Nope. Not now, not then, and not in the absence of parasites.

The early pandemic studies you "recall" were real studies, meta studies that looked at the use of Ivermectin in "the Global South" in countries with high incidence of worms | parasites | etc.

These studies showed a distinct improvement in the face of COVID for treated groups .. eg: those untreated that had parasites and caught COVID Vs. those treated and caught COVID but now had immune responses uncomprimised by parasites.

more recent studies, in G20 type countries,

    A Cochrane meta-analysis of 11 eligible trials examining the efficacy of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 published through April 2022 concluded that ivermectin has no beneficial effect for people with COVID-19.1

    Since May 2022, an additional 3 large randomized clinical trials including several thousand participants have been published, each reaching a similar conclusion.

    Today JAMA publishes a new trial of ivermectin treatment for mild to moderate COVID-19 that addresses the possibility that the existing literature may have missed the efficacy of ivermectin because the previously tested dose (approximately 400 μg/kg daily for 3 days) was insufficient.

    At a higher treatment dose (600 μg/kg daily) and longer treatment duration (6 days), Naggie and colleagues again conclude that ivermectin is not beneficial for the treatment of COVID-19.

and,

New study shows ivermectin lacks meaningful benefits in COVID-19 treatment (March, 2024)

    New research led by the University of Oxford has concluded that the antiparasitic drug ivermectin does not provide clinically meaningful benefits for treating COVID-19 in a largely vaccinated population.

Damn- no effect in any trial in the absence of worms.

> Bit of a tautology there, we'd expect the people who got things right to know what they were talking about in hindsight

whereas I'm talking about qualified epidemiologists who were correct then (2020) and still correct today .. the likes of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Stanley (who I worked with in the 1980s) et al.