1) Thank you for noticing. I do spend time reading things so I can understand as much as I can about various issues.
3) It's not approved for use with viruses. It's for larva worms that live in your eyes that were planted by black flies. Not for viruses. Viruses are not baby black flies. Baby black flies are not viruses. There is no reliable data that says it works for viruses.
2) That's a complicated question that I don't really have an answer for. I don't think anyone gets this. Because it's dumb AF. Srsly, this is stupid. Just like the hydroxychloroquine and bleach thing, it's dumb.
BUT I'm gonna take a stab at it since you asked.
I believe the ivermectin, just like the hydroxychloroquine and the bleach, comes from the anti-science streak that runs through American conservatism. The belief that "mah common sense is better than yer book learning"
which, okay, someone who has 10 years of experience in selling pillows will know more about selling pillows than someone with 1 year of experience selling pillows and a 4-year degree.
But that pillow salesman and their 10 years doesn't know more about viruses than the 10 years of schooling plus the years of experience a virologist. They just don't.
That's like 30% of it. You want your "common sense" to be better than "book learning."
20% of it is conservatives have trouble imagining things being other than they are right now. Global warming has to be false because it gets cold at my house in the winter. Eating red meat can't be bad for you, I like how it tastes. Taxes are bad because I don't want to pay them, and we've always had these huge highways and infrastructure, so why do we need to keep paying for them?
The remaining 50% of it is a desperate desire to "own the libs." You need to prove that you're right, and they're wrong. Y'all grasp at anything that will make you right. And it's a knee-jerk reaction too. You'll go along with anyone who says "you're right, you don't need to go to school and study to understand this complex problem."
So, when the salesman shows up, and he offers to sell you some horse paste to fight that covid, you buy it. You buy it because the lib science types say "don't do that. it could be bad". You buy it because, just this one time, you want to be right.