This statement is a misunderstanding of what happened.

In August 2020 Dr Thomas Borody, a gastroenterologist who runs the Centre for Digestive Diseases in Sydney, came out saying his triple therapy using Ivermectin, Doxycycline and zinc was the cure for COVID-19. This got some airtime on radio stations and Murdoch owned media which did not help its credibility. Some doctors in Melbourne used it with reports of success. Last I heard, Dr Borody was partnering to run some clinical trials in the US but I have heard no further updates since around December 2020 or January 2021.

The people behind the Monash Ivermectin in-vitro study still believe in its use as a broad antiviral. Professor David Jans was interviewed on the ABC and it was not a very friendly interview.

The success story of Australia was in the strict and swift enforcement of isolation, lockdown, testing, contact tracing, and masks. Since around late January the cases dwindled and now the country has had basically zero community transmission for months. Life is mostly normal for the time being, we don't even require masks on public transport anymore. This has greatly reduced the pressure to roll out vaccines and also taken away any interest in pursuing early interventions like Ivermectin.

In some ways this is a good problem to have - no COVID-19 and no deaths is good.

Unfortunately Australia's government and medical system is very much in the pocket of pharma and follows the lead of the US and the WHO. After Trump and his promotion of HCQ, Ivermectin became a political matter in the same way. Government health sites and academic papers covering COVID-19 treatments recommend against Ivermectin citing poor evidence, using a cherry picked list of studies which do not get updated.

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