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It’s crazy that money is such a huge incentive. Knowing that a cure for Covid is a potentially $100B market means you throw the kitchen sink at it. Imagine bei

It’s crazy that money is such a huge incentive. Knowing that a cure for Covid is a potentially $100B market means you throw the kitchen sink at it. Imagine being this lab. Do you think they ever had trouble hiring an assistant? Buying new equipment? Getting bonuses? This environment must be fantastically different from the typical meat grinder of bio R&D.

ryanobjc 5y ago
Therefore how can you trust this drug? Follow the money! It’s just big science trying to propagate a pandemic to make more money! If this sounds insane, we’ll ok just reflecting the common anti vax sentiments I hear on this web site (ugh).
- themitigating 5y ago
  Every business exists to make money, the same with most people.
  - randcraw 5y ago
    So no business can exist that seeks something other than money? Non-profits and not-for-profits are not businesses?
    - 20after4 5y ago
      Non profit organizations still need money to operate. They still pay their employees with money. They still must earn revenue somehow to cover their operations, unless they are entirely funded by an endowment. The only difference from for-profit companies is that they don't earn returns for investors.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dustintrex 5y ago
  Except that this pill won't be given to people unless they're already sick with COVID. Not that this will stop the tinfoil hat brigade, but it's going to be much less controversial than universal vaccine mandates.
- fknorangesite 5y ago
  > the common anti vax sentiments I hear on this web site (ugh). Seeing this stuff so prevalent on HN really disappointed me.
  - president 5y ago
    Try to understand why this viewpoint exists. We are all logical people. The difference is in the trust of public media and government. Both sides of the argument are mostly right in what they believe given the information they are consuming. My suggestion - read sources from both sides before deciding that anyone slightly against Covid hysteria is misinformed and is an anti-vaxxer. Second suggestion, anti-vaxxer is a really misleading and extremely divisive term.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      The anti-vax movement is in the uncanny valley of media trust. If they had more trust, they'd follow traditional institutional recommendations as most had done for decades. If they had less trust, they'd realize that Faceboot et al are just more media sources hijacking their sense of social proof. The path to actually rejecting "the media" isn't to just follow substitute media that promotes opposite viewpoints - you have to reason from first principles and look to falsify every single thing you read.
    - WillDaSilva 5y ago
      > We are all logical people That's a bold claim. In my experience the vast majority of people hardly try to think logically or apply critical thinking skills in most opportunities, and no human does so anywhere close to all the time. Humans are deeply irrational creatures, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
    - fknorangesite 5y ago
      > My suggestion - read sources from both sides I assure you I have; only one of those sides has any intellectual merit.
      - 5y ago
- pessimizer 5y ago
  It won't happen, because the explicit arguments are just pretexts. After The Lancet/Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy (and other popular media figures), the word "vaccine" is now simply triggering of aggressive suspicion. That media panic combining with: 1) the 80s New Age/Self-Help/Healthy Living/Naturopathic flakes, 2) the suspicions of black people who are generally neglected and sometimes abused by the health care industry (over a very long term with sign-off from regulators), 3) and the religious fundamentalist divine punishment crowd (disease exists to punish weakness and evil), and 4) the factual observation that the healthcare industry in the US is hopelessly corrupt from top to bottom, and will not change no matter how strong the political will of the general population, or how organized it is, ...and all combinations thereof, means that this is going to be something that we have to deal with forever. It has nothing to do with whether the vaccine is new or experimental, it's that it's a vaccine. We still don't have universal vaccination for HPV, and that prevents cancer. The media blames vaccine hesitancy on Republican hucksters, but that's just because they're centrist neolibs and that's what they're paid to do. Republican grifters take advantage of whatever's available; this week they actually became animal rights activists in order to attack Fauci:) The anti-vax feeling is deeper than that; it's become hopelessly tangled into religion, identity, and anti-authoritarianism. It's not going away. Covid-19 was actually pretty mild when it comes down to it, when a real disease comes along, we're all dead. I'm actually on a personal countdown until I hear the first argument that this safe, effective, experimental pill is a reason not to take the dangerous, pointless, experimental vaccine, and that big pharma wants you to take the vaccine instead of the pill because reasons.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    I'm actually on a personal countdown until I hear the first argument that this safe, effective, experimental pill is a reason not to take the dangerous, pointless, experimental vaccine, and that big pharma wants you to take the vaccine instead of the pill because reasons. That ship sailed weeks ago on the Twittersphere, once news of the new drug's development came out. According to half of the idiots, the announcement explains why horse paste had to be "suppressed," given that ivermectin was inexpensive, already approved for human use, and unpatentable. The other half maintained that no, the new Pfizer compound was unalloyed good news, because they no longer needed to worry about getting the "untested," "experimental" vaccine. Covid-19 was actually pretty mild when it comes down to it, when a real disease comes along, we're all dead. Exactly, SARS-CoV-2 amounts to a dress rehearsal. We know how the real thing is going to play out now, and oh, boy.
FooBarWidget 5y ago
I don't think it's fair to say that it's just money. There's also a global crisis and a huge need for such a drug.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Well hopefully money serves as a tool for prioritizing resources for important problems. Seems to be working well in this case.
  - xattt 5y ago
    The added incentive is survival of the species.
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      Lets not overdo it. Covid is not wiping out the human species.
      - rafaelvasco 5y ago
        Maybe it could if left unchecked and mutating up and down ?
        acdha 5y ago
        No — if it was that easy, the odds are high that something else would have already done so. The two things which tend to factor into this are that there's a lot of natural variation so it means that the population will change to favor a high percentage of people who are somewhat resistant to it[1] after a few generations of recovery. There's also an inverse relationship between deadliness and spread: if something kills at a high rate, the odds are high that it'll burn out when the outside world goes into quarantine as long as it doesn't spread to 100% of the breeding population before they start dying. Anything deadly enough to wipe out a species is going to have a LOT less resistance to lockdowns — COVID-19 is deadly but far below the rates of other diseases and that puts it in a grey area where there are a fair number of people who've had it and can say “no big deal”. Smallpox or polio were enough worse that people jumped on treatment campaigns because almost everyone with lived experience knew they didn't want it. 1. A great example appears to be Sickle Cell Anemia, where the gene responsible is thought to confer some resistance to malaria — normally this would be a disadvantage but in areas where malaria is endemic the risk of SCA is more than balanced by the risk of malaria.
pie42000 5y ago
This is what being an engineer during WW2 must have been like. Near infinite money and resources, but very tough deadlines
- subsubzero 5y ago
  agree, The manhattan project alone was 1% of the US GDP during its most expensive year, that would equate to $230 Billion in today's dollars.
  - xxpor 5y ago
    Along these lines, for anyone who hasn't heard of it: At the Trinity test, there was a containment unit called Jumbo: https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/jumbo https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/jumbo Basically, if Trinity fizzled, they wanted to be able to recover the billion dollar plutonium core. It didn't actually end up being used, and so it was ordered destroyed. But the thing was so tough that they essentially couldn't blow it up. Normal bombs just weren't powerful enough. So now it's just sitting there at the site.
  - tomatocracy 5y ago
    There are still occasionally projects which approach this relative scale today. When Boeing (temporarily) shut down 737 MAX production in early 2020 it was reported that this would reduce US GDP by between 0.3% and 0.6% (depending on the economist doing the calculation), for example.
- rangoon626 5y ago
  Still can't get over WWII, so everyone has to larp. Truly, imagine having your main frame of reference pretending you are in WWII, for everything else you do in life.
_2o1z 5y ago
Sadly, promise of money means "viability." Have to be realistic about these things. You wouldn't believe it, but no one wanted to make a good hip broach to fix grandma. It took athlete injury repair R&D money to make that happen.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
It’s also a boom and bust business. Once COVID has gone away I bet funding will dry up and a lot of these people will have trouble finding work.
spamizbad 5y ago
I know people who have worked on some pretty revolutionary cardiac drugs that got laid off once their project was complete. It'll still be a meatgrinder for the talent behind these drugs. The spoils are further up the food chain.
dang 5y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29120313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29120313.

ryanobjc 5y ago

Therefore how can you trust this drug? Follow the money! It’s just big science trying to propagate a pandemic to make more money! If this sounds insane, we’ll ok just reflecting the common anti vax sentiments I hear on this web site (ugh).

themitigating 5y ago
Every business exists to make money, the same with most people.
- randcraw 5y ago
  So no business can exist that seeks something other than money? Non-profits and not-for-profits are not businesses?
  - 20after4 5y ago
    Non profit organizations still need money to operate. They still pay their employees with money. They still must earn revenue somehow to cover their operations, unless they are entirely funded by an endowment. The only difference from for-profit companies is that they don't earn returns for investors.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dustintrex 5y ago
Except that this pill won't be given to people unless they're already sick with COVID. Not that this will stop the tinfoil hat brigade, but it's going to be much less controversial than universal vaccine mandates.
fknorangesite 5y ago
> the common anti vax sentiments I hear on this web site (ugh). Seeing this stuff so prevalent on HN really disappointed me.
- president 5y ago
  Try to understand why this viewpoint exists. We are all logical people. The difference is in the trust of public media and government. Both sides of the argument are mostly right in what they believe given the information they are consuming. My suggestion - read sources from both sides before deciding that anyone slightly against Covid hysteria is misinformed and is an anti-vaxxer. Second suggestion, anti-vaxxer is a really misleading and extremely divisive term.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    The anti-vax movement is in the uncanny valley of media trust. If they had more trust, they'd follow traditional institutional recommendations as most had done for decades. If they had less trust, they'd realize that Faceboot et al are just more media sources hijacking their sense of social proof. The path to actually rejecting "the media" isn't to just follow substitute media that promotes opposite viewpoints - you have to reason from first principles and look to falsify every single thing you read.
  - WillDaSilva 5y ago
    > We are all logical people That's a bold claim. In my experience the vast majority of people hardly try to think logically or apply critical thinking skills in most opportunities, and no human does so anywhere close to all the time. Humans are deeply irrational creatures, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
  - fknorangesite 5y ago
    > My suggestion - read sources from both sides I assure you I have; only one of those sides has any intellectual merit.
    - 5y ago
pessimizer 5y ago
It won't happen, because the explicit arguments are just pretexts. After The Lancet/Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy (and other popular media figures), the word "vaccine" is now simply triggering of aggressive suspicion. That media panic combining with: 1) the 80s New Age/Self-Help/Healthy Living/Naturopathic flakes, 2) the suspicions of black people who are generally neglected and sometimes abused by the health care industry (over a very long term with sign-off from regulators), 3) and the religious fundamentalist divine punishment crowd (disease exists to punish weakness and evil), and 4) the factual observation that the healthcare industry in the US is hopelessly corrupt from top to bottom, and will not change no matter how strong the political will of the general population, or how organized it is, ...and all combinations thereof, means that this is going to be something that we have to deal with forever. It has nothing to do with whether the vaccine is new or experimental, it's that it's a vaccine. We still don't have universal vaccination for HPV, and that prevents cancer. The media blames vaccine hesitancy on Republican hucksters, but that's just because they're centrist neolibs and that's what they're paid to do. Republican grifters take advantage of whatever's available; this week they actually became animal rights activists in order to attack Fauci:) The anti-vax feeling is deeper than that; it's become hopelessly tangled into religion, identity, and anti-authoritarianism. It's not going away. Covid-19 was actually pretty mild when it comes down to it, when a real disease comes along, we're all dead. I'm actually on a personal countdown until I hear the first argument that this safe, effective, experimental pill is a reason not to take the dangerous, pointless, experimental vaccine, and that big pharma wants you to take the vaccine instead of the pill because reasons.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  I'm actually on a personal countdown until I hear the first argument that this safe, effective, experimental pill is a reason not to take the dangerous, pointless, experimental vaccine, and that big pharma wants you to take the vaccine instead of the pill because reasons. That ship sailed weeks ago on the Twittersphere, once news of the new drug's development came out. According to half of the idiots, the announcement explains why horse paste had to be "suppressed," given that ivermectin was inexpensive, already approved for human use, and unpatentable. The other half maintained that no, the new Pfizer compound was unalloyed good news, because they no longer needed to worry about getting the "untested," "experimental" vaccine. Covid-19 was actually pretty mild when it comes down to it, when a real disease comes along, we're all dead. Exactly, SARS-CoV-2 amounts to a dress rehearsal. We know how the real thing is going to play out now, and oh, boy.

FooBarWidget 5y ago

I don't think it's fair to say that it's just money. There's also a global crisis and a huge need for such a drug.

Robotbeat 5y ago
Well hopefully money serves as a tool for prioritizing resources for important problems. Seems to be working well in this case.
- xattt 5y ago
  The added incentive is survival of the species.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    Lets not overdo it. Covid is not wiping out the human species.
    - rafaelvasco 5y ago
      Maybe it could if left unchecked and mutating up and down ?
      - acdha 5y ago
        No — if it was that easy, the odds are high that something else would have already done so. The two things which tend to factor into this are that there's a lot of natural variation so it means that the population will change to favor a high percentage of people who are somewhat resistant to it[1] after a few generations of recovery. There's also an inverse relationship between deadliness and spread: if something kills at a high rate, the odds are high that it'll burn out when the outside world goes into quarantine as long as it doesn't spread to 100% of the breeding population before they start dying. Anything deadly enough to wipe out a species is going to have a LOT less resistance to lockdowns — COVID-19 is deadly but far below the rates of other diseases and that puts it in a grey area where there are a fair number of people who've had it and can say “no big deal”. Smallpox or polio were enough worse that people jumped on treatment campaigns because almost everyone with lived experience knew they didn't want it. 1. A great example appears to be Sickle Cell Anemia, where the gene responsible is thought to confer some resistance to malaria — normally this would be a disadvantage but in areas where malaria is endemic the risk of SCA is more than balanced by the risk of malaria.

pie42000 5y ago

This is what being an engineer during WW2 must have been like. Near infinite money and resources, but very tough deadlines

subsubzero 5y ago
agree, The manhattan project alone was 1% of the US GDP during its most expensive year, that would equate to $230 Billion in today's dollars.
- xxpor 5y ago
  Along these lines, for anyone who hasn't heard of it: At the Trinity test, there was a containment unit called Jumbo: https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/jumbo https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/jumbo Basically, if Trinity fizzled, they wanted to be able to recover the billion dollar plutonium core. It didn't actually end up being used, and so it was ordered destroyed. But the thing was so tough that they essentially couldn't blow it up. Normal bombs just weren't powerful enough. So now it's just sitting there at the site.
- tomatocracy 5y ago
  There are still occasionally projects which approach this relative scale today. When Boeing (temporarily) shut down 737 MAX production in early 2020 it was reported that this would reduce US GDP by between 0.3% and 0.6% (depending on the economist doing the calculation), for example.
rangoon626 5y ago
Still can't get over WWII, so everyone has to larp. Truly, imagine having your main frame of reference pretending you are in WWII, for everything else you do in life.

_2o1z 5y ago

Sadly, promise of money means "viability." Have to be realistic about these things. You wouldn't believe it, but no one wanted to make a good hip broach to fix grandma. It took athlete injury repair R&D money to make that happen.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

It’s also a boom and bust business. Once COVID has gone away I bet funding will dry up and a lot of these people will have trouble finding work.

spamizbad 5y ago

I know people who have worked on some pretty revolutionary cardiac drugs that got laid off once their project was complete. It'll still be a meatgrinder for the talent behind these drugs. The spoils are further up the food chain.

dang 5y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29120313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29120313.