Doctors can legally prescribe medications that have FDA approval for reasons other than the original intent of the medication. It is call "off label" use and is quite common.

Tocilzumab, a medication originally developed for arthritis is being used in some hospitals to reduce the effects of Covid-19.

While the first use of budesonide may have been purely experimental or intuitive the data was the reason serious science was used to explore the possibility that it could be useful.

I like Keith, "cringe when I read about a totally untested treatment and the proponent uses words like “common sense” and “intuitive” to explain the rationale for the treatment."

It depends on who is making the claim. It is common sense and intuitive to a doctor that certain medications "perhaps could" be useful to treat to Covid. They are allowed by US law to use there "common sense and intuition" to try medications developed for other purposes and often do. They are also responsible for the outcomes of their actions. The threat of legal action often constraints doctors in hospitals from trying things. It is a ballance, some people will die because they did not try and some will die because they did try.

I have little interest in what youtube has to say or the media. I want to read the technical information that is peer reviewed from a well known and respected institution. People who depend only on social media, youtube, and the news media as their only source of information will be hard pressed to make logical informed decisions about what to believe.

In a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic we will always take some level of risk because we have no other real choice. Nothing to my knowledge other than remdesivir has been actually approved by the FDA in the fight against Covid-19. The FDA is looking at things every day so they may have approved things I am not aware of. The FDA has granted an emergency use authorization for several things to include at least two vaccines not because they like doing that but because they have no other real option. So far it looks like that was a risk well worth taking.

At the end of the day Civid-19 where it has been controlled, it did not happen due to medication. It was brought under control by well known simple public health measures, mask wearing, seperating people, limiting movement, testing and contact tracing. Where those public health measures have not been adopted early on large amounts of people have died.

I have a serious interest in biochemistry and Covid is only one subject I am studying.

I know this is not a subject matter we normally discuss on this forum but it effect is relevant to all of us, plus the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are dying.

Billy

“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig?
“Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”