I think the point of the article is that if some government DID spend the money to properly research this, it would take time, as in MANY years. I remember many decades ago that Vitamin E was thought to be a great supplement to reduce coronary heart disease etc. It was then studied by following 10,000 people for 4.5 years [1] and it was determined that the hint of benefit seen in observational studies turned out to be false hope. So with much time and money, it could be found that there is benefit in ivermectin. But the current state is that the FDA [2] and CDC [2] recommend AGAINST ivermectin use for treatment or prevention of SARS-COV2 infection / Covid-19.

Like the article says: science is slow, pandemics are fast.

[1] https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminE-HealthProfessiona... [2] https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul... [3] https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/pdf/CDC_HAN_449.pdf