Here is why when it comes to drugs and vaccines, a randomized, double-blinded study using controls is necessary to have a holistic understanding of the effects.
While the entire news cycle and market is busy falling for today’s news of limited findings, a more comprehensive study that was published today with slightly different outcomes is being ignored.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31022-9/fulltext
Here’s the authors’ summary:
Our trial found that intravenous remdesivir did not significantly improve the time to clinical improvement, mortality, or time to clearance of virus in patients with serious COVID-19 compared with placebo. Compared with a previous study of compassionate use of remdesivir, our study population was less ill and was treated somewhat earlier in their disease course (median 10 days
vs 12 days). Such differences might be expected to favour remdesivir, providing greater effects in our study population, but our results did not meet this expectation.