Ivermectin doesn’t work. It doesn’t prevent Covid-19, nor does it treat it. Unfortunately, the official government response to this misinformation has once again failed to be blunt enough, with a few exceptions. More on that below, but first let’s review what the heck ivermectin is.
Ivermectin is used to treat two relatively rare (in the U.S.) parasites: a nematode called Onchocerca volvulus that causes river blindness, and an intestinal nematode called Strongyloides stercoralis.
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Nematodes are not even remotely similar to viruses, and there’s no reason to think that a treatment for nematode infections will cure a virus–unless, apparently, a popular talk show host claims that it will.
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Now, there actually have been several studies of ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19…. Virtually all of the studies showed that ivermectin simply doesn’t work, but one study out of Egypt (by Elgazzar et al.) seemed to show that it worked quite well.
That was really surprising, but the story collapsed pretty quickly: it turned out the data was falsified, and parts of the paper were plagiarised. About a month ago, the study–which was still an un-reviewed preprint, was retracted by the publisher.
