Maybe so, but it is hard to believe major institutions would spend the last 2 weeks gobbling up 10's of millions of shares if they didn't think ARIA had a great future. Today's volume was tiny compared to the massive buying volume going on more recently. I don't see any reason why one down day where shorts did all they could to bring down the price should discourage longs. With the massive potential of ARIA, I would not want to be short right now. The shorts already had their hay-day from 25 down to 2.20. Shorting is a whole lot riskier now than it was back then.
The shorts believe they have time. FDA is not likely to reverse positions in the short term. But if they put Iclusig back on the market, it will move the stock up.