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US Secures World Stock of Key Covid-19 Drug Remdesivir
US Secures World Stock of Key Covid-19 Drug Remdesivir:
No other country will be able to buy remdesivir, which can help recovery from Covid-19, for next three months at least
The US has bought up virtually all the stocks for the next three months of one of the two drugs proven to work against Covid-19, leaving none for the UK, Europe or most of the rest of the world.
Experts and campaigners are alarmed both by the US unilateral action on remdesivir and the wider implications, for instance in the event of a vaccine becoming available. The Trump administration has already shown that it is prepared to outbid and outmanoeuvre all other countries to secure the medical supplies it needs for the US.
“They’ve got access to most of the drug supply [of remdesivir], so there’s nothing for Europe,” said Dr Andrew Hill, senior visiting research fellow at Liverpool University.
Remdesivir, the first drug approved by licensing authorities in the US to treat Covid-19, is made by Gilead and has been shown to help people recover faster from the disease. The first 140,000 doses, supplied to drug trials around the world, have been used up. The Trump administration has now bought more than 500,000 doses, which is all of Gilead’s production for July and 90% of August and September.
US to buy 500,000 Remdesivir Coronavirus Treatment Courses at $2,340 Each
US to buy 500,000 remdesivir coronavirus treatment courses at $2,340 each:
The US Department of Health and Human Services has agreed to buy 500,000 remdesivir treatment courses, in the wake of clinical trials revealing the drug can help patients recover more quickly from the coronavirus. A five-day course will cost $2,340,or $3,120 for commercially insured patients, biotech firm Gilead Sciences said.
Early last month, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency authorization for remdesivir to be used in cases of COVID-19 when patients were "hospitalized with severe disease," shortly after the drug showed "clear-cut positive effect" in a US trial.
[...] "To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it," HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a release.
[...] Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day addressed the higher price for private insurers, according to health site Stat, by noting that there are "always two prices" for a drug in the US. In an open letter, he acknowledged that the company's work on remdesivir is "far from done."
[...] He also said that countries in the developing world will get the drug at greatly reduced prices, through generic manufacturers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 06 2020, @12:04AM (25 children)
I had some neighbors out in the country, for a short time. After they moved in they decided the mail should be delivered to their gate, not to the boxes at the start of the private road. Very persistent, very "hard negotiators" those new neighbors were - they "made" the post office deliver to their mailbox at the gate... they won, that one. Small town, word gets around - they didn't win another one for the next two years, when they moved out.
It's a small world, word gets around.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @12:43AM (4 children)
How petulant of them to want what pretty much every other american expects out of the post office unless you live in a apartment complex. HOW PETULANT! How DARE they expect the best out of the post office.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @01:48AM (1 child)
What? I expect my mail in the mailbox, not delivered to my doorstep. Entitlement is the worst affliction of the ignorant and arrogant.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 06 2020, @05:11PM
When I moved into the City of Miami (1992) the standard garbage pickup was at the back door of the house... kinda weird at first having garbage men walking into your back yard once a week, but after getting used to that it was a real let down when they discontinued the service and made the homeowners put the garbage on the street. In the Miami area I think it's still standard to have mail delivered to-the-doorstep, where you don't even have to step out in the rain to collect it from your box, your box is usually under the front porch awning. This country screwball was fighting to move his mailbox 1/2 mile down a dirt road, when his house was another 1/4 mile down his dirt driveway... I didn't see the point, honestly.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 06 2020, @02:20AM (1 child)
It was (and still is) a privately maintained road, dirt, the post office isn't required to drive on private roads to deliver mail - I'm still surprised he made that happen.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @04:34PM
Probably capitualted just to shut the guy up. Quite common actually, but it gives assholes a fake sense of power instead of a real gratefullness for the kindness of others.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 06 2020, @04:08PM (19 children)
I did say it wasn't particularly diplomatic, didn't I? Dude has a simple way of looking at his responsibilities but they are his responsibilities. They also absolutely hold primacy over having people like us.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 06 2020, @05:06PM (18 children)
I guess it's all about time horizons - if all you care about is the next 3 months, sure: balls to the wall, take no prisoners, me, Me, ME, ME!, ME!!!!! - that's all that matters.
A measured approach, even just sharing 30% of the supply with the rest of the world, would go a long way toward securing future cooperation as compared to just stiffing them all.
The most successful and longest lasting victories of history weren't the ones where the "victors" kicked the defeated when they were down. Lasting victory involves either complete annihilation of the enemy (which often comes at a tremendous cost), or recognition of the other side as equals and helping them to rebuild after the conflict is resolved. Personally, I'm not ready to pay the price of nuking the rest of the world, and I doubt that we'd like living on "our side" much in the aftermath.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @08:07PM (1 child)
annihilation via assimilation is another route, FYI
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday July 07 2020, @03:02AM
Does that cover self-annihilation?
New figures suggest "only" 186,000 dead by October 1.. [reason.com] so not enough to qualify (yet)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 07 2020, @01:24PM (15 children)
I don't particularly care if we have it or not. Coronaids does not worry me. Like at all. A hundred thousand deaths out of about eight billion over half a year isn't even a rounding error.
But world opinion matters nothing to me either. Again, at all. If you have more than most people, for any reason, a lot of them are going to hate you. Works on an individual scale and even more certainly on a global scale.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 07 2020, @02:12PM (14 children)
https://www.google.com/search?q=total+covid+deaths+worldwide [google.com]
Looking like 540K / 7.8B by the time you read this.
The more frightening figure is 540K / 11.6M confirmed cases which would extrapolate up to 363M deaths in the next couple of years if left to run unchecked. Personally, I believe that 11.6M number to translate to 200M+ total cases, so, it's not quite so scary to me - but nobody really has a good handle on that.
I submitted an article (declined by the Soylent editors) which estimates that the early confirmed cases stats were approximately 1/80th of the total cases - that's the highest credible estimate I've seen so far, but even at that rate we'll be looking at 5 million deaths before this finishes making the rounds - 10x the "normal" annual global death toll for influenza.
I'd consider novel threats (like COVID) "significant" - above rounding error - when they start to exceed the global suicide rate, which I believe is running around 1.5 million per year now. Without management, it's pretty clear that COVID is capable of beating that number.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 07 2020, @02:49PM (13 children)
Confirmed cases = someone came in and tested to have the virus active in their system. And every time they bother to check for it, the number of people with antibodies but no virus is way the hell higher. As in 10x higher. And that's still a very underrepresentative sample because it does not include anyone who didn't feel the need to go in and get tested for antibodies because they'd already had it and gotten over it.
So, yeah, that is colossally incorrect math in your extrapolation.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 07 2020, @03:37PM (12 children)
The so-called data is set up to be a straw man, with tests that are pushed through the process so they're more questionable than normal, and then the testing rates are still laughable even months down the line like we are, my county has 1M pop, we've tested less than 8000 and we're high for the state.
Of those 8000 tested (and what's the self-selection criteria for which 0.8% of the population has chosen to get tested?) we're showing something under 7% antibodies, as indicated by aforementioned less than reliable tests.
The death numbers may be fudged, but much less than all the sketchy test numbers. We're on track to credit COVID with more deaths than suicide in 2020 - it's already significant, and management clearly matters to outcome. Now, is management causing more damage than good? That's going to be a tough one to call for decades to come, management certainly is causing society to explore some options that haven't been seriously tried, like telecommuting, which may do more good than all the COVID containment ever could. Our auto insurance is already down by 40% - if that translates to 40% less deaths on the highway, that's 14,000 lives saved in the U.S alone - not to mention non-fatal injuries (like my father and his wife who were laid up for a year of rehab and permanently damaged...) Then there's the obvious: BUT MUH JERBS! counter arguments...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 07 2020, @05:03PM (11 children)
S'basically what I'm saying, yeah. The jerbs thing is pretty crucial though. There's a tipping point where it starts dropping like a teenage guy's fly when he has pornhub time and doesn't recover within our lifetimes no matter what anyone does. Short of that there's still some pretty terrible and quite deadly consequences to be had though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 07 2020, @05:42PM (8 children)
My grandparents lived through the great depression - definitely mentally scarred them for life, took "cheap Scotsmen" to a whole new level, but even that only lasted 10 years, and the world economy was practically roaring by the 1950s (circumstances vary, of course) - I plan to live for at least 20 more years... maybe 30 if I'm having fun.
There are all kinds of solutions to the jerbs - for example: we're already pumping enough tax dollars into corporate welfare to fund UBI...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:41PM (7 children)
No, we're not. Not even close. UBI is defined as enough to live, though not well, off of. Even if the entire nation had a cost of living like that of a broke-dick state like OK or TN, that comes to around a quarter of a trillion dollars. Per month. That's approaching three times what the government currently takes in in taxes in a year for just that program. And it would have to be spent every single year. So you're either going to have to raise taxes on your citizens who don't say "fuck it" and live off of UBI (you know, the ones actually contributing to society) by more than they're getting back in UBI or you're going to have to deficit spend at levels that will have the dollar as worthless as Venezuelan currency within a decade.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:29PM (6 children)
Let's do a family of 4 in Tennessee: 3 bedroom house $1134, food $1100, utilities and incidentals $600 - make that round at $725 per person per month x 350 million is right on your quarter trillion per month. Now - take the Yang approach to funding: VAT on the $3T+ of monthly consumer spending, for 0.25T, that's a VAT rate of 8% - oh, but now cost of living just jumped 8%, so let's just boost that VAT to 10%, and increase the UBI from $725 to $800 per month per person. Funded - zero deficit spending. People say "fuckit" and quit work, their spending is still taxed, the program doesn't lose income. Personally, I'd rather not be "served" by people who consider themselves slaves to the system - let the people who want jobs, who want more than $800 per month and what that can buy, let them ask "do you want fries with that?"
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 12 2020, @02:11PM (5 children)
I don't care who hands me my burger but I do care about being forced under threat of imprisonment to pay someone to play XBox and smoke pot all day. Fuck that. They can get off their ass and contribute to society or starve unless they have a damned good reason they're unable to.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 12 2020, @04:14PM (4 children)
Well, see, there's the difference. I've been on the handing out the burgers side of the counter, and when the burger hander had a bad attitude you are subjecting yourself to risk of disease - whether intentional or unintentional on the part of the burger hander, and you can say they're under threat of imprisonment if they endanger burger buying customers like that, but experience says that actual enforcement of health standards is rare, at best.
Also, what's your feeling about sales tax and all that it pays for? That's what VAT is - tax on spending. Don't want to pay the tax? Don't spend. Very few people go to prison over sales tax issues.
Now, paying a 10% VAT so that some people can play XBox and smoke pot all day - I don't see how that affects me at all. Oh, wait, I'm paying 10% VAT - well, I'm also getting $800 per month per person, so $3200 per month in my house. I sure as fuck don't spend $32,000 per month on VAT taxed items - so that sounds like a win to me. Do you spend more than $8000 per month per person on VAT taxed items? According to our consumer spending stats there are people out there who do, and as far as I'm concerned they're the only ones who should be crying foul on a proposal like this.
Also, anybody who is bitching about a 10% tax on their spending above $96,000 per person per year can go fuck themselves, as far as I'm concerned.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 13 2020, @03:05PM (3 children)
The feelings I have about sales tax are about what my feelings would be about having a hangnail on a foot that I just got shot in. It's not currently a big enough pain to warrant any attention.
Which should set off warning bells of bullshit math in your head.
Yeah, because your financial happiness is based on what others have. More precisely on what folks who have more than you have. They have more so they must not deserve what they earn, eh? Envy, pure and simple. Sin taxes are supposed to be taxes on the one doing the sinning not other folks, just FYI. If you want more than you have, put in the effort necessary to get it. You know, just like most everyone who has more than you had to do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 13 2020, @03:38PM (2 children)
Well, in most areas, sales taxes are already running in the neighborhood of 10%, so a 10% VAT would be like two hangnails, and still less than those commie Euro states that are all obviously dying a terrible death from overtaxation (not.)
I think it's more upside down than that - those in the yachts and private jets, and more commonly in high-end real-estate and new luxury cars, might be less secure in their self-defined superiority if the rabble weren't all struggling to keep a simple roof over their heads, so they obviously won't be choosing to pay a VAT that has basically no impact on their quality of life, other than to dramatically raise the quality of life of so many others.
Where I and my ilk stand, this would be a more or less revenue neutral proposition, we might get a bit more UBI than we pay in increased taxes, or not- I really don't care - we're doing O.K. and I'm not looking for a boost out of this. As for my children who don't have any readily apparent sources of income they can "earn" - this would be the difference between constantly having advocates demonstrate their "lack of means" and "disability" to receive basically the same money that UBI would provide without all that wonderful bureaucratic overhead.
You would think that, wouldn't you? I believe this is a demonstration of the difference between median and mean. We're usually running around quoting median income, median expenses, etc. but, when you look at average consumer spending with the top 10% are doing something like 90% of the spending, a VAT on all spending can return some impressive figures for the average.
U.S. consumer spending is reported at something like $3T per month, just under $10K per person per month - clearly we don't all spend that kind of money, but the ones that do don't mind spending it. If I skimmed the tables correctly, it looks like about half goes on "housing" - which in my father's case would be a fine 4000 sq ft home in Georgia that he hasn't set foot in in 4 months, plus an equally pricey "beach house" in Florida for him, the wife, and two cats. Gasp! Horror! A tax on housing expense?!?!? As if there aren't already property taxes on real estate. Tap 10% of that money stream, give it back on a per-capita basis instead of a per-dollar-spent basis, and you've solved the problem of housing for the poor.
10% was good enough for God in the Middle ages, I don't see why it's too much for the modern world.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 13 2020, @04:57PM (1 child)
You do know that we're nearly the highest taxed non-communist, non-anarchist nation already if you add up all the taxes we pay, yeah?
Which is really beside the point since you're never going to convince me it's my duty to pay someone to play XBox and smoke pot by saying it's affordable. I don't care if Sally Struthers comes on and shows me pictures of emaciated potheads with flies around their bloodshot eyes while they play pay-to-win games on their XBox, their support is not my responsibility. Now if you want to talk about figuring out the least burdensome way to ensure folks are paid commensurately to their contribution to society, that's another matter entirely.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 13 2020, @05:37PM
What I'm talking about is the least burdensome way to ensure folks get what they need to live. When you make people poor enough, their cost of living actually goes up. They no longer have cheap access to the broader markets, they're forced to take what they can get at "convenience pricing." They also end up in expensive crisis situations that are only a crisis because they don't have a the few bucks it takes to buy a way out of the problem - like having a blowout on the freeway because they can't afford to replace a worn out tire, and let's not devolve into healthcare maintenance vs ER discussions...
Means testing, disability testing, funds use oversight and audits, those are pure burden. One test: are you a citizen? Yes: here's your UBI, No: welcome to the U.S. - stay and work as long as you can afford to, most illegals will be leaving by choice: no walls required. With a "real" UBI in place, you could erase minimum wage - let the employers convince their workers they want the job however they like - the living wage is already taken care of.
It's not so simple, there's legions on high levels of disability that would require continued support "in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed" unless you want to turn vast tracts of Appalachia and similar places into new ghost towns. But, I would consider it a huge step forward - not only because our people are suffering less, but because I don't have to live in a country with a bunch of suffering people - they're more expensive to police and imprison than they are to provide a basic living for in the community.
You're worried that somebody might be smoking pot and playing X-Box on your dime? We're already funding much much worse in the current system.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 07 2020, @07:40PM (1 child)
Oooh, just had a thought for you and Kanye's campaign: trickle up economics, let the rich get their money from all the fool on UBI who just piss it away.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:42PM
That's fucking funny. I would laugh my entire ass off.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.