I'm not so sure it's busy-work. There's a prioritisation issue. There are so many diseases, and many more proposed treatments. Without a good reason to jump th

I'm not so sure it's busy-work. There's a prioritisation issue. There are so many diseases, and many more proposed treatments. Without a good reason to jump the queue there are bound to be delays. There's also the efficacy testing issue. Your phase 2/phase 3 test subjects are mostly young european males (Uni-students). Without deliberately exposing them, how likely are they (and the control group) get infected? It could take years for a statistically significant number of the control group to catch the disease. When there's a pandemic on you might hit those numbers in a few weeks.