Posted on 02/06/2021 3:07:42 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
The government poured $18.5 billion into vaccines, a strategy that resulted in at least five effective products at record-shattering speed. But its investment in drugs was far smaller, about $8.2 billion, most of which went to just a few candidates, such as monoclonal antibodies. Studies of other drugs were poorly organized.
The result was that many promising drugs that could stop the disease early, called antivirals, were neglected. Their trials have stalled, either because researchers couldn’t find enough funding or enough patients to participate.
“I blame myself to some extent,” said Dr. Woodcock, who has overseen the federal government’s efforts to develop Covid drugs.
Hundreds of hospitals and universities began their own trials of existing drugs — already deemed safe and widely manufactured — that might also work against the coronavirus. But most of these trials were small and disorganized.
In many cases, researchers have been left on their own to set up trials without the backing of the federal government or pharmaceutical companies.
Many scientists suspect that the best time to fight the coronavirus is early in an infection, when the virus is multiplying quickly...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yeah, about that...
Simple fact.
As NIAID director since 1984 it was Fauci’s job to develop a medical countermeasure for SARS and he did nothing.
By 2020 after SARS and MERS it is serious dereliction of duty that no treatment modality had been put in place.
Under PAHPA and PHEMCE Fauci was responsible, had the funds and the ability.
He did nothing.
This is the scandal.
Thank you Dr. Fauci.
You can’t use a experimental vaccine or get FDA approval if there are alternative therapies. Hence why HQC had to be demonized and there was no effort on investigative therapies (other than other experimental drugs) considered. Have to get the billion dollar mRNA payout the corrupt Fauci had invested in - personally.
Rewriting history already. They said these already deemed sage drugs were announced by everyone to be deadly poison all of a sudden. HCQ would guaranteed to make you blind before giving you a heart attack AND it was crucial to save it for lupus patients (who apparantly the left hates and wants to give blindness and heart attacks to). Pharmacists were threatened with professional expulsion of they dispensed them.
Now it's 'we knew they were safe but studies were slow to come' instead of 'we virtually criminalized it because Trump'
“too small and poorly designed to provide useful data,”
Which was the result of incompetence.
Incompetent people, but a diverse group!
Very disappointed by our medical system’s response to the Covid.
Yep the left always says trump killed 400k people when it was them and their rabid hatred of him and hcq and any other common sense drug
By 2020 after SARS and MERS it is serious dereliction of duty that no treatment modality had been put in place.
Under PAHPA and PHEMCE Fauci was responsible, had the funds and the ability.
All of the information I can find about the government's efforts to be ready for a pandemic blame Trump for partially disbanding the pandemic response team.
My experience in working with niche diseases is that it is very difficult to push countermeasures development forward. Institutions like USAMRIID do a lot of early drug development work, but it is difficult to find pharmaceutical companies to take the early drug candidates forward through phase trials when they don't see an immediate potential for profit.
From a profit point of view, no one was interested in SARS countermeasures once SARS was eliminated. MERS still infects people, but the numbers are so low and non-American or non-European that companies see little chance for profit.
The lack of countermeasures research is not new, and certainly cannot be pinned on Fauci. Given the choice between funding immediate threats or funding hypothetical threats, the money is always going to be prioritized for the immediate threats.
I found this article, The WHO R&D Blueprint: 2018 review of emerging infectious diseases requiring urgent research and development efforts. It is interesting that international groups of multidisciplinary experts can meet and discuss the need for research into these diseases and countermeasures, yet the research efforts remain limited.
“All of the information I can find about the government’s efforts to be ready for a pandemic blame Trump for partially disbanding the pandemic response”
Which is utter nonsense because SARS appeared in 2004.
“My experience in working with niche diseases is that it is very difficult to push countermeasures development forward. Institutions like USAMRIID do a lot of early drug development work, but it is difficult to find pharmaceutical companies to take the early drug candidates forward through phase trials when they don’t see an immediate potential for profit.”
Yes, but this was addressed after 911 with PAHPA and PHEMCE. Look them up if you are unfamiliar. Most people don’t know about these things, not even Congress people.
NIAID is tasked with the basic research and BARDA with bringing the drug to full development. The FDA Animal Rule was implemented to allow approval of drugs, Medical Countermeasures, using animal models to determine efficacy combined with human trials in healthy people to determine safety and reasonable expectation of efficacy in humans based on animal studies and human clinical trials. Drugs for possible threats, such as Covid-19, can be approved in advance or brought to Emergency Use Authorization. The CDC is to maintain the drugs in the strategic national stockpile for use in the event of outbreak, nuclear attack, biological attack etc...
Fauci did not ever even fund development of a SARS animal model despite SARS and MERS.
Btw the supposed pandemic response Trump shut down was a redundant and unnecessary intelligence group outside of and that post-dated PAHPA and PHEMCE.
Hi, one more follow-up to your thoughtful response.
“From a profit point of view, no one was interested in SARS countermeasures once SARS was eliminated. MERS still infects people, but the numbers are so low and non-American or non-European that companies see little chance for profit.”
This is why PAHPA was made law and PHEMCE implemented and BARDA created. These are funded programs to develop important drugs that do not have a market but might be needed. 911 and the anthrax attacks showed the need for it.
“The lack of countermeasures research is not new, and certainly cannot be pinned on Fauci. Given the choice between funding immediate threats or funding hypothetical threats, the money is always going to be prioritized for the immediate threats.”
Again, no. The programs were put in place to address this problem and Fauci was responsible for what is arguably the most important component. There have been myriad funding under NIAID of medical countermeasures for biological disease threats, radiation, chemical etc...some have been brought to approval or EUA status.
He ignored SARS.
FauxXi --- hard at work.
This couldn't have had anything to do with the marxist press, often led by the NYTimes, attempt to demonize any doctors or scientists who came out with claims about having excellent treatments, could it? /sarcasm
The press scared people into thinking that treadments like HCQ and Ivermectin were dangerous. No wonder those trying to get a trial going couldn't find enough people to participate.
Is Gov. Cuomo personally responsible for sabatoging the early study of HCQ when New York wouldn't give it to any Covid19 patients until they needed the ICU. No one said that it worked late in the disease progression.
If it turns out that a major reason for far less Covid 19 deaths in Africa and India is the fact that so many people take HCQ for malaria, will Cuomo apologize? I doubt it. He always has a way to blame someone else and then lapdog press defends his lies.
The title of the article is a giant half truth amounting to a giant lie.
By the title you are suppose to think the “search” for effective Covid-19 treatments merely faltered, when in truth that search was constantly stymied by dozens of official and private “authorities”, with most officials not interested in anything that would minimize the need for a vaccine and with all of them getting their anti-treatments narrative sold to a slavish media.
Whereas, if treatments were made the big priority from day one, and all institutions and governments did that, allowing many more trials and emergency applications of treatments as well as outright approvals that never came or came only with great resistance, then the goal would have become less about “preventing infection” than on focusing treatment on the 20% vulnerable population (age and/or co-morbidity) while 80% of the population did what we always do with the flu - survived and developed herd immunity as we survived it.
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