Right. Figuring out the dose would not take years if it actually worked.
There are always leads, always more possibilities to try, so it's a critical scientific skill to understand how promising they actually are. Nobody will ever publish a peer-reviewed scientific paper saying "this shit is completely fucking hopeless" -- even if it is -- so you have to make that inference from a growing pile of negative evidence "we haven't been able to replicate / determine dosing / find support for" and from the shift of attention to different theories.
While the benefits of ivermectin in a single-drug regime are heavily contested, a lot of folks here seem to be unaware that certain multi-drug regimes have shown promising results. For example see the positive outcomes of this double blind placebo controlled RCT evaluating ivermectin with doxycycline.
Translation: "this shit is completely fucking hopeless."
Multi-drug combination treatments are where studies of ineffective treatments go to die. "X didn't work, but maybe X+Y or X+Z will" is one of those low-quality ever-present followup leads I was talking about in the sibling post. To a researcher, seeing attention shift to combination treatments means that the primary hypothesis failed and people are throwing Hail Marys. It's not impossible that one of them will work, and that's why nobody will actually publish a paper saying "this shit is completely fucking hopeless," but in a situation where this shit really was completely fucking hopeless I would expect to see exactly this: a couple of positive "hail mary" results that squeak over the significance threshold with low N and low effect size.
Ivermectin does not help covid. Period. It is not contested. The people who tell you it is contested are interested in selling it to you. It is snake oil in the context of covid.
It is great for other things. But for covid it is a good indication you are a deluded idiot. (with 95% confidence)
"if you add antibiotics the result might be better"
Your study says that 183 people in Bangladesh saw their median recovery period reduced from 9 to 7 days when on both drugs, and downplays Ivermectin's influence.
"The effective dose of ivermectin required to reach IC50 at a pulmonary level is considerably higher than that used in this study. However, evaluation at higher doses requires detailed safety analysis"
There are always leads, always more possibilities to try, so it's a critical scientific skill to understand how promising they actually are. Nobody will ever publish a peer-reviewed scientific paper saying "this shit is completely fucking hopeless" -- even if it is -- so you have to make that inference from a growing pile of negative evidence "we haven't been able to replicate / determine dosing / find support for" and from the shift of attention to different theories.