Astral Codex Ten

fluvoxamine

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fluvoxamine

Article

fluvoxamine is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between November 23, 2021 and May 21, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “the trials that found fluvoxamine worked were funded by a random billionaire”; “Regarding fluvoxamine: interesting that your assessment is that it “works""; “one chemical in this class is fluvoxamine”. It most often appears alongside COVID, ivermectin, ivermectin.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: November 23, 2021
  • Last seen: May 21, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On Ivermectin
November 23, 2021 · Original source
This is false and I don't know where they're getting it from. Corticosteroids, fluvoxamine, and Paxlovid seem provisionally great. I haven't looked into the monoclonal antibodies but if western health authorities say they're fine I have no reason to doubt that. I even think there are plausible arguments (though no proof) for a few less-used options like zinc.
Obviously I urge my readers to get good treatments and not bad treatments. In fact, you even have my permission to pester your doctor about giving you a fluvoxamine prescription if you're in the appropriate stage of COVID and they don't think of it themselves. If they tell you it might have dangerous side effects, tell them that I have more experience with it than they do, and no it doesn't (unless you are bipolar or in some kind of special bizarre high-risk category).
I do think it’s occasionally possible to have genuine bottom-up medical research: ketamine seems to have worked this way. Even the trials that found fluvoxamine worked were funded by a random billionaire, which is sort of bottom-up in the sense of not being some established clique of experts with a vested outcome in the result. But I don’t think we know how to do this consistently yet, even though it would be cool if we could.
Pascalian Medicine
November 24, 2021 · Original source
In fact, Insanity Wolf has a strong argument here: one chemical in this class is fluvoxamine. Six months ago, it was just like all these others: something with a clever story of why it might work and a few weak preliminary studies, but only the sort that never pan out in real life. Then a really big, excellent randomized trial seemed to find it worked, and the current scientific consensus agrees this is probably true. So if you’d done the Insanity Wolf thing six months ago and taken twenty untested compounds, at least one of them would have worked and cut your COVID mortality by 30% (our current guess at fluvoxamine’s effect size).
The FDA Has Punted Decisions About Luvox Prescription To The Deepest Recesses Of The Human Soul
December 22, 2021 · Original source
Here’s my pitch for fluvoxamine (Luvox) for COVID.
But a different drug, the SSRI antidepressant fluvoxamine, actually did really well! It decreased COVID hospitalizations by about 30% - not the perfect cure rate the rumors attributed to ivermectin, but a substantial decrease. Given the size and professionalism of this study, and another smaller one that also got positive results, I and many others take Luvox pretty seriously. At this point I’d give it 60-40 it works.
What are the risks? Like every medication, including Tylenol, aspirin, etc, Luvox has some common minor side effects and some rare major ones. But let’s step back a second. Fluvoxamine is a bog-standard SSRI. Its side effects are generic SSRI side effects. We give SSRIs to 30 million people a year, or about 10% of all Americans. As a psychiatrist, I’m not supposed to say flippant things like “we give SSRIs out like candy”. We do careful risk-benefit analysis and when appropriate we screen patients for various risk factors. But after we do all that stuff, we give them to 10% of Americans, compared to 12% of Americans who got candy last Halloween. So you can draw your own conclusion about how severe we think the risks are.
Inline links: 12% of Americans
The Other COVID Reckoning
May 21, 2025 · Original source
Five years later, we can’t stop talking about COVID. Remember lockdowns? The conflicting guidelines about masks - don’t wear them! Wear them! Maybe wear them! School closures, remote learning, learning loss, something about teachers’ unions. That one Vox article on how worrying about COVID was anti-Chinese racism. The time Trump sort of half-suggested injecting disinfectants. Hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoxamine, Paxlovid. Those jerks who tried to pressure you into getting vaccines, or those other jerks who wouldn’t get vaccines even though it put everyone else at risk. Anthony Fauci, Pierre Kory, Great Barrington, Tomas Pueyo, Alina Chan. Five years later, you can open up any news site and find continuing debate about all of these things.