One thing to know is that there is much incentive in the pharmaceutical industry to repurpose drugs. There are a number of reasons, with the main one being that a repurposed drug does not need to go through the same sort of FDA approval process, which makes it much cheaper to bring to market for a new application. I can guarantee you that there are studies throwing chemical libraries with known drugs looking for compounds that block Ace2 binding to spike. Something that actually can get into the airway side of the aveolar sacs. The work is already there showing that, at very high concentration, ivermectin can block Ace2-spike. In fact, because of its structure, it can block many protein-protein interactions because of its structure, sort of non-specifically. But delivering ivermectin to the aveolii at the necessary concentration to block that interaction in people is not a trivial matter-getting a big chemical structure drug across that membrane is just tough. You need a very high circulating concentration for that to even be possible. And at those concentrations it gets into the CNS and is a rather potent neurotoxin. If CoV-2 were an enteric virus it might be a different story. Omicron has acquired changes allowing it to infect the upper respiratory tract, so a nasal spray form of ivermectin might be something to try. Don't know if its been looked at it.
The public health push was always going to be directed towards something that could actually confer immunity. A drug approach does not make that possible. But taking ivermectin at proper dosage certainly will not hurt you, and it could conceivably have some benefit on the post infection side. The anti-inflammatory properties, to my understanding, have been mostly looked at with respect to reducing the mortality of full blown COVID19
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