Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were met with cautious optimism by the research community after the first preliminary hits in screening experiments for drug repurposing, exactly as you’re advocating [0]. The tides turned when things didn’t pan out in subsequent clinical studies. Actually, for ivermectin the tide started turning after people realized what an unrealistically massive dose was needed in the first in vitro study [0 again]

There were a few cases of fraud (most notably one of the biggest ivermectin studies last summer) but it’s not necessary to resort to allegations of ubiquitous fraud to conclude that the research doesn’t really support use of these drugs as effective Covid therapeutics

0: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/what-s-ivermectin

Some studies, especially in the southern hemisphere, were quite sold on ivermectin, but there is a lot of suspicion that the good results are actually due to worms increasing the risk of Covid death.

So if you're from the US and your aunt from Florida/Louisiana tells you Ivermectin work, you can honestly respond: Yes.

Is there any reason why worms would increase the severe morbidity/death rate?

The only thing I can think off is that (some) parasites tend to have a suppressive impact on the immune system but it also seem that could also prevent the cytokine storm that initially was reported as a major cause of severe illness and death.

Sorry to say, but the vaccine is a better option to prevent covid, even considering this study. You can take ivermectin if you use the normal dosage, it is not harmful and may be helpful. But a lot of people is promoting ivermectin instead of the vaccine or using a higher dosage and this is causing a lot of preventable deaths.

Relevant: https://nypost.com/2022/01/11/united-airlines-says-3000-empl...