[ncmncm]

People suggesting ivermectin ought to be interesting were not wrong. It could plausibly have had some effect, based on the biochemistry.

It just turned out not to work. I don't know of any evidence that trying it, when we had literally nothing else, did anybody any harm. All the harm came from people using it instead of, later, doing the things that did turn out to actually work. Probably a few people even cleared up a chronic worm infection they didn't know about.

What I did not see, and expected to see, was a study of relative infection rates in people already on ivermectin for an on-label use vs. people who were not. These came out pretty early vis a vis chloroquines, showing that people who had been taking that got COVID-19 just like anybody else. Maybe periodic ivermectin doses wasn't a thing...

[PeterisP]

Noone was going after researchers running proper studies with informed consent on e.g. ivermectin impact on Covid. However, doctors randomly prescribing stuff because they believe in it is quite different from a medical study - we have good historical reasons why we regulate medical experiments on humans, why we don't allow the medical and pharmaceutical industry to "just try it" unless certain conditions are met.