COVID-19 Vaccine Development as Reality Show

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Health at 4/20/2020 07:26:00 PM

This pharma reality show could use a loudmouthed, orange-faced fatty whose tagline is "You're FDA disapproved!"

Almost every conceivable activity has been turned into a reality show: (90s rap star) Vanilla Ice Goes Amish...a real-life 'Lord of the Flies' scenario where young'uns run society in Kid Nation...the list goes on and on. The age of Trump has transformed even normally staid and dignified human endeavors into, well, reality shows--and you could very plausibly argue that he's turned the entire USA into Kid Nation, but I digress.

Given Trump's incessant search for a COVID-19 miracle cure to save his political fortunes, we didn't have to wait too long before someone came up with--you guessed it--a reality show about developing a COVID-19 vaccine. Now, vaccine development is not something to be trifled with since the amounts spent and the tortuous path to commercialization--ensuring efficacy and safety--are hardly frivolous. Or maybe that was how vaccine development was like prior to November 8, 2016. Open up your LinkedIn account if you have one and you'll probably have a paid (spam) message from Johnson & Johnson hawking the program above. But it's hardly the only offender touting early-stage drugs to gain Trump's attention:

President Donald Trump’s habit of touting potential coronavirus cures during daily White House briefings has changed the game for drugmakers, who are dropping their usually secretive ways to aggressively court public opinion.

From Gilead releasing anecdotal results on the drug remdesivir to Johnson & Johnson’s new reality series on the making of its experimental vaccine, pharmaceutical companies are seeking to shape the narrative like never before. The PR push could raise false hope about therapies that don't end up working, or even put pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to approve drugs and vaccines whose effectiveness isn't clear.

Gilead’s unusual move last week to publish data from compassionate use of remdesivir raised eyebrows among researchers. To a trained eye, the information revealed little about the experimental drug’s safety or effectiveness — and Gilead has multiple clinical trials underway that are set to produce more definitive results in just a few weeks.

This Wild West approach to promoting drugs and vaccines this early in the development process is a dramatic reversal for the pharmaceutical industry, which is normally guarded about the information it releases about ongoing clinical trials and the FDA approval process.

Why has normal caution been thrown out the window? A quick stock bump helps in this time of depressed equity valuations. Ask Gilead. With pharma companies of all sizes trying to conserve cash, having Trump trumpet your drug instead of having to publicize it yourself helps, too. Still, you have to be very brave indeed since the drug may fail to make it through FDA trials--like 86% of them do.  Obviously, all potential COVID-19 vaccines and treatments are early-stage drugs whose futures are uncertain. That includes Gilead's remdesivir. 

Then again, maybe we are all TV infomercial hawkers now--pharma companies notwithstanding. Ours is such a dissipated age.