A medicine can have antiviral properties even if it’s main uses are usually for other reasons. In fact many therapeutic discoveries for medicines have been realized later in their uses. Ivermectin most assuredly has antiviral properties.
Ivermectin: a systematic review from antiviral effects to COVID-19 complementary regimen - PubMed
In fact, there are over 120 research articles we can go through just with its antiviral effects in Covid over just the past two years.
Exactly. And the reverse. Amantadine comes to mind - initially developed as an antiviral, ended up used as a medication for tremor and dyskinesia in Parkinson's disease. Doesn't do a great job in either. But then, someone noticed a side effect was insomnia so now it's used pretty broadly for fatigue / sleepiness in people with various conditions like multiple sclerosis or head trauma... Science.
For most people it is difficult to realize just how random the discovery of drugs and their effects really is.
Neurontin was supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread for seizures, but it's pretty lame in that original indication. But, of course, it's extremely useful now for nerve pain.
Viagra was supposed to be a life saving medication for high blood pressure and chest pain, but it didn't work that well and had a pesky side effect. That pesky side effect became it's current main indication.
Coming back to seizures, this one probably tops the bill. The search for seizure medications was stalling and it was quite hard to find an effective compound, so when a French researcher had great results with a bunch of different compounds he was testing he couldn't believe it. And he shouldn't have. Turned out the "inert" solvent used to dilute all those compounds was the actual effective medication - valproic acid / Depakote.
As matter of fact, one of the official, approved medications for COVID, is a drug for rheumatoid arthritis. Of course it makes sense, it reduces inflammation etc. but the simplifying rhetoric "how could something for joint disease help in COVID?" would sound the same.
Anyway, the next misconception, that might be even more dangerous is the proposition that off-label prescribing is somehow a bad thing.
Prescribing medications "off label", that is without an official FDA-approved indication, is a common, day-to-day, practice. It's not something odd or even unusual. It is a banal occurrence. In some specialties, off label is the only kind of prescribing, because for some less frequent conditions, there ar no approved medications. Doctors are doctors because of their knowledge, skill, experience and judgement. They are supposed to have a degree of autonomy in practice. Patients are also unique. They have a universal right to choose their physician. Before COVID, no one questioned any of this. In fact, they were held as fundamental values of the profession and of the doctor-patient relationship. But just like in many other ways, COVID is changing the very concepts on which our society is established. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that promoting the idea that off-label prescribing is a malignant practice is one of these ways.
It will be a sad day indeed if this novel ideology takes hold and doctors are no longer allowed to practice outside the dictates of an official agency. Doctor choice will become moot, and all people will be the patient of a small group of politically powerful doctors, while the actual providers will be simple clerks.