Why Did We Fumble COVID-19 Therapeutics?

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.