I’m trying to wrap my head around how someone getting steroids yesterday could head home today, even if home is the White House, and I think I’ve got it...

The thing is, I think many if not all of us I. Medicine have just assumed that if he got steroids it’s because he was *supposed* to get steroids. That is, he was really sick.

Supporting this assumption was a bunch of clues, like the bungled dissembling of his doctor’s about how he’s not so sick, while his political folks were saying he’s really sick...

But there are two possible explanations for why he would be put on steroids... first is that he needed to be on them, but he didn’t want to admit it. That’s the conventional wisdom: he wants to appear strong and couldn’t admit he was really sick.

But the second possibility is that he is his own doctor. The moment he got the diagnosis - even before, in fact - he was making his own medical decisions. His doctors are just along for the ride.

Basically, he prescribed himself steroids, and Remdesivir, and an experimental polyclonal antibody made by a golf buddy... in the same way that he gave himself hydroxychloroquine earlier in the pandemic, despite no good evidence it was effective.

He loves the idea of miracle cures, as yet unproven by science but very clear to him. So he takes HCQ, and zinc, and who knows what else—none of which are endorsed by his doctors, but they all acquiesce because, well, he’s the President and they’d like to keep their jobs.

Side benefits, politically, if this is true, are that he had a mild case, but we all think it was worse, and now he’s much better much faster than expected. He must be super strong... the drug made by his friend must be really good...the virus can’t be all that bad...

Side note: I’m NOT suggesting a conspiracy here. I’m the opposite of a conspiracy theorist. I just think it’s possible he bullied his doctors into giving him treatments he didn’t warrant getting, that weren’t evidence-based.

I had assumed his doctors were treating him according to guidelines, so he must be sicker than he was admitting. But now I wonder if he was never very sick - as many aren’t - but he demanded to be treated as though he was... and they weren’t able or willing to push back.