Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General Concerning prediction for the COVID-19 pandemic

It may be of interest that Gilead has donated their entire stock of Remdemesvir. Here is a quote from the attached link:

"Gilead has donated the entirety of its existing supply of finished and unfinished product to help address the urgent medical needs posed by this pandemic around the world. Assuming a 10-day treatment course, Gilead’s donation of 1.5 million individual doses of remdesivir equates to more than 140,000 treatment courses that will be provided at no cost to treat patients following potential emergency authorizations and regulatory approvals.

https://www.gilead.com/news-and-pre...thorization-for-the-treatment-of-covid19

There you go, no scam. Although I wouldn't automatically think they are doing it exclusively out of a generous heart. They probably want to score publicity points and earn good will with governmental officials home and abroad.

The people who control "Big Pharma" are not all heartless monsters.

They are however all heartless capitalists.

It would be terrific if they could do a prophylactic study in Georgia, since it's a place where there is likely to be a whole lot of people who are going to be exposed shortly. It's exactly the situation where an antiviral could work, if it ever will. One if the problems with a prophylactic study is getting a placebo arm with no infections. A good double blind random study there with a large N, and we could be done with hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, etc.

140,000 treatments is enough to have some good studies. If remdesivir proves useful, that would just be the tip of the iceberg. They (and maybe others) would have to make a hell of a lot more. We have maybe 300 million people in America who could be potential customers. Not to mention billions of people in other countries.

Yeah sure, at a thousand dollars a pill, right?

It's not a pill. It's delivered by IV.

Anyway, I don't think it is unfair for a drug company to recover R&D costs and make a profit. Of course I don't support outrageous profits but a profit is fair. Without drug companies we wouldn't have 98% of the medications known to man. Would you prefer a world without modern medicines?

NICE: Researchers at Utrecht and Rotterdam have a monoclonal antibody that binds to the spike protein on both SARS and also MERS viruses. They started their work using the original SARS-COV virus but they have tested it and it binds to all the virus spike proteins. This work will not lead directly to a vaccine, but monoclonal antibodies can be mass-produced and in effect give you a synthetic passive antiserum. All the supply and transfusion problems with donor plasma are eliminated. Not as long-lasting as a vaccine, but still a very effective treatment that can actually inactivate viruses.

It's been tested in cultured cells and shown to inactivate the viruses. This was one of 51 different antibodies mice produced when challenged with spike proteins. The fact that it's a single antibody type is what makes it "monoclonal". Recovery from infection typically produces many different antibodies. Next step is to try it in animals, then humans, but it's very similar to using donor plasma.

Drug company profit is fair, but they spend more on marketing salaries, advertising, and executive bonuses than they spend on research. And how about a drug company that latches on to a drug that has been in use for various autoimmune diseases in Europe for decades and is in the public domain, tries it on a different autoimmune disease, gets a patent and exclusivity for years, and then sells $100 dollars worth for over $70,000 per year? And there is NO competition because all the drug companies sell their drugs for that disease for about $70,000 per year (coincidentally)!

That's the drug I take for my MS. Insurance companies and now Medicare pay for most of it. My share is still over $6000 per year, but that company is using it to siphon huge amounts of money out of health insurance and Medicare, which affects us all.

Of course it's fair for a company to make a profit.
I'm not a communist.
That said, the main job of the Federal Government, the absolute top priority, is to keep Americans safe.
Even the most die hard anti-government libertarians believe that.

Well, our Federal Government FAILED to do that, because of intentional criminal negligence from the very top levels of our leadership.
Innocent people have been made ill and have died through no fault of their own. And now they should be forced to choose between having a roof over their head and getting an injection that might save their lives?
No.
No...sorry...this is one of those cases where a large chunk of all that money being handed out needs to be directed toward making sure that every living being inside our shores gets this medicine.
And yes, it should be FREE OF CHARGE and available everywhere.

That is the least we can do, it is what we should do, it is what we MUST DO, if we wish to avoid the kind of catastrophe currently happening in Singapore, where entire segments of the population are being ignored, with disastrous results.

Would I prefer a world without modern medicines? No, of course I prefer modern medicines, and I am okay with making a profit.

I am not okay with darwinian laws of the jungle being deliberately applied to vulnerable segments of the population who don't have an extra four or five thousand dollars handy to keep their families alive.

This is a pandemic, it does not care about our politics, our status on the social calendar or our capitalism. Letting vulnerable millions just die because they can't fork over ridiculous sums is beyond despicable.

And to be totally honest, if we continue to allow this sort of thinking to escalate, it will ultimately lead to a spate of violent revolutions around the world, and we will not escape unscathed.

This is the sort of crisis which had damn well better rouse the better angels of our nature or else we can sit back and watch the entire world burn to the ground and wake up with civilization at a dead end.