First, the effects of Ivermectin on viral load were not significant: "The ivermectin group had non-statistically significant lower viral loads at day 4 (p = 0·24 for gene E; p = 0·18 for gene N) and day 7 (p = 0·16 for gene E; p = 0·18 for gene N) post treatment as well as lower IgG titers at day 21 post treatment (p = 0·24)."
Second, Ivermectin did show earlier recovery: "Patients in the ivermectin group recovered earlier from hyposmia/anosmia (76 vs 158 patient-days; p < 0.001)."
From the Washington Post article, a YouTube exec is quoted as saying “We’ll remove claims that vaccines are dangerous or cause a lot of health effects, that vaccines cause autism, cancer, infertility or contain microchips.” This leads me to believe the kind of medical misinformation YouTube is targeting is much more general.
Also, the medical consensus -- via things like Cochrane Review [0] -- is that there isn't enough data on Ivermectin. It's the statistical uncertainty around it that gives the medical establishment pause, and currently makes recommendations of using it misinformation. Should the scientific community discover something different, the definition of misinformation will change.
[0] https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
Misinformation. Anti-vaxx groups are sighting India because a tiny state(Goa) with a population of 1.59 Million included Ivermecitin in their home isolation medicine kit along with zinc, doxycycline, homeopathy etc. and also announced that adults in the state would be given Ivermecitin.
A fraction of their population actually received that kit, Of which negligible population actually consumed those if any. Ivermecitin, Zinc, doxycycline were removed from that kit in Goa after federal medical authority asked it to do so and it was even removed from the treatment of COVID-19 patients in the hospitals throughout India.
So, No 'hundreds of millions of people in India' never took Ivermecitin and is no way related to the drop in cases of COVID in India. But Anti-vaxx groups are using this misinformation as an ammunition at unexpected places to further their agenda[1].
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210924045611/https://github.co...
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/no-fresh-covid-cas...
https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/lucknow-news/yogi-adit...
What does the attached URLs has to do with your claim of "hundreds of millions of people in India who have been taking Ivermectin for significant amounts of time." and implying somehow that Ivermectin reduced the COVID case load in India which coincidentally is exactly what Anti-vaxx are peddling?
States which were using non-evidence based medication incl. Ivermecitin have dropped them after Directorate general of health services (DGHS) has issued guidelines to stop using them[1] and recently Indian Council of Medical Research have also dropped them from the list[2].
There's no reason to put India and Ivermecitin again in the same sentence unless it's to promote misinformation.
[1] https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-outbreak/story/revised...
[2] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/icmr-drops-ivermec...
And here is a study which looks at viral load since days of symptom onset, showing that at the 72 hour mark there is still plenty of Covid-19 in the body: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0869-5
I am not a medical expert, so there may be things to criticize about these studies. All I meant to point out is that people are looking into / have looked at the questions you raise. Doctors and nurses are pretty burnt out; I for one think that they'd be looking for prophylactic treatments.