Was ivermectin considered mere "horse paste" in 2017?

I have a lot of tabs open on various topics, and I plan to do a bunch of posts to comment on them all. But this first one is on just one story: ivermectin.

The disinformation campaign against ivermectin is in high gear. From the government (FDA, CDC) to seemingly independent Twitter users, scorn oozes out of every pixel for idiots who dose themselves with veterinary medicine in the insane hope that they will ward off the deadly Covid virus, when all they have to do is get a jab and their lives will be unicorns and rainbows.

That makes this 2017 article published on nature.com in the Journal of Antibiotics so interesting, because it has nothing but glowing prose and vast footnotes on the promises of that cheap and effective remedy for people: Ivermectin: enigmatic multifaceted ‘wonder’ drug continues to surprise and exceed expectations.

Over the past decade, the global scientific community have begun to recognize the unmatched value of an extraordinary drug, ivermectin, that originates from a single microbe unearthed from soil in Japan. Work on ivermectin has seen its discoverer, Satoshi Ōmura, of Tokyo’s prestigious Kitasato Institute, receive the 2014 Gairdner Global Health Award and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with a collaborating partner in the discovery and development of the drug, William Campbell of Merck & Co. Incorporated. Today, ivermectin is continuing to surprise and excite scientists, offering more and more promise to help improve global public health by treating a diverse range of diseases, with its unexpected potential as an antibacterial, antiviral and anti-cancer agent being particularly extraordinary.

There are so many benefits to this drug that you have to scroll down the article pretty far to find the overwhelmingly positive report of its anti-viral properties:  

Antiviral (e.g. HIV, dengue, encephalitis)

Recent research has confounded the belief, held for most of the past 40 years, that ivermectin was devoid of any antiviral characteristics. Ivermectin has been found to potently inhibit replication of the yellow fever virus, with EC50 values in the sub-nanomolar range. It also inhibits replication in several other flaviviruses, including dengue, Japanese encephalitis and tick-borne encephalitis, probably by targeting non-structural 3 helicase activity.97 Ivermectin inhibits dengue viruses and interrupts virus replication, bestowing protection against infection with all distinct virus serotypes, and has unexplored potential as a dengue antiviral.98

Ivermectin has also been demonstrated to be a potent broad-spectrum specific inhibitor of importin α/β-mediated nuclear transport and demonstrates antiviral activity against several RNA viruses by blocking the nuclear trafficking of viral proteins. It has been shown to have potent antiviral action against HIV-1 and dengue viruses, both of which are dependent on the importin protein superfamily for several key cellular processes. Ivermectin may be of import in disrupting HIV-1 integrase in HIV-1 as well as NS-5 (non-structural protein 5) polymerase in dengue viruses.99, 100

Maybe, just maybe, people have done their own research (with the help of the brave Drs. Kory and Marik and all the others who put treating patients ahead of toeing the government line), and realize that they won't get ivermectin unless they get it themselves. They get that they can read the insert of even the version they buy at the Tractor Supply Company -- unlike the insert of the vaccine, which is blank. So they can see for themselves what the inactive ingredients are and make their own decision -- unlike with the vaccines. And knowing that over a billion human beings have taken ivermectin and that it's safer than tylenol makes this decision a no-brainer. 

Looks like Covid changed a lot of things for us. One thing it seems to have changed is the view of this remedy -- which went from wonder-drug, cheap and effective for humans, to poisonous conspiracy potion. I wonder why?