Wow, almost 1% of the US population already had a prescription for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budesonide#Brand_names last year.

This appears to be quite a breakthrough if it can cut hospitalization by 90%.

Time to do a few slightly larger scale studies, and then some even larger ones. We’ll have the results in 6 months already!

My guess? 14 studies with positive results like this, and one that shows no effect. So the WHO will put out a statement that no, scientific meta studies show this clearly doesn’t work and should never be used.

Throughout the pandemic we have seen many small studies that have had small hints of efficacy which later shows up as a null result in larger studies. Mostly this can be attributed to various sources of statical noise. In this case though, a 90% reduction is unlikely to be a null result, even though it is likely to be an overestimate. The signal is much higher than the background.