Tenchu's Thoughts: Follow-up to "The People's Cure for the Coronavirus"
I just saw this breaking news headline:
Dow futures rip 800 points higher amid report Gilead drug showing effectiveness treating coronavirus
In short, there was a report saying that a hospital in Chicago treated some coronavirus patients with Remdesivir, about 125 in all of which 113 had severe symptoms. Most of them recovered and were discharged, with only two dying. That's pretty good given that people who exhibit severe symptoms and require ventilators have a 50/50 chance of surviving. (I'm not sure what percentage of the "severe" patients actually went on ventilators, though.)
This is very early, of course, and I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I can't help but feel encouraged by the prospects of a successful trial.
And this, of course, is coming from Gilead Sciences, who is a major Big Pharma player and is regularly attacked by the left for being oh-so-greedy. In fact, here in the Bay Area where Gilead is headquartered, security is tight, and Gilead keeps a relatively low profile. They don't have a spaceship for an HQ building like Apple does, for instance. Even their corporate shuttles that bring employees to the office don't have any indications that the shuttle belongs to Gilead since that could invite protesters.
Let's Win One for Capitalism
Once again, the free market is working as intended. Not only does it develop technologies that enable the social media age, but it also develops life saving pharmaceuticals so that we can more quickly overcome the coronavirus and not fear a resurgence as lockdowns are lifted.
Can Comrade Sanders promise that in a Sandersuela? Of course not.
Can Uncle Joe "You're full of shit" Biden promise that in an America controlled by the Democratic establishment? Yeah right; he probably can't even remember the name Gilead.
How about whoever Joe picks as his running mate? Maybe Elizabeth Warren? She'll be the first to bust down the doors of Gilead and "nationalize" Remdesivir, given how hostile she has been to Big Pharma.
What about China and her supporters on this forum, like Sly and Shark Fin Soup? It's likely that, as soon as Remdesivir proves to be effective, they'll come up with their own version called Lemdesibeer, call it a Chinese invention, and sell it to the world in a display of magnanimity.
Hydroxycloro-who?
(By the way, maybe all of this talk about hydrochloroquine, driven in no small part by Trump himself, can finally die down. Soooooo many "experts" on HCQ have popped up all over the place, despite the results being inconclusive.)
But, but ... SCIENCE!
And then, of course, there are all the people who hide behind the mantle of "science." These people often use the word "science" to push an agenda, like "You better obey our commands, because they're backed by SCIENCE!"
Whether you trust your local politicians and their commitment to "science" is beyond the scope of this post. But I just wanted to point out that Gilead Sciences and other Big Pharma companies are perhaps the most stringent adherents to the scientific process. Why? Because there is a ton of money riding on the results. Because they have to be doubly and triply sure that their pharmaceuticals work. Because anything less than objective, provable results will be fatal to the company.
In short, it's the profit motive, those oh-so-evil profit margins, that drives Gilead to adhere to the scientific process. Yes, positive results will lead to profits, but negative results are good, too, because Gilead will know when to cut their losses and move on.
Speaking of negative results, remember that Remdesivir was previously tried for a different outbreak, specifically Ebola, without much success. The results of that, however, were archived, and I'm sure those archives proved to be invaluable in bringing back Remdesivir for the latest pandemic. That just emphasizes the point that even negative results can be useful.
The Chinese Coronavirus
Compare that with labs in China. Their results are subject to the agendas of the Chinese Communist Party. Any inconvenient results will be suppressed. Any positive results will be claimed as a success by the Party. Doctors and scientists there know the deal, and they know that if they say the wrong things, they will "disappear."
Based on that, how can you trust anything that comes out of a Chinese lab? Even worse, how can you trust any data from world governments that have a record of suppressing their own citizens and suppressing their free speech rights?
And how can you trust organizations like the WHO who take the word of these repressive regimes as gospel? I wouldn't be surprised if they started asking North Korea for advice on how to deal with the coronavirus. After all, North Korea had ZERO cases, according to their Dear Leader. They must have done something right, no?
Tenchusatsu |
