re: NY Judge Orders Hospital To Use Ivermectin, Woman Recovers

The main issue is liability. If a patient has a bad outcome from covid and you adhered to the standard of care, then it’s just an unfortunate outcome. If a patient is given ivermectin and has a bad outcome, then a physician could be liable and even be sued for malpractice even if the drug can’t definitely be proven to have caused the bad outcome. It’s just part of the screwy logic in medical tort.

Now all that being said, there’s no strong evidence ivermectin helps. The smaller studies have conflicting outcomes and the few larger studies generally showed no benefit or harm. The case in the OP is an absurd anecdote where the main issue isn’t even the use of the drug at all but a physicians withdrawal of treatment. And in that case, it’s merely an example of someone getting better from a low mortality disease while taking a medication. It’s impossible to determine the medication is what did it, especially with a sample size of 1.

Overall ivermectin is a pretty safe drug. It’s probably not going to hurt any given patient, though I have nothing to point to that constitutes good evidence it works. But our system has produced, almost by necessity, a completely risk averse healthcare industry.