I remember digging deep into the numbers when they came out....

I remember digging deep into the numbers when they came out. MSCs alone did not do well. I believe that without steroids, the patients were too far gone by the time they were put on ventilators and received the MSCs. It is possible that the steroids helped mitigate the damage so the patients were still well enough to benefit from the MSCs when they received them.

All IMO with no medical training, mind you.

I really would love to see the new ARDS trial get going. I am scared of the next pandemic, and truly believe without the vaccines and Paxlovid I would have died from covid. (I am a walking basket of risk factors.) I struggled to recover from pneumonia this (northern hemisphere) winter and know I would be vulnerable to the next threat. By the way, they did start me out on steroids but stopped them midway through the antibiotic treatment. Perhaps the same theory I was suggesting with MSCs - mitigate the damage, calm the immune system down enough to let the real treatment start working. On a side note, I was surprised to learn how steroids cause blood sugar to spike...