Hiya
@bsms and everyone here - that's such an interesting discussion on worming etc you had there, and sadly I was away, so excuse me for chiming in now.
Re ivermectin vs vaccine, I'll say that I agree with
@egrogan's argument. Ivermectin isn't side-effect free either (especially for some dogs with Border Collie genes) plus it's not going to be anywhere near as effective as vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 if at all - I think in people there's a bit of a tendency to prefer the devil you know to the devil you don't, even in instances where they are equally risky, or the "old devil" is actually riskier. With the vaccine we don't know the long-term side-effects, but I do think that the potential long-term side-effects of actually getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 are likely to be worse than the potential long-term side-effects from vaccination. We already know about "long COVID" and some people getting organ damage from viral infection - and I doubt that we'll see that from a vaccine (which doesn't cause a viral infection, just creates antibodies).
I personally was worried about shorter-term side effects, like cytokine storms if exposed to virus after immunisation, and that's already been vetted in the drug trials. Coronavirus vaccines always were tricky for that reason and I'm glad they appear to have found ways past this problem. Of course, for long-term and unusual side-effects only the long term will tell us, as with anything (DDT, thalidomide etc), but personally I'll be lining up for the vaccination when it becomes available to me (I'm not in a priority group and we still don't have community transmission in WA) - just like I do flu shots. By the way, I didn't do flu shots for ten years at one point after two years in a row being stabbed into a nerve in the arm and then having weeks where I couldn't lift it without pain. But then Brett started working at a medical practice and raving about how good the nurse there was at doing shots and I've been getting annual flu shots again since then too, without having arm problems afterwards!
Now as worming goes, I've actually taken ivermectin because none of the human over-the-counter wormers treat tapeworm, and the stuff you get on prescription has more listed side-effects than ivermectin (which is in human use in Africa etc). It's not that I had evidence of having tapeworm, but that one day I asked myself what the chances were of having escaped tapeworm infection given that I've had lifelong associations with dogs, not all of whom were necessarily wormed (neighbour's dogs, dogs in the street etc - I love dogs) - and that my dog potentially carries the really problematic hydatid tapeworm eggs on her coat because she rolls in fox scats, and foxes can carry hydatids, and
hydatid disease is seriously nasty and very hard to treat - not like just having normal intestinal tapeworms.
By the way, I did not find any evidence of intestinal tapeworm after taking ivermectin - but I didn't look that closely, so it wasn't impossible - just I didn't have spools and spools of dying tapeworm coming out of me like you hear about in some of the tales that do the rounds, and like you can sometimes see when neglected dogs are wormed etc. That'd be freaky... and now I'm going to stop in case some of you are having dinner.
Oh and I don't dare give ivermectin to my dog, she has BC genes.
And something that shocked me:
Yet I also see it this way: my girls and I have asthma. This is unchanging. Can I get an inhaler without a prescription? Nope. Can I get a prescription without a doctor visit? Nope. The doctor requires a visit every 6 months. That visit costs a lot of money. $300 after insurance. So, for each of us to get our prescription it would take $1800 a year, besides what it costs for the inhaler.
OMG
@Knave, that's so terrible! 😱 I get the odd asthma attack when I have really bad hayfever, so I always have Ventolin (the bronchiodilating reliever puffer, not the "preventer" which is corticosteroids which I really don't want to inhale no matter that it's "recommended" to do it - Ventolin is fine for me for treating the odd attack). Ventolin is over-the-counter and costs me $20 and the puffer usually lasts me 1-2 years. If I wanted a prescription puffer, the gap fee for a GP visit here is currently $48 and the rest ($38) is covered by Medicare - and there's many GPs who don't charge gap fees to patients who aren't well-off, like pensioners or people on social security or just on discretion, because they don't have much spare cash and request a "bulk bill" consultation.
I love our universal Medicare system in Australia and think it's wonderful value for money (2% of taxable income for average income earners, less for the less well-off, more for higher-income earners) and great peace of mind. Also I love that in our society, average people don't have these huge financial issues around going to see doctors or having to go to hospital or getting expensive drug treatment, because many drugs are subsidised by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme so that we pay around $20 per standard prescription (some things much less, like the contraceptive pill is $5 for three months' worth).
When I broke my foot two and a half years ago the total cost to me for the hospital visit and follow-up with the specialist orthopaedist at fortnightly intervals was zero. I chose to buy an i-Walk support crutch, but got ordinary crutches on an as-needed free loan from the local hospital for as long as they were useful to me - I returned them after six weeks. The moon boot was complimentary, they fitted it at the hospital.
A bladder infection is easy to know when you have it, and yet getting the smzs to treat it requires a lot of money. Simple things they make very difficult, and in turn, people like me get worse care.
And that's precisely what doesn't happen when everyone is automatically insured with a not-for-profit scheme through the tax system. No shareholders to skim money off the operation, no private-company executives with their salaries and bonuses, no average people stressing about medical treatment when they need it or getting lesser care, no pensioners limping around because they can't afford joint replacements, noone robbing the bank because their relative has a rare disease that's expensive to treat. The stress of illness and needing surgery etc is already enough without financial stress compounded on top of it. Also, our society saves money because people's problems are seen promptly, and lifestyle conditions get medical management early. So, less medical complications and less time off work than when you have to really consider money as well when seeing a doctor. I've got animals and I know what would come first if it was a choice of my seeing a doctor or my horse not getting his Cushings treatment. Thank goodness I never have to make that choice.
If you guys ever get a chance to get a Medicare system like Australia's I would highly recommend you go for it - it was brought in here in the 1980s and it's an almost universally beloved scheme that's working very well. The only people that don't love it are the right-wingers and the private insurance companies. 😛
