There's no grand conspiracy here. Ivermectin hype began with a single in vitro (in glass, i.e. in a petri dish in a lab) study, where infected cells were treated using Ivermectin and subsequent tests showed a significant drop in viral RNA levels.
Picking up on the lead, a study compared the outcomes of patients who had had COVID and took Ivermectin to those who did not take Ivermectin, retrospectively (i.e. the patients took their prescriptions and nothing extra). There saw no improvement.
Ivermectin has recently shown efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 in-vitro. We retrospectively reviewed severe COVID-19 patients receiving standard doses of ivermectin and we compared clinical and microbiological outcomes with a similar group of patients not receiving ivermectin. No differences were found between groups. We recommend the evaluation of high-doses of ivermectin in randomized trials against SARS-CoV-2.
