During COVID, steroids were rapidly identified as providing a positive survival benefit and became standard of care.

There is actually a good reason to think that steroids are beneficial in severe infections. This is because often in a severe infection/inflammation, a big portion of the damage is done by the inflammatory response.

Reading about the pathophysiology of influenza 13 years ago after H1N1, I came to this conclusion, and it was trialed, but good quality studies showed it to not be effective.

COVID has a slightly different pathophysiology and in COVID it works.

But yea, as a rule, it’s not a good idea to dose with steroids if sick