spell I found online[1], and now I’m a furry.
The isolation from covid restrictions, combined with loads of the major conspiracy talking points coming true[0], could easily lead people down this big rabbit hole if their brain is so inclined. I know my brain tends to think in this way and I really felt the pull into crazy land. I mostly avoided going too far and as things have opened up I think I'm now back to a more reasonable view of reality, but I have sympathy for and understanding of the people who became this way recently.
[0] mandatory vaccinations, health passports, cashless society, great reset, etc etc
I think that the current legitimacy crisis is the cause for this. Once you have one core source/belief invalidated, it's super easy to slide into more fringe views.
I unironically blame the pervasiveness of drugs, namely cannabis and alcohol. They seem to be causing serious damage in a large subset of the population. Perhaps it has always been the case but we are more aware of such issues now.
However I know several people who are not drug users have similarly sunk into a state of paranoia or madness. Truly a sad state of affairs and I hope we can identify it, and treat them if possible because it seems telling them outright their thoughts/actions are manic is perceived as an insult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis maybe? "Up to half of the world's population is infected by toxoplasmosis, but have no symptoms." (No symptoms that we/they know of but read about how it affects mice. Makes them crazy reckless and wanna go get eaten by a cat.)
This is highly speculative stuff, but... that's the point. I think people sometimes forget that the was a time when nothing was scientifically proven.
I'm surprised Lyme disease wasn't mentioned, as I think it also falls into the bucket of latent diseases that can cause unquantified effects much later down the line.
At least the title, "Endemic Pathogens Are Making You Crazy And Then Killing You", can be accepted as a default prior, rather than an extraordinary claim. Many diseases are both prevalent and not under heavy study. Funding and interest in studying a disease is partially caused by individuals being able to link the disease to a symptom, and this is hard without data. (You rolled a 4, but is the die biased toward 4? It's impossible to tell from a single roll.) When these diseases are occasionally looked into, such as with hookworm and toxoplasmosis, the track record finds harms at an alarming rate, so we should expect the remaining diseases, which are not yet looked into, to have similar rates of danger.
Thus, without making assertions on the article's individual claims, the general thrust is broadly true. The reason people hold the "these diseases are generally harmless" prior is likely from another prior, "if X disease were so harmful, doctors would be studying it", and that unfortunately does not match current practice.
Covid-19 provides an example of how hard it is to link symptoms. We know now that anosmia is solidly connected to Covid-19, but this was not known for a while. The CDC only listed three official symptoms six months after the outbreak [0], reflecting the understanding at the time. Doctors talked about their patients and found commonalities; this bubbled anecdotes into attention. So even with intense and joint attention by the world, with a clear and reliable symptom, the symptom can evade notice for a while. When nobody's attention is on a disease, and the symptoms are chronic, the symptoms become invisible.
Caveat: this is not my field, and I do not study it. An epidemiologist could likely present a more accurate picture.
Nah. Hard nah. I don't quite understand how you went from, "I'm an enthusiastic researcher who enjoys..." to, "Ivermectin works on Republicans because Republicans live in squalor so they have worms but we don't know if Ivermectin actually works against COVID or not because our healthcare system sucks."
Its about a crossover and assumption error in the models
The patient and their doctor are assuming the wrong thing and coincidentally get a nice result
And the people trying to make a controlled review are assuming the wrong thing
Its a dewormer acting as a dewormer and thats actually saving people’s lives, would be useful policy wise to acknowledge why that is, instead of invalidating that group of people
I suspect the thing people are anchoring on is the word “republican”. I’ve heard a similar claim about the mechanism you describe, but it was with regard to a group actually likely to have worms — I don’t have a strong reason to think the USA has a worm problem, despite all the anger I see directed at the American medical system.
yeah I led with a lot of trigger words, it just wouldn't be accurate to pretend there is a more generalized group of people that would seek it. that drug doesn't/didnt get airtime as a remedy in non-republican news sources.
> I don’t have a strong reason to think the USA has a worm problem
Two thoughts on that
1) I don't know if we really need to quantify it. We need to verify/validate that this pipeline happens. Worms -> Covid -> Ivermectin -> less deaths/hospitalizations, but maybe we could just give it to people. Just throw it in the drug cocktail for treatment.
2) We already do this in some cases. Untreated but latent gonorrhea can cause miscarriages. People planning pregancies get a variety of preparatory treatments from doctors, within the long list of stuff can be a gonorrhea treatment, just by default. There is no need to even test for it, "hun I've only been with youuuuu where did this positive result for gonorrhea come frommmmm", we just spare everyone that conversation and just give the treatment for it to help avoid the complications or miscarriage. I could honestly see the same for Ivermectin.
Ivermectin doesn’t reduce mortality in COVID a significant amount (let’s say d > 0.3) in the absence of comorbid parasites: 85-90% confidence
Parasitic worms are a significant confounder in some ivermectin studies, such that they made them get a positive result even when honest and methodologically sound: 50% confidence
Fraud and data processing errors are of similar magnitude to p-hacking and methodological problems in explaining bad studies (95% confidence interval for fraud: between >1% and 5% as important as methodological problems; 95% confidence interval for data processing errors: between 5% and 100% as important)
Probably “Trust Science” is not the right way to reach proponents of pseudoscientific medicine: ???% confidence"
> they arent checking people with worms because nobody knows they have worms, thanks to the state of our healthcare
I have decent healthcare. I don’t think I’ve been explicitly checked for worms recently. Maybe in the bloodwork?
This is honestly one of the better ivermectin hypotheses I’ve come across. It doesn’t deserve to be downvoted, particularly within the context of the article, which set a low bar for evidence.
The "rural squalor" assumption doesn't help with the downvotes. That's a fairly derogatory blanket generalization, and whether or not statistics back OP up they could choose better verbiage.
Oh, I didn't think that part would be controversial, its where you get parasites and why the combination is a hit with one political party. A subset live in the middle of nowhere with poor infrastructure, the people out there aren't of other political parties because those other parties dont acknowledge them as well. I thought that would be clear. Its not about people that dont live in those environments and are also republican. You have to understand us identity politics to know why that wasn’t supposed to be derogatory. its supposed to be emphasis for effect, and accurate.
this is an example of other political parties not even giving them the benefit of the doubt to look into why it could possibly be working out for them. or even considering the errors in the models.
>You have to understand us identity politics to know why that wasn’t supposed to be derogatory.
For what it's worth, I live in the US, completely understand identity politics and am fully aware of the stereotypes - accurate or not - about how right-leaning individuals largely live "in squalor" relative to other political parties. I understand where you're coming from, I would just suggest that you be a little more thoughtful in how you approach that subject next time.
Saying, "Ivermectin saves republican lives because they already have worms in their body (from living in rural squalor)," sounds a lot like you've generalized every single Republican in the country as both having worms and "living in squalor". In point of fact, not every Republican has worms, and certainly not every Republican lives in squalor. Living in squalor is also not a prerequisite for getting worms.
A better way to approach it would be to say something along the lines of, "It's my understanding that states whose climates are more prone to worms are red states, so - correct me if I'm wrong - I would assume that we're more likely to see worm infections in Republicans than Democrats. This is also bolstered by the fact that 3 million more Republicans live in poverty compared to Democrats[1]."
Some small subset of the US doesn't have indoor plumbing and electricity. People don't live in squalor. This article says that not having working plumbing is more common in cities:
And then there's the problem where the ivermectin studies apparently went out of their way to have a statistically significant portion of those people?
As a child I lived in the South where parasites are endemic. I had my shit analyzed every physical. I shat in a jar in the comfort of my home and brought it to the physical; the doctor's job was to make slides and search for parasites. It was obvious that the doctor didn't enjoy the tests, much to my amusement.
As an adult I've never had a similar test. Yet I live in a similar climate and often do the same things I did as a child (e.g., walk barefoot, swim in a river, etc.).
I asked my doctors about parasites but they always ho-hummed, claiming any parasitic infestation would show up on blood tests. I think they're wrong and so treat myself to the occasional anti-parasitic.
FWIW it isn't a new "ivermectin hypothesis": it's been discussed ad nauseum, even on HN.
There's also the "hygiene hypothesis" which states roughly that early exposure to various pathogens helps the immune system learn what is dangerous and what is not. If you've ever visited someplace like, say, Cambodia (parts of which are underwater much of the year) you were likely impressed by the difference between their children's exposure to the elements and those of most children in the USA.
my doctor and I had a recent discussion about exactly this. Just incredibly bizarre behavior from people with no explanation. I asked if it could be caused by parasites. She brought up a study in LA where they tested the homeless for Babesia, and many people tested positive. Sorry I did not get the link for this study, but it is plausible. I'm not even sure how we can as a society even address this. One of the treatments is now so politically polarized during the pandemic, even mentioning it out loud is a conversation killer.
also curious; nothing on this page looks controversial (https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/babesiosis/health_professional...), unless you believe that doctors are wrongly overprescribing azithromycin. (which is fair! but probably not conversation-killingly controversial)
Chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine would be the other likely candidates. A quick web search suggests they've been tested and found ineffective for Babesia. Of course, their being found ineffective for treating a disease in a scientific study does not always stop people from trying them.
There's a mouse study from 2019 suggesting ivermectin is likely to be effective against Babesia, but it is not a standard treatment as far as I can tell.
The article left me wondering, how many of these endemic pathogens are treatable? If they aren’t treatable, it makes sense for doctors not to routinely test for them. (Basic research to find new treatments is another matter.)
Many methodologies have unintentionally introduced bias, like the article mentions. Another example, ear infections are generally assumed to be caused by bacteria instead of viruses leading to prescription of antibiotics which may cause dysbiosis or antibiotic resistance leading to chronic ear infections and/or digestive issues. Why don’t clinicians test for viruses or parasites first to see if maybe that is weakening the immune system and leading to a bacterial overgrowth?
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadI am not talking about “I believe bubble up economics you believe trickle down so you’re crazy” kind of disagreements, I mean stuff like “lizard people from planet nibiru are eating the children of flat earth which is why the shadow government is injecting you with 5g to make you magnetic” kind of stuff.
I have watched several seemingly normal people go more and more crazy, and a pathogen (or maybe long Covid?) seems like a possible reason.
At least that’s what I tell myself.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/mind-cont... (https://archive.ph/S5nB9)
There was no transition. They were always like this and that is the default.
When I was a teenager, I took the New Age/occult section of the bookstore seriously[0]. It feels silly in retrospect, but it’s not really any weirder than the religious beliefs I was brought up with, nor the presence of horoscopes in all the newspapers and advertised elsewhere without getting banned under the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, nor the then-new National Lottery being shown with a regular segment by a fortune teller called Mystic Meg, nor the endless TV shows about ancient aliens and ghosts and telepathy, and you might be surprised how long people continued to say crop circles “had to be supernatural” after their secret was revealed to be two blokes and a stick.
Edit: Oh, and my mum insisted on handing out homeopathic sand and white paint pigment[2]. And the Bach flower remedies “for memory” (she got Alzheimer’s 20 years younger than her mum). Plus all the stuff about crystal powers, dowsing rods, the whole caboodle.
[0] So, naturally I tried the shape-shifting turn-yourself-into-a-werewolf spell I found online[1], and now I’m a furry.
[1] The original website is long gone, but this looks like the same text I saw 25 years ago: http://www.paganlibrary.com/rituals_spells/russian_shifting_...
[2] No, seriously: https://homeopathicremediesonline.com/product/titanium-oxyda...
[0] mandatory vaccinations, health passports, cashless society, great reset, etc etc
However I know several people who are not drug users have similarly sunk into a state of paranoia or madness. Truly a sad state of affairs and I hope we can identify it, and treat them if possible because it seems telling them outright their thoughts/actions are manic is perceived as an insult.
Leaded gasoline wasn't banned till the 70s and only really eliminated by the 90s.
I'm surprised Lyme disease wasn't mentioned, as I think it also falls into the bucket of latent diseases that can cause unquantified effects much later down the line.
Thus, without making assertions on the article's individual claims, the general thrust is broadly true. The reason people hold the "these diseases are generally harmless" prior is likely from another prior, "if X disease were so harmful, doctors would be studying it", and that unfortunately does not match current practice.
Covid-19 provides an example of how hard it is to link symptoms. We know now that anosmia is solidly connected to Covid-19, but this was not known for a while. The CDC only listed three official symptoms six months after the outbreak [0], reflecting the understanding at the time. Doctors talked about their patients and found commonalities; this bubbled anecdotes into attention. So even with intense and joint attention by the world, with a clear and reliable symptom, the symptom can evade notice for a while. When nobody's attention is on a disease, and the symptoms are chronic, the symptoms become invisible.
Caveat: this is not my field, and I do not study it. An epidemiologist could likely present a more accurate picture.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200415000910/https://www.cdc.g...
Nah. Hard nah. I don't quite understand how you went from, "I'm an enthusiastic researcher who enjoys..." to, "Ivermectin works on Republicans because Republicans live in squalor so they have worms but we don't know if Ivermectin actually works against COVID or not because our healthcare system sucks."
People with worms only notice they have a problem after getting sick with covid
How did you read that differently
Read it again
The patient and their doctor are assuming the wrong thing and coincidentally get a nice result
And the people trying to make a controlled review are assuming the wrong thing
Its a dewormer acting as a dewormer and thats actually saving people’s lives, would be useful policy wise to acknowledge why that is, instead of invalidating that group of people
> I don’t have a strong reason to think the USA has a worm problem
Two thoughts on that
1) I don't know if we really need to quantify it. We need to verify/validate that this pipeline happens. Worms -> Covid -> Ivermectin -> less deaths/hospitalizations, but maybe we could just give it to people. Just throw it in the drug cocktail for treatment.
2) We already do this in some cases. Untreated but latent gonorrhea can cause miscarriages. People planning pregancies get a variety of preparatory treatments from doctors, within the long list of stuff can be a gonorrhea treatment, just by default. There is no need to even test for it, "hun I've only been with youuuuu where did this positive result for gonorrhea come frommmmm", we just spare everyone that conversation and just give the treatment for it to help avoid the complications or miscarriage. I could honestly see the same for Ivermectin.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
"The Summary
Ivermectin doesn’t reduce mortality in COVID a significant amount (let’s say d > 0.3) in the absence of comorbid parasites: 85-90% confidence
Parasitic worms are a significant confounder in some ivermectin studies, such that they made them get a positive result even when honest and methodologically sound: 50% confidence
Fraud and data processing errors are of similar magnitude to p-hacking and methodological problems in explaining bad studies (95% confidence interval for fraud: between >1% and 5% as important as methodological problems; 95% confidence interval for data processing errors: between 5% and 100% as important)
Probably “Trust Science” is not the right way to reach proponents of pseudoscientific medicine: ???% confidence"
I have decent healthcare. I don’t think I’ve been explicitly checked for worms recently. Maybe in the bloodwork?
This is honestly one of the better ivermectin hypotheses I’ve come across. It doesn’t deserve to be downvoted, particularly within the context of the article, which set a low bar for evidence.
People react to that and cant even process the rest verbatim
this is an example of other political parties not even giving them the benefit of the doubt to look into why it could possibly be working out for them. or even considering the errors in the models.
For what it's worth, I live in the US, completely understand identity politics and am fully aware of the stereotypes - accurate or not - about how right-leaning individuals largely live "in squalor" relative to other political parties. I understand where you're coming from, I would just suggest that you be a little more thoughtful in how you approach that subject next time.
Saying, "Ivermectin saves republican lives because they already have worms in their body (from living in rural squalor)," sounds a lot like you've generalized every single Republican in the country as both having worms and "living in squalor". In point of fact, not every Republican has worms, and certainly not every Republican lives in squalor. Living in squalor is also not a prerequisite for getting worms.
A better way to approach it would be to say something along the lines of, "It's my understanding that states whose climates are more prone to worms are red states, so - correct me if I'm wrong - I would assume that we're more likely to see worm infections in Republicans than Democrats. This is also bolstered by the fact that 3 million more Republicans live in poverty compared to Democrats[1]."
[1]https://www.brookings.edu/research/poverty-crosses-party-lin...
Just a thought.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/27/water-almost...
And then there's the problem where the ivermectin studies apparently went out of their way to have a statistically significant portion of those people?
You thought you had decent healthcare! FTFY!
As a child I lived in the South where parasites are endemic. I had my shit analyzed every physical. I shat in a jar in the comfort of my home and brought it to the physical; the doctor's job was to make slides and search for parasites. It was obvious that the doctor didn't enjoy the tests, much to my amusement.
As an adult I've never had a similar test. Yet I live in a similar climate and often do the same things I did as a child (e.g., walk barefoot, swim in a river, etc.).
I asked my doctors about parasites but they always ho-hummed, claiming any parasitic infestation would show up on blood tests. I think they're wrong and so treat myself to the occasional anti-parasitic.
FWIW it isn't a new "ivermectin hypothesis": it's been discussed ad nauseum, even on HN.
I've read it can be good for some people with MS. Depends on the sort of worms, apparently.
Quackery?
https://dhvi.duke.edu/staying-home-harming-your-child’s-immu...
There's a mouse study from 2019 suggesting ivermectin is likely to be effective against Babesia, but it is not a standard treatment as far as I can tell.