Thread by @ydeigin

🧵 RESPONSE THREAD TO @BretWeinstein and @HeatherEHeying Podcast #87

In this thread I will collect all of my responses to B&H's key counterarguments as I heard them on their podcast #87 today:

1⃣ *Bret thinks drugs are dangerous because telomeres*

This part set the stage very well for the festival of incompetence that the podcast turned out to be. Incompetence in drug development, pharmacology, data analysis, statistics, reading comprehension and even basic biology.

Here is the relevant clip and my analysis of Bret's telomere hypothesis:

https://twitter.com/ydeigin/status/1414863204665135104

2⃣ *Bret still claims Covid vaccines are dangerous*

"Vaccines don't stay at the injection site"
"Spike protein is toxic"

Oh well, at least no more exploding rat ovaries, phew.

Here the clip with my comments:

https://twitter.com/ydeigin/status/1414944337620881411

3⃣ *Ivermectin is "natural" because it comes from soil bacteria*

Oh boy, that was quite a WTF moment:

"the fact ivermectin comes from soil bacteria, it's not a
completely synthetic molecule, means that it is likely to be similar to things that one's ancestors...

...have encountered before and there's therefore a good chance that the body has a reasonably elegant way of dealing with it rather than using some mechanism that's not so great"

I just have one comment to that: 🤦‍♂️

4⃣ *Heather has reading comprehension issues and claims we can't tell apart prophylaxis from treatment*

For some reason Heather thinks that the first paragraph in the screenshot of our article is all about prophylaxis.

No, Heather, see the italicized *any* word in the "any significant benefit" phrase? "Any" stands for either prophylactic or treatment benefit, and the reference to the JAMA study is meant to highlight that even as treatment (i.e. not as crazy...

...a suggestion as your proposal of using IVM as alternative to vaccines), IVM has no proven benefit when the clinical trial is done properly.

With that out of the way, the next paragraph then dives into the prophylactic comparison of IVM to vaccines, and it's not even close.

5⃣ *B&H still tout the Carvallo IVM prophylaxis study*

Yeah, the SARS2 origin skeptics suddenly seem to trust even the most unbelievable of studies when it comes to IVM.

Here is the clip and a detailed thread:

https://twitter.com/ydeigin/status/1414893470964195330

6⃣ *Heather claims that correlation between declines in cases and IVM use is "really good evidence" for IVM efficacy*

Yeah, this is just a clear example of mistaking correlation for causation with cherrypicking on top.

You know that cases rise and drop all the time, right?

There were plenty of other places which didn't use IVM and cases still fell. Like in Russia, or Sweden after the second wave. These countries didn't use IVM, didn't have lockdowns, Russia's vaccination rate was (and still is) dismal but numbers still fell.

So, no, not evidence.

7⃣ *Heather doesn’t understand IVM's teratogenicity, or drug development*

Here's a clip and a detailed thread:

https://twitter.com/ydeigin/status/1414873558887673864

8⃣ *Heather didn’t read or understand the papers on IVM’s testicular toxicity*

Yeah, another double standard: rat ovaries are important but rat testicles... not so much.

Clip/thread:

https://twitter.com/ydeigin/status/1414876375970947072

9⃣ *The Deigin Threshold or how IVM can do its magic without being present in the body*

Is IVM secretly a vaccine pretending to be a small molecule? Bret hints it might be.

https://twitter.com/ydeigin/status/1414907080096505862

🔟 *Heather reads a chapter from their book which further reveals their anti-scientific beliefs*

https://twitter.com/ydeigin/status/1414911681080303618

1⃣1⃣ *IVM could somehow interfere with vaccine effectiveness*

Yeah, B&H were far off into conjecture land by then.

https://twitter.com/ydeigin/status/1414823660913938434

1⃣2⃣ *Large-scale randomized controlled trials are very very expensive*

A good trial does not need to be "large scale". And randomization and double blinding don't add any significant overheard to a trial.

1⃣3⃣ That's all, folks!