Actually, the retired pathologist at Peak Prosperity made an interesting point about the steroid paper: He said steroid use has been in the MATH+ protocol from East Virginia Medical School for months and they have been using it for a long time in France and Spain, and that the reported mortality of 41% for ventilated patients without the drug was WAY worse than current rates. Either this is very old data, or they are doing something wrong in their treatments.
More likely, this simply represents the sluggish response of the random drug trial system to a fast moving pandemic. Yes, random assigned double-blind trials are the best evidence in science today. But when some hospital's mortality rate drops from 41% down to 10%, maybe your hospital should try whatever they are doing. The random blind study can confirm that was the right move later.
He also reported on a small trial of Pepcid (or the generic). N was just around 100, so it's hard to draw any conclusion, but out of all the people who took it almost everybody said they recovered quickly and completely. It's at the "somebody should do a real random study with a lot of people" stage now. But once again, it's something that's not going to harm anyone or cost a lot, so why not try it.
