RE: The Daily Telegraph Today9 May 2020 13:00
Telegraph part 2
First, the intense race to come up with a vaccine or effective drug will create new ways of working, collaborations and shortcuts that can be used against other diseases as well. Some of the drugs giants are already getting together on a vaccine – look at the tie-up between GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi for example, which GSK chief executive Emma Walmsley described as "unprecedented" – but once they get used to working in new ways it will spill over into all kinds of other research and products as well. Under pressure, change that might have taken a decade can suddenly happen overnight.
Next, regulations may well be re-invented. Over decades, and for perfectly understandable reasons, we have demanded higher and higher standards for new medicines. But perhaps it has gone too far, or at least not been designed in the right way? There is a fascinating debate underway, for example, about whether "challenge vaccines", where volunteers are inoculated and then deliberately exposed to a virus, rather than waiting for that to happen naturally, should be allowed.
We might feel uneasy about that, but if it speeds up getting a vaccine by six months, then arguably it is worth it (after all, we don’t mind young men volunteering to fight wars for us, and that is a lot riskier, so what’s the problem with them volunteering for vaccine trials?). The important point is this. We may decide in the next few months that the way we test medicines needs a radical overhaul, because faster testing is the only way out of this mess - and that will change the way the industry operates permanently.
Third, spending will be increased. Whatever else happens, governments are going to be spending much more on their healthcare systems, drug development and preventative medicine. We have just discovered what a massive cost an epidemic can impose on an economy. Set against the trillions in lost output, and in extra government debt, whatever we spend on medical care, and on research in particular, is going to seem modest by comparison.
Finally, the operating environment is about to get a lot easier. We are not going to be hearing a lot about greedy "big pharma" over the next few years. If a few companies make a lot of money from a Covid-19 vaccine, no one is going to mind in the least. Indeed, this might be the moment for regulatory change. Legislators might decide to allow patents to last for more than 20 years (perhaps in exchange for lower prices) to encourage investment and innovation – it is a little hard, to put it mildly, to understand why the copyright in a book lasts for 70 years after the death of an author, but the inventor of a drug only has exclusive rights to it for 20.
Right now, investors are backing businesses in the race for Covid-19 treatments. Any company that gets a vaccine or a drug into Phase II or III trials is already witnessing a sharp spike in its share price. And, of course, any breakthrough in treating the virus is going to
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