I don’t object to doing small clinical studies although I’m not convinced the in vitro studies actually showed anything worth investigating. That is, if I were in charge of allocating any level of scarce funding, time, or testing capacity I would not have selected it based on the very weak in vitro data. Its only worth it if it is “free” and you can’t do something else instead. The problem is that if you have researchers or funders that are willing to study ivermectin but not other treatments then it’s hard to trust that they do the study fairly.
In addition ivermectin in particular already had a bit of a crank following pre COVID. In principle cranks believing in something has no bearing either way on whether it is true but ivermectin has already been unsuccessfully tried as an antiviral.
