Bret Weinstein on health: what the evidence says · JRE #1671
SUBJECT: HEALTH
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
these were frontline workers who were so thoroughly exposed to COVID that 57% of the people in the 400-person control group who didn't take ivermectin did get COVID
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Weinstein described a study of frontline workers in which 57% of a 400-person unmedicated control group contracted COVID, implying ivermectin's prophylactic effect approached 100%. No peer-reviewed or preprint study matching those specific figures (400 controls, 57% infection rate) was found. The Argentine trial most commonly cited for ivermectin pre-exposure prophylaxis in health workers (Chahla et al., 2021) had a control group of only 117 people, of whom 15 (about 13%) tested positive for COVID-19, and it tested ivermectin combined with a nasal spray (iota-carrageenan), not ivermectin alone. A larger Indian case-control study (186 matched pairs) found a 73% relative reduction in infection with two-dose ivermectin, still well short of near-100% efficacy, and as an unblinded observational study it is vulnerable to confounding by health-conscious behavior among ivermectin users. The largest, most rigorous evidence, the placebo-controlled ACTIV-6 randomized trial (JAMA, 2022, n=1591), found no clinically meaningful benefit of ivermectin against COVID-19. Overall, the specific numbers Weinstein cited do not match any identifiable published study, and the broader body of controlled evidence does not support a near-100% prophylactic effect for ivermectin.