Why the delay, and why no placebo Covid controls?

Great to see this finally available. I wonder what "politics" happened with the first submission. It appears the paper must have been rejected at another journal, as this accepted paper to Intl J Inf Dis was only submitted on 10/16/20. I wonder who was holding it up at the other journal(s), and why? Can't believe this took 6+ months to get accepted, from this version submitted on 5/5/20:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020....20084673v1

I am slightly puzzled that BP was saying in one of the Dr. Yo or Dr. Drew videos a while ago (August?) that one of the reviewers complained of no control group (indeed this was in the original paper, " this EIND study lacks a placebo control group for comparison" . BP said that he had added the controls at that point, so I am confused why this paper does not contain placebo or non-LL treated s/c patient data. Anyone have a good explanation for (1) the delay, and 5 months where this apparently sat in review and was rejected or withdrawn, and (2) why BP seemed to say he was adding a "control" group (original had healthy controls, but not placebo or non-LL Covid controls), but it not showing up in either the original paper revisions submitted to another journal, or the current version accepted as pre-print today?

EDIT: I see that Dr. Mudd from Wash. U. provided some COVID controls, but there must be something I'm missing. The Figures seem to be the same as the original ones.

Can anyone help me figure out what's different, and if we have COVID placebo controls now or not?