We get such small slivers of information regarding his medical condition that people really shouldn't be speculating as to the truth of the situation, particularly people without a medical background. I would not doubt that this Stanford law professor would be a good judge of what entails "capacity" but I don't think she is a good judge of what what the possible outcomes of dexamethasone are. Even though most people are hearing about dexamethasone for the first time in the context of COVID, it is a very commonly used drug, for a variety of conditions, in a variety of doses, and a variety of durations. This professor's experience with dexamethasone is not generalizable to everyone else's experiences.

The rationale for using dexamethasone in brain surgery is very different from its use in COVID. In brain surgery, high dose, prolonged dexamethasone is crucial to reduce the brain inflammation that could otherwise lead to herniation of the brain out of its rigid container (i.e. the skull) if post-surgical swelling isn't controlled. It also helps with healing and prevention of neurogenic nausea that can occur with the surgery. Moreover, the comment she makes in the article "you have to wean off which takes time" is specifically a consequence of long term, high dose treatment. With this kind of use, the body's ability to produce similar molecules from the adrenal gland is suppressed. If dexamethasone is stopped abruptly, the adrenal gland doesn't have time to wake up, which is sometime that can actually be fatal. However, this suppression occurs over a span of weeks. While the standard COVID dexamethasone dose is moderately high and typically given for 7-10 days it is not equivalent with the approach used in many types of neurosurgery.