These days, we have seen and heard good news one after another regarding the fighting against the COVID pandemic, from successful vaccine trials to more effective COVID virus treatments becoming available. For anyone without a brainwashed mindset and with normal brain function, it is obvious such kind of speedy success in bringing effective protection and treatment to society is unprecedented and historical! This has to be attributed largely to the great efforts and grand support by the Trump administration, especially the Operation Warp Speed (OWS) program (see below). Without that, it is virtually impossible to achieve what has been achieved now, just within months since the start of the pandemic! For anyone with some knowledge and experience in drug research and development, this is nothing less than amazing and miraculous!! But we all know, for the left media (socalled 流氓媒体), nothing is more important than politics, even the human life should let its way to their politics! Since day one of the OWS debut, it has been bombarded with criticism and ridicules with the aim to kill it in the cradle.
See here to get a sense: Operation Warp Speed adviser says media criticism slows coronavirus fight
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By Jeff Brown
Announced on May 15 of this year, Operation Warp Speed (OWS) has already been one of the most successful public-private partnerships in history. And it certainly has been the fastest to produce results.
The partnership was designed to do one simple thing: develop vaccines and therapies effective against COVID-19 as soon as is humanly possible, and most certainly before the end of this year.
And it delivered.
Immediately following the election, we have already seen several major announcements of both Phase 3 clinical trial results as well as Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for emergency use authorization (EUA).
And the last three days were no exception.
On Saturday, the FDA authorized Regeneron's COVID-19 antibody therapy for treating mild to moderate cases of COVID-19 in patients 12 years of age or older. This authorization is especially useful for the most at-risk population of those older than 65 years.
Regeneron's approach is different than the vaccines in that its antibodies attach to the COVID-19 virus and prevent it from replicating. They basically help our bodies shut down the virus before it can cause too much trouble.
This authorization comes on the back of the FDA's previous authorization for Eli Lilly's antibody therapy earlier this month.
And if that weren't enough, early this morning AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford announced that their COVID-19 vaccine was as much as 90% effective in large clinical trials.
Equally important is that there were no serious safety events related to the vaccine in the trials. This news comes immediately on the back of Moderna's announcement of 94.5% efficacy and Pfizer/BioNTech's 95% efficacy.
That's not one, not two, but three effective vaccines that will soon be available in the coming weeks. And it's all the result of Operation Warp Speed.
There are now three approved therapies for COVID-19: Gilead's remdesivir, Eli Lilly's antibody therapy, and now Regeneron's antibody cocktail.
So how did this all happen? Was it just luck? Absolutely not.
It was money, plain and simple. It was an explicit commitment of funds that backstopped the development and large-scale manufacturing of the vaccines and therapies.
This allowed the biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to race ahead, at warp speed, without any risk of losing money.
Need proof? Here it is:
AstraZeneca received up to $1.2 billion of support on May 21.
Moderna received up to $483 million in support on April 16. This was later expanded to an additional $472 million for late-stage clinical development.
Moderna received up to $1.5 billion in funds to support large-scale manufacturing and delivery of its vaccine on August 11.
Pfizer received up to $1.95 billion in funds to support large-scale manufacturing of its vaccine on July 22.
Regeneron received $450 million in funds to support large-scale manufacturing of its antibody therapy on July 7.
Eli Lilly received a $375 million agreement for the sales of its COVID-19 therapy on October 28.
I remember reading so many negative articles and opinions about this public-private partnership and how so many "experts" told us that it would be years before we saw a vaccine.
They were dead wrong.
When the risk of bankruptcy was removed and all work was guaranteed, the industry didn't have anything to lose. The normal "risk versus reward" business decisions were no longer necessary. There wasn't any risk, and there was a lot of reward. And that's why it happened so quickly.
Moving at this speed wouldn't have been possible inside the bureaucracy of a government laboratory.
But in the labs of leading-edge biotechnology companies, this kind of fast innovation is not only possible but normal when there is funding available.
I hope you share my overwhelming sense of optimism.
Why? Because if we can develop vaccines and therapies within the span of six months, we can also start to tackle many of the world's other diseases that are far more dangerous than COVID-19.
And we're not going to have to wait a decade or two before the "cures" become available.
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