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I read this on Quora which seems a decent summary:
"What they did for Trump that’s relevant here is they gave him steroids. Steroids suppress the immune system. In the early stage of the disease, it’s your own immune system that’s causing most of the problem. It inflames the lungs, fills them with fluid, and even starts damaging healthy cells.
Steroids turn all the alert systems off. No inflammation, and no killer cells attacking your lungs. You feel better.
However, to use a clumsy metaphor, what the steroids do is they turn off the loud annoying alarms that generally go off during a fire. Now you can get some sleep and get some work done without being annoyed by the flashing lights and loud noise.
Of course, the fire is still there or, in this case, the coronavirus. While a patient is on steroids, the disease doesn’t trigger an immune response. It just goes about its merry way destroying lung cells to make copies of itself.
So, a few days later, when the steroids wear off, the symtoms come back with a vengeance. Giving the patient steroids at this point has a lesser effect and also allows the disease to grow unchecked without pesky killer cells and antibodies trying to fight it.
My dad was on steroids for his pulmonary fibrosis for the last few months of his life. He felt great, but he was dying inside. His heart gave out within a few months of starting them. In that stage, he couldn’t come off them without his lungs pretty much shutting down entirely.
So I’m not hopeful for Mr. Trump at this point."
"What they did for Trump that’s relevant here is they gave him steroids. Steroids suppress the immune system. In the early stage of the disease, it’s your own immune system that’s causing most of the problem. It inflames the lungs, fills them with fluid, and even starts damaging healthy cells.
Steroids turn all the alert systems off. No inflammation, and no killer cells attacking your lungs. You feel better.
However, to use a clumsy metaphor, what the steroids do is they turn off the loud annoying alarms that generally go off during a fire. Now you can get some sleep and get some work done without being annoyed by the flashing lights and loud noise.
Of course, the fire is still there or, in this case, the coronavirus. While a patient is on steroids, the disease doesn’t trigger an immune response. It just goes about its merry way destroying lung cells to make copies of itself.
So, a few days later, when the steroids wear off, the symtoms come back with a vengeance. Giving the patient steroids at this point has a lesser effect and also allows the disease to grow unchecked without pesky killer cells and antibodies trying to fight it.
My dad was on steroids for his pulmonary fibrosis for the last few months of his life. He felt great, but he was dying inside. His heart gave out within a few months of starting them. In that stage, he couldn’t come off them without his lungs pretty much shutting down entirely.
So I’m not hopeful for Mr. Trump at this point."
