The Remdesivir 'Anger'

This week, Remdesivir (the Ebola drug) got into the news.  For Ebola 'help'....most scientists came to a decision that it marginally helped.  However, they came in the past three months to discover that it had benefits for Covid-19.

It came out this week that Trump's team had gone to the company and made this massive deal, and pretty much limited the ability of the Germans/EU to buy the drug.  So there was bitter talk for two days over the evil-Trump situation. In their mind, it should have been evenly distributed out....so everyone got a bit of the drug.

I sat and looked over this entire discussion and there's this one odd thing that stands out.

The FDA (the US drug folks) sat and approved Remdesivir for use with Covid-19 back on 1 May 2020. 

The German RKI folks?  Around the third week of June....they approved the drug for the treatment. Seven weeks had passed.

The EU drug folks? 25 June was the approval date.

You see....the minute that the FDA approved the drug, the US effort to deal with the company who makes it (Gilead) started. 

The seven weeks that RKI or the EU drug-approval folks spent in their approach?  No talk or negotiations with the Gilead company.  It appears that they only started talks after the EU did their approval.  I'm guessing that the company sat there and tried to be professional about it....but they weren't first in line or talking over a deal for the whole month of May. 

This grumbling of the Germans and EU?  Maybe in their mind justified....but they weren't on the same pace of things as the Americans.

Then we come to this one simple fact....this is not a vaccine.  This is the treatment drug, if you come down with Covid-19.  Then we come to the price-tag....$2,340 for a five-day treatment.  It won't be cheap.  But because of the negotiations done, and the bulk buy....the US gets a slightly different (lesser) price scale.  Also part of the deal, 127 less-wealthy countries got a great deal by Gilead, because of the pricing that the Americans paid.  Their pricing will be roughly 15-to-20 percent of what the average American will pay.

But then we come to the obvious science part of this.  China now says that you can get only two to three months of immunity from Covid-19.  If true (I'm skeptical)....then this will be coming around in various waves in the future, and unless the vaccine business works (I'm even more skeptical of this talk)....you might be dependent on Remdesivir long-term. 

So the criticism here?  Maybe it's a lesson learned....if you wait to make a decision, you might not be the first guy in line. 

UK-BREXIT folks would make this obvious statement about the EU in this case....their process of handling anything is long and intense.  No one in the EU shadow makes decisions without a massive amount of time, talk, and effort being part of the landscape.