You would have a point if that was all there was to this....but instead there was a coordinated media attack against what is a relatively harmless (if nothing else) medication with a long term safety record, as well as an attack on any medical professional that would dare considering prescribing it.
Like you said, there is some evidence of it working, however not fully conclusive yet, but given its safety profile, it does not seem heinous as a choice for some to prescribe.
Instead it's dragged through the mud as a "horse dewormer", with the insinuation that it's not even a human medicine, and portrayed as filling up emergency rooms in widely distributed but fabricated news articles.
It was also talked down by Merck, the pharma company that used to have an exclusive patent, but now must share it as a generic medication. Incidentally Merck released a new, patented oral therapy that ivermectin would directly complete against, which nets them an enormous government contract.
The same can be said of Pfizer, and their new oral therapy.
The problem is most people can't hold all of these disparate ideas in their head and once and revert to tribalism.
Ivermectin may or may not work, but the coordinated media propaganda attack against it was likely profit driven.
Also, ivermectin was portrayed as somehow undermining the vaccine. This is absurd as it would simply be another tool that can be used alongside vaccines, such as to treat people after breakthrough cases.
Notice that when the patented oral therapies came out, there was no such concern that they would undermine vaccines in the same way as ivermectin was portrayed.
Money matters, look into it.
Are there market and political ideological forces tilting the narrative and potentially affecting the course of the research? There is, and there
always have been.
There are financial and political interests everywhere. That does not discredit the procedure of scientific practice in general, nor the work of the doctors and scientists doing the medical trial testing. Far less does it justify extrapolating its use before the completion of trials and research.
You are oversimplifying the safety profile of the drug. Invermectin has been used in controlled contexts for onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis, and Muñoz's (2021) study was over a sample of 54
healthy adults who showed no significant symptoms.
That is
not the same as proving that the drug is safe for patients who might not be healthy adults, or who have pre-existing conditions of some sort. Clinical trials have to be carried relative to the candidate patient pool, in consideration of collateral conditions. The obvious ones are pregnancy, or pre-existing medical risk factors like diabetes or obesity which make it extremely important to do test controls.
In the case of COVID and invermectin, there have been several studies that suggest safety factors are high but with mixed results in treatment: Krolewiecki (2021) shows a correlation between mean plasma levels and viral load concentrations;
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00239-X/fulltext
Bounfate and Chesini (2021) show no significant risk for high-dosage but also no significant reduction in viral loads.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3918289
Vallejos (2021) indicates that results do not mitigate the risk of hospitalization:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34215210/
FDA studies and many independent organizations have shown serious medical complications with patients with pre.existing conditions with hospitalizations. There seems to be a correlation with the use of blood thinners and adverse effects, which would be critical to map since many older people take medicines for heart disease, etc.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2114907
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/...ectin&cntry=&state=&city=&dist=&Search=Search
Heidary (2020) already established the necessity for extensive clinical trials.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-020-0336-z
The result of rigorous studies will be a much clearer sense of just when, how, and who the drug might help and be prescribed to safely.
I'm not saying there weren't and aren't political and market distortions. I'm saying Joe Rogan is an irresponsible sack of shit extrapolating from individual experience and partial information. You can't do that.
