Donald Jenius Trump
44 is way too small to have any power in a clinical trial - exactly the reason why large scale trials are needed. In this case - the RECOVERY trial at Oxford University is a prime example of how to do scientific research like this properly.
Small trials are essential precursors to large trials. Large scale clinical trials are very expensive and time consuming - the trial you mention has initial funding of nearly £11 million. But there are thousands of potential treatments, some possibly effective, some not.
You need to screen these first with much smaller, limited trials to separate the potential wheat from the obvious chaff. You must also supply ample evidence of the safety and likely efficacy in the trial approvals process before you start injecting hundreds of patients with the stuff as part of the large trial, and you don't get that without doing smaller trials.
The real problem starts when the idiot President announces that a drug combination has "a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine" and suggests they should be immediately put into large scale use based on very flimsy evidence.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
