A variety of reasons, in roughly descending order of guestimated importance:
- The early focus was on "flattening the curve" to preserve hospital and ventilator capacity, and so insufficient attention was paid to early-stage therapeutics.
- Hydroxychloroquine was unsuccessfully tried as a late-stage therapeutic, and this politicized episode made the healthcare establishment afraid of an embarrassing replay.
- Therapeutics don't appreciably reduce R0 compared to a vaccine. Treatment is super important, but curtailing exponential spread is super-duper-important.
- Risk-averse government bureaucrats didn't think to waive the rule that Emergency Use Authorization for vaccines is only allowed if no therapeutics are available.
- Risk-averse medical bureaucrats are indoctrinated to oppose any therapy that hasn't been proven effective, particularly in randomized control trials.
- The pharmaceutical industry has no profit incentive to re-purpose off-patent drugs for new indications.
- The Orange Man was promoting therapeutics, and we can't give him a win.
- It was harder to recruit early-stage trial subjects because 1) they're not in hospital beds and 2) the pandemic ebbed in summer.
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