Van Dissel also falsely informs the Chamber

Van Dissel bakes them brown again. Two recent achievements, the seasonal effect in the newspaper and ivermectin in the House.

The seasonal effect in the AD

My eye just fell on a statement by Dissel in the AD. If he has integrity, as the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences recently praised him, then the man is truly errant:

The seasonal effect has 10%-15% influence? He says this without the slightest substantiation. His information may be correct: they do indeed assume that, but it is a nonsensical assumption. It's not just a very careless estimate, it's yet another blatant blunder. Just like "Don't expect many problems from carnival because you celebrate it in small groups anyway". The man is a puppet, a ventriloquist's dummy. A few critical questions about that 10%-15% seasonal effect, think about it yourself, or look something up in pubmed or something:

• Has that ever been observed before with a respiratory virus, a seasonal effect of 10%-15%? If so, with which one?
• In case of measles perhaps? But that's an aerosol disease and they don't play a significant role in Covid, do they?
• So that leaves 85%-90%, outside the seasonal effect. So what was the other 85%-90% impact last year, when the numbers without vaccination fell significantly earlier and faster than they do now?
• All previous years with other flu and cold-like people, what was that 85%-90% at the end of the flu season (or should I say 'wave') that made the flu go away?
• What is different about this year's season than in previous years? It starts later (which is why the decline starts later).

Jacco must have put together another Excel sheet and Jaap still hasn't discovered the trend function, he still thinks that Jacco is a Wizard with self-designed algorithms.

Chamber falsely informed about ivermectin

"The probability that an ineffective treatment led to positive results for the 55 studies to date is estimated to be 1 in 23 trillion (p = 0.0000000000000043)."

Review in Nature on 55 ivermectin studies

And then the ridiculous sheet by Jaap van Dissel:

Remedy for parasitic infestations/infections

ivermectin is a drug for which the Nobel Prize has been awarded. It has now been prescribed billions of times, especially in Africa for river blindness and (other) parasitic infections, without worrying side effects (which are known, as until recently with every drug or vaccine). The countries where ivermectin programs take place are in the right-hand side of this graph, but van Dissel is probably not familiar with this analysis. This could be a reason for further research or regional pilots:

"Some studies with methodological limitations"

He goes on to claim that there are only a few studies. On https://c19ivermectin.com/ There are now 96, of which 58 are peer reviewed. They aim to give a complete overview, but it is difficult to keep track of the studies outside of each other.

On https://ivmmeta.com/ There are now 57 studies.

On both sites, the reliability and quality of the studies are also taken into account.

One double-blind, randomized trial and 'outcome'

I already discussed that study at the time, the "JAMA" article in question I wrote on March 5th. The study flawed and gave a positive picture of the effect of ivermectin. Because the study is incorrectly designed, the only positive results are not significant. It is now three months later. Since then, 30 studies have been published on ivermectin, van Dissel has no idea. When there's consistent data coming from dozens, hundreds of different angles, it must be reluctance not to take action just because they all don't meet the perfect standard of an RCT.

About the JAMA article: 10 days later, it came to light that thecontrol group also used ivermectin. That is for sale in Colombia. No wonder that the effectiveness compared to the placebo group was not spectacular and that the side effects did not differ much from each other.

It is also striking to see how sales increased (table, see the right column) and how often ivermectina is suddenly googled in the region at the start of the trial: the blue line in the graph.

In addition, we have countries where ivermectin programs are achieving spectacular results. Comparisons of comparable cities, regions or countries with and without ivermectin are invariably in favor of ivermectin. Certainly used prophylactically, so as a support for the specific covid defenses, it works wonders. This is observed and reported. The RCTs are lagging behind, but there are few parties that are willing to make the resources available and have the expertise in-house: these are mainly pharmaceutical companies and they are not interested in a cheap patent-free pill.

Ivermectin not included in WHO guidelines, etc.

There is a lot more medication that has not been taken seriously. This while there are tens of thousands of doctors who are open to it and thousands who have united in alliances, letters and other initiatives to be allowed to prescribe ivermectin. In the Netherlands, a fine has therefore been imposed on prescribing this innocent drug, even as a prophylaxis. The fine can be up to €150,000,-. Unless, for example, you want to go on safari in Africa and need a prophylaxis for malaria, then the doctor may prescribe it. Holidays above all. The WHO seems to rely mainly on the advice of pharmaceutical companies.

Furthermore, it is not surprising that the WHO is in line with the RIVM because the RIVM uncritically implements the WHO guidelines.

Reference to FMS/SWAB

The SWAB advice has not been adjusted since the beginning of March. This is impossible in a crisis situation, especially for the only advisory body that can be officially held accountable. Read more about the demonstrable dysfunction of SWAB/FMS in this Twitter thread by Desmond Noordenstein

The manufacturer Merck itself advises against

I'll just borrow an excerpt from a previous article:

Merck has publicly confirmed that it is advising against ivermectin as a Covid drug and has also stopped its own corona vaccine development. A month later, it was announced that the contract negotiations had been completed and that they had signed to co-produce the Janssen vaccine.

As a scientist, how can you use such statements from a pharmaceutical company as substantiation?

Jaap van Dissel spreads disinformation, we can say that. And that in the House of Representatives. We are entering another period of wrong policy if this continues.

Excellent detailed Twitter thread about this sheet, also from Desmond Noordenstein