Ivermectin is for horses.
Dude, I recognize you might be just being ironical and a gadfly, and your avatar for doing that is perfectly fitting!
...but
just in case you're not clownin' around: Ivermectin
in the right formulation and
the right doses is one of the most commonly-used human meds on the planet. Obviously if it's coupled with dewormer and/or administered at a thousand times the safe dosage, it'd be harmful or fatal. (But then, the same is true of
water.)
Now, the mere fact that Ivermectin is an unusually safe and commonplace human medication doesn't mean it does anything to help with COVID. There are (or,
were, last time I checked the literature) two proposed mechanisms-of-action for helping with COVID: One in relation to the ACE2 receptor and another in relation to intracellular replication. Maybe that's been updated; I don't know. And, the population studies go both ways. Yet,
actual clinicians often swear by it. "Data isn't the plural of anecdote," I know. Still, when whole countries begin to pile up the anecdotes, sometimes y'wonder if that doesn't constitute a better sample set than a well-designed study of 25 college students.
I, not being a clinician, have no clue who's right...nor, by the way, do I think it's reasonable to conclude that anyone else does! It's just too soon. (But that's typical fog-of-war stuff. In twenty years, maybe, we'll know. I try to be
epistemically humble.) On the other hand, the
relative harmlessness of it (properly formulated, in correct doses) means that
even if it does nothing to help, the downside of thinking that it
would help is basically nil.
So basically the smart approach to such things, I think, is: Know your own epistemic limits; do the reading; judge as best you can whether the available information is helpful; evaluate the cost/benefit of each course of action; and then man-up and make a judgment call. (Which is very nearly what all grownups have to do for
every decision, all day, every day.
)
