Actually no we wouldn’t, because real clinical trials with thousands of subjects take a long time to wrap up, even when researchers are working at breakneck speed.
FWIW The anecdotal evidence from doctors and patients who have managed to get a hold of some of it has been very good so far.
yes but, if in a trial, if one arm performs substantially different than the control arm (e.g. 50% or even 100% lower death rate), the large difference between arms can lead to investigators ending the trial early
ironically, this happened in a previous 2019 trial of Remdemsivir, for a different virus, Ebola
in that trial, 4 drugs for Ebola were tested, including Remdemsivir. 2 non-Remdemsivir drugs succeeded substantially--the large difference between those drugs and Remdemsivir, was enough to cause the investigator to end the trial early and drop Remdemsivir
ironically, the investigator for that trial was none-other-than Dr. Fauci. Maybe that's why he hasn't mentioned Remdemsivir much on TV these days, based on his past professional disappointing experience with Remdemsivir
also, double ironically, Remdemsivir was initially designed to treat Ebola virus, not for flu or coronavirus type viruses. The fact that after the Ebola trial, Remdemsivir was declared not that effective for Ebola (the very virus Remdemsivir was created for), means there is even less of a chance Remdemsivir will prove to be effective for Covid-19 in the current trials
if Remdemsivir cures 100% of all Covid-19 cases, halfway through the trial, they would have enough data to show a net positive benefit. They don't need to finish the whole trial to declare Remdemsivir useful
the fact that they are running the whole trial to finish, most likely means the effect of Remdemsivir is not too noticeable. They need more data to get to statistical significance. Hence, they want the trial to run to original planned finish date.
my guess is
Remdemsivir probably has some positive effect. Say, 10% lower death rate if used during 1st few days of infection. Still great, much much better than our current situation of nothing. It would not cure Covid completely, but it would help substantially, especially in large populations of infected
Plus, killing off the virus isn't necessarily going to be equivalent to observed outcomes. It is easy to imagine someone having no viruses but their lungs aren't working properly because of damage done so they are still sick.
So even a perfectly efficacious drug would still not necessarily be an obvious miracle cure, depending on how the disease progression works.
This is a good time to wait for clinical trials to finish.
FWIW The anecdotal evidence from doctors and patients who have managed to get a hold of some of it has been very good so far.