4 ms·
True, the study did focus on vaccines, but I would have also thought perhaps a statement in that quoted paragraph along the lines of "And authorise available an
by phillc73 5y ago
True, the study did focus on vaccines, but I would have also thought perhaps a statement in that quoted paragraph along the lines of "And authorise available anti-viral treatments ASAP" would have brought a little more balance.
I do wonder about, and would like to see, a calculation of the cost of widespread anti-viral availability versus the cost of vaccination programmes. The current global COVID-19 death rate is at around 2% of total infectious cases, or around 5 million people.[1] Vaccination will have by now certainly assisted in preventing this number being even higher. I wonder about the cost of producing and distributing globally 500 million anti-viral treatments, versus an also very high number of vaccines and the cost of education programmes prompting people to accept vaccination. Would the current pandemic situation (health and economic) be different if the early focus had have been on anti-viral treatments rather than vaccines?
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
- ufo 5y agoVaccines are dirt cheap. Just the cost of the covid test to diagnose covid (which is required before the appropriate anti-viral may be prescribed) is probably going to be more than the cost of a vaccine. > Would the current pandemic situation (health and economic) be different if the early focus had have been on anti-viral treatments rather than vaccines? For starters, there were no anti-viral medications that actually worked against COVID. And that was not due to lack of trying. Generally speaking, it is harder to develop a small-molecule antiviral medication than it is to develop an effective vaccine. For many viral diseases there are no drugs that work, or you need a cocktail of drugs at the same time.