seller posts to my country or not?

[blkwolf02]

I am trying to get something that me and my mother really need. The item is located in the United States and the seller includes a list of countries that he/she posts to (including Australia). Yet eBay does not let me pay for the item as it states "To pay using PayPal, direct debit or credit card, you must live in the same country as the seller." I tried sending it to my US postbox that forwards all US mail to my Australian address, but my payment gets rejected. Did anyone have this issue?

[countessalmirena]

@blkwolf02,

I won't comment at length on your apparently wanting to take ivermectin without being advised to do so by your doctor or other medically registered health professional. (That means I will try not to make this a scroller of a post.)

In terms of your not being able to purchase this on eBay from the seller, eBay explicitly forbids the sale of prescription drugs. In eBay's Prescription and over-the-counter drugs policy, it is stated:

❝What is the policy?

• Prescription drugs or drugs containing prescription strength medication cannot be listed
• Over-the-counter medication containing non-prescription strength drugs must:
  • Clearly state the concentration of the prescription drug in the description
  • Not be expired prior to reaching the buyer, and clearly state the expiration in the description
• Herbal, holistic, or drug-like remedies can't imply any non-government-approved treatments, or be compared to any prescription drug
• It is not allowed to claim any health benefits from legal substances that the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) hasn't approved
• Listings should include the AUST R or AUST L number from the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG)
• Veterinary medicines classified as OTC by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) may be sold; however, any medication product listed below is not allowed:
  • Does not have an authorisation for sale in Australia
  • Requires a prescription defined by APVMA
  • Any injectable substances, including vitamins, and regardless of whether they're available over the counter
  • Repackaged over-the-counter medications, including flea and tick medications
  • Any Frontline flea control products
  • Sentinel, Revolution, Heartgard, and Interceptor heartworm medicines❞

Under a doctor's care, ivermectin is used to to treat some truly ghastly internal nematode infections, in particular Onchocerciasis and Lymphatic filariasis. People do not, however, take it willy-nilly in some Bolsinaro fashion. Currently it shows promising signs in vitro. (In vitro - L, within the glass - means it's not within a living organism; it is a test performed in a petri dish or test tube, etc.) We're a long way from having an effective treatment or vaccine for COVID-19. The whole purpose of drug trials is to ensure that the drug in question works against the targeted disease, at what lowest effective dosage, without such harmful side effects in vivo as would render the cure worse than the disease, and so on.

To ignore these things (and many more) without having even the most basic specialised medical education and qualification, let alone having the years of specialised experience and training on the job, and the even more specific expertise in developing and being involved with drug trials, is beyond foolish. I have to be strong-worded here. You cannot overestimate how much harm you could be doing. Please... do not do a Bolsonaro.

I think I have to rescind my "no scroller" comment at the top of my post, but I will include it in this spoiler so that you can ignore it if you don't want to read it.

Spoiler

If you think I am overstating things, being elitist or something of the sort, I want you to read just this one sentence which described the preparation of the cell culture in the in vitro tests.

Vero/hSLAM cells were maintained in Earle's Minimum Essential Medium (EMEM) containing 7% Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) (Bovogen Biologicals, Keilor East, AUS) 2 mM L-Glutamine, 1 mM Sodium pyruvate, 1500 mg/L sodium bicarbonate, 15 mM HEPES and 0.4 mg/ml geneticin at 37 °C, 5% CO2.

Then read just this one sentence about how the cultures were infected for the purpose of the test.

Cells were seeded into 12-well tissue culture plates 24 h prior to infection with SARS-CoV-2 (Australia/VIC01/2020 isolate) at an MOI of 0.1 in infection media (as per maintenance media but containing only 2% FBS) for 2 h.

Then read just this one paragraph about how ivermectin was introduced into the infected culture for the purpose of the test.

Media containing inoculum was removed and replaced with 1 mL fresh media (2% FBS) containing Ivermectin at the indicated concentrations or DMSO alone and incubated as indicated for 0–3 days. At the appropriate timepoint, cell supernatant was collected and spun for 10 min at 6,000 g to remove debris and the supernatant transferred to fresh collection tubes. The cell monolayers were collected by scraping and resuspension into 1 mL fresh media (2% FBS). Toxicity controls were set up in parallel in every experiment on uninfected cells.

Does the above make perfect sense to you, to the extent that you feel confident of replicating the test yourself?

It's true that ivermectin's broad spectrum antiviral activity relates to its ability to target the host importin (IMP) α/β1 nuclear transport proteins responsible for nuclear entry of cargoes such as integrase and NS5, can dissociate the preformed IMPα/β1 heterodimer, as well as prevent its formation, through binding to the IMPα armadillo (ARM) repeat domain to impact IMPα thermal stability and α-helicity, and that ivermectin inhibits NS5-IMPα interaction in a cell context using quantitative bimolecular fluorescence complementation. (Yang et al)

Yang, S., Atkinson, S., Wang, C., Lee, A., Bogoyevitch, M., Borg, N. and Jans, D., 2020. The broad spectrum antiviral ivermectin targets the host nuclear transport importin α/β1 heterodimer. Antiviral Research, 177, p.104760.

That is nowhere near a cooee of having a usable, effective, proven treatment for COVID-19.

It warrants further research and study. May effective vaccines and treatments eventuate in the not-too-distant future; my expectation is that there will be several different drugs used in patient-tailored approaches to this dangerous and infectious disease.

I hope you and your mother are well and safe.