At-home treatment

Could this be our wonder drug?

EARLIER this week, it was all the rage (and we mean it) when somebody figured out that drug companies seek to make profits. As if keeping their businesses thriving would benefit the rest of us.

Some enterprising outfit called the People Vaccine Alliance pulled the paperwork and told the press that Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute for their vaccines. And, said outfit complains, the world’s poorest countries remain largely unvaccinated.

Well, if you’re going there, Arkansas remains largely unvaccinated. And just for the record, the developed world is very much helping undeveloped nations. This country, in particular, has pledged a billion doses to poorer countries. (“To beat the pandemic here, we need to beat it everywhere.”—President Joe Biden.)

And one of the best ways to get more doses in the pipeline is to make it profitable to somebody.

But the headlines screamed: Drug companies make $1,000 a second for their vaccines! For some of us, that’s good news—perhaps great news. Because it means those companies will have cash on hand to develop the next vaccine to fight the next pandemic.

If anybody figures out a way to do this sort of thing better, we’re all ears. So is the rest of mankind.

IN LESS frustrating news, Pfizer announced this week that it would ask regulators in the U.S. to authorize its pill for covid-19, a treatment that could be taken at home to fight the disease. As winter sets in, numbers of cases are beginning to creep up again, and some reports say that boosters might become common and necessary, like the annual flu shot. An anti-covid dose in pill form would be a wonder drug.

“Pfizer’s pill has been shown in testing to significantly cut the rate of hospitalizations and deaths among people with coronavirus infections,” the wire reports say.

Not just Pfizer is working on this. That company is actually a little behind. For drug company Merck already has a pill being screened by the FDA. Some smaller drugmakers are in on the action, too.

Once somebody contracts covid and it’s confirmed, he may be more likely to take help in a pill form. By the time symptoms show up, it would become obvious to even the most anti-vax advocate that this thing is no hoax. And there have been heart-breaking stories in the papers over the last year of people being wheeled into hospitals who have asked nurses for the vaccine, only to be told it’s too late now. But a pill would revive hope. As The New York Times’ Bret Stephens put it the other day, a pill could turn this thing from a plague into a nuisance. (We learned this week that Mr. Stephens is currently in quarantine with a breakthrough case. With no sense of taste or smell. Just in time for Thanksgiving. We wish him well.)

Deep down in these stories, below the headlines, subheads and ledes, we note this: Both Pfizer and Merck have made deals with the UN to allow generic drugmakers to make these pills for nearly 100 poorer countries, which don’t have an American FDA to go through. One would imagine allowing that would cut into profits substantially.

But those companies can afford it, thanks to their business models. How about we let them continue without complaining overmuch? It seems to be working. For us all.