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Comment by nodesocket | Hacker News Reader

I’m a little frustrated that all the doctors seemed to have gotten this wrong. Using steroids was completely missed and ignored as a treatment for severe patients, as I understand dexamethasone was only shown to help people on oxygen or ventilators. It seems everybody was focused on covid being a respiratory disease, when in fact it looks like it’s actually circulatory.

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It was not missed. The recommendations during the first wave were to avoid corticosteroids because they were thought to be nefarious in this case. At least in Europe.

Now we switched to the opposite. Behold, medical statistics the 8th world's marvel!

It takes time to understand diseases, basically. This thing has been circulating for less than a year, and the West has only taken it seriously for a handful of months.

No, it wasn't missed. What happened was that doctors thought that steroids would suppress the immune system, and that is not what they wanted at the time. My wife is asthmatic, and she was warned not to use her daily inhaler because it was a steroid.

Now, the belief is that the cytokine storm is what we want to avoid, and by suppressing the immune system, we can avoid it. So the original conclusion was completely wrong, but that's what happens when you have a new virus. Everyone thought this was a respiratory disease, but now it's looking more like a blood disease.

A tiny nit: it's a blood vessel disease. I upvoted your comment.

What do you mean it was missed?

Corticosteroids were recommended to reduce the body’s overreaction.

What I am wondering about is whatever happened to Ivermectin, that was so promising back in April. MERCK makes Stromectol since the 70s. Clears the entire infection in 48 hours!

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/could-an-antiparas...

European experts actively recommended not to give corticosteroids at the start of the pandemic and changed course late in the first wave.

We had direct communication with those experts in my hospital and local guidelines didn't recommend steroids.

Would be interesting to know what they based that on.

*In cell cultures.

It's in at least one trial. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04374279 Estimated completion date is this month, so keep an eye out.

When and bow will we know the results of this study?

If nothing else you'll hear news about it if the study looks promising

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