How do you respond to criticism that many of the studies showing ivermectin’s effectiveness were small, poorly designed and executed, or with high risks of bias?

As all clinical trials suffer from risks of bias in their design and conduct, as assessed by the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2.0 tool, performing meta-analyses can more accurately detect the true effects despite individual trial biases.

One real-time meta-analysis of dozens of studies of ivermectin shows statistically significant improvements for mortality, ventilation, ICU admission, hospitalization, disease progression, recovery, cases, and viral clearance. A pooled analysis shows a 63% improvement for early treatment, 39% improvement for late treatment and 83% improvement for prophylaxis. In order to avoid a statistically significant result, the researchers say they need to exclude more than half of the studies.