"The drug, which was invented for Ebola but failed to work, is under patent to Gilead, which means no other company in wealthy countries can make it."<p>Sorry, but if the one blessed company with the patent can't keep up with demand, and millions are going to die because there are patent restrictions, then ignore the patent laws and save some lives. It wouldn't look too good if the American government tried to stop it, essentially saying "It's against the law to save their lives, and we're going to punish you for saving them."
The drug that looked very promising for the last pandemic, yet turned out to have no benefit, and now looks very promising as a treatment for this pandemic...<p>Smells to me like someone in the remdesivir marketing department is doing very well... Are there any scientific studies that don't have vested interests and show it's a good treatment?
Interestingly, Gilead apparently has a standing agreement with Europe to deliver remdesivir. It should be interesting to see how this agreement can be fulfilled if 100% of all doses have already been sold to the U.S.<p>Currenly, remdesivir is not approved for the treatment of COVID-10 in the EU, but a decision along these lines is expected this week.
According to the article 500,000 doses are the production of July, and 90% of August and September. Three full months would be 500,000 / 2.80 * 3 = 535,714 doses. A full treatment is made of six doses. There are 89,285 treatments in there. Less than 30,000 per month. Too bad for the rest of the world that all of them will happen in the USA but they are way too few to matter globally. Split them proportionally with the population and how many of them are going to be assigned to any European country? Maybe we need a x10 in the production or more. Better, local production, which I understand is neither quick nor easy.
If there is already alternative suppliers of this drug in India (as claimed by the article) under generic brands, can't they do a licensing deal for the drug and use that production while still not ignoring patent laws?<p>can't tell if this is a supply chain (production) problem or patent laws dilemma.
The wonder drug that supposedly can cut two whole days off a case! Wow I am surely sad that MY goverment didn't hoard all those pills, I mean they are only 2000USD per treatment...<p>First the US buys all the chloroquin, now this. Next they will come for all our sugar pills too!
I thought studies include Remdesivir and Hydroxycloroquine showed negative results. Why would we be buying up Remdesivir when Dexamethasone is the new hot drug with good clinical results?
The rest of the world already uses HCQ + Zinc prophylactically for about $20 instead. The pharma complex did a great job along with their zombie mob of amrchair biochemists (the ones downvoting me to hades right now) of discrediting HCQ with BS studies of almost dead people with 10x the normal dose of HCQ without Zinc. All HCQ is in this protocol is a Ionophore to get the zinc into the cells. Lancet had to retract one of the studies which they almost never do.
Recently read about This. theoretically doesn’t look like the cure<p><a href="https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/06/29/how-remdesivir-works-and-why-its-not-the-ultimate-coronavirus-killer/" rel="nofollow">https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/06/29/how-remdesivir-wor...</a>
The optics of this are terrible and the US should be working with other countries. But my guess is even if the US worked with Europe on distribution >90% of it would go to the US anyway. The need stateside is exponentially greater.<p>My guess is that Gilead played Trump and will now backtrack to make a licensing deal so that the EU can produce its own at a lower price.<p>There’s nothing stopping Gilead from allowing more licensing now that it has squeezed all it can from its best customer.
This is a terrible waste of money. Hydroxychloroquine is less expensive, seems to be more effective according to the research, and backed by more science. You just have to look beyond your mainstream media to find the truth.
Sounds like the Guardian isn't happy its home country got out-bid. Did it expect that America would buy less of a potentially life-saving drug, effectively prioritizing the welfare of foreigners over her own? I'd expect any government to act in such a manner.