We don’t know whether ivermectin is helping people with COVID, but one of the largest health-insurance companies, UnitedHealthcare, and researchers at the medical schools of UCLA, Northwestern, and the University of Minnesota believe that the data that are now available look promising. They are conducting a nationwide outpatient study, COVID-Out, to determine whether ivermectin and two other common drugs could help keep people out of hospitals and intensive-care units.

It’s fine to be skeptical of ivermectin’s efficacy against COVID. But it does a disservice to imply that it’s unsafe or meant only for animals. Maybe the reporters scoring cheap shots against Joe Rogan and others should explore whether the criticism of any non-vaccine treatment might be part of a disinformation campaign by people who want everyone to stay in one approved lane on COVID treatments. Pharmaceutical companies could be among the suspects.

I’m reminded of the famous warning issued by Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman in the 1960s: “There is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science.”