Covid Update
Daily case counts are now down to June 2020 levels. Outbreaks in Michigan & New Jersey have subsided and almost 40% of Americans are fully vaccinated. 40% is probably nowhere near herd immunity, but it still helps tremendously.
The 7-day moving average for deaths is down to about 600 per day from a peak of 3300/day in January. Wrap your head around that...2700 fewer Americans are dying from Covid EVERY DAY compared to January.
In a few weeks, the daily case counts & deaths should be the lowest they've been since the beginning of the pandemic. Amazing.
Vaccine Freedom
CDC has said it's ok for vaccinated people to go mask-free indoors. That's great news as long as you can trust the people you're indoors with - but of course you usually can't. Those vaccine-declining freeloaders are highly unlikely to be the types of people who willingly wear masks indoors.
Pharma R&D Spending
If you spend any time on the pharma/biotech Twitter, you will doubtlessly come across the people who chastise pharmaceutical companies for spending more on marketing than on R&D. Not clear when that became the metric by which to measure a company. If they're spending a crapload on R&D who cares what they do with the rest? Would you rather they give it to executives?
According to The Economist, Big Pharma spends roughly 25% of revenue on R&D, whereas Big Software spends about 15% and Big Tech spend about 3%. Yet strangely no one is bringing out the torches demanding Apple or Microsoft spend 10x more on R&D.
But all this big pharma R&D anger excludes the startups who have $0 in revenue and spend tens of millions on R&D. When big pharma acquires them for $200M after the startup has already spent, say, $100M on R&D, it goes onto the big pharma balance sheet as an acquisition, not R&D. But they're still reaping the rewards of that $100M in R&D and paying handsomely for it.
People are always going to find something to complain about. Invented a drug that saves lives? Too expensive. Invented a drug to end a pandemic? Why didn't you cure every other viral disease. Advertising to try to sell your product? You shouldn't.
It's reasonable to question whether marketing prescription drugs to the general public should be legal. It's not reasonable to suggest spending 25% of revenue on R&D is somehow not good enough.
Second Shot Delay
A new study has showed that for people over 80 years old, delaying dose #2 of an mRNA Covid vaccine could increase peak antibody levels by 3.5 times. The study was conducted in the UK once they started delaying second doses to ensure wider coverage of initial doses. Given the fact that this patient population has weaker than normal immune systems, it may be that the usual 3-4 weeks is just not long enough for their initial immune response to fully ramp up. Interesting, but this result absolutely cannot be extrapolated down to younger folks. A separate study for younger people would have to be conducted.
