Political leaders should focus entirely on developing a drug to treat the coronavirus or it will remain a problem long-term, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a series of tweets on Sunday.
“We should put everything we have into developing an effective medicine,” he wrote on Twitter. “It should be a coordinated, deliberate, urgent industrial policy. There's no room for sluggish political leadership when it comes to this urgent priority. Everything depends on our rapid success.”
He emphasized in another tweet that “If we'd taken certain steps in winter - and recognized #coronavirus had characteristics we always feared in its balance between transmissibility and lethality - we may be in different position now. Let's not have to say in the fall we wish we'd done more in the spring."
Gottlieb warned that without effective drugs the virus will "probably become epidemic in the southern hemisphere and return to us in September.”
He added it will “circulate in the background of society" and timid customers won't entirely return, so "We'll be operating an 80% economy.”
Gottlieb also stressed that “We need a massive surveillance system to detect spread early so we can rely and case-based strategies to isolate sick people and close contacts. But we also need a drug. And there are only a handful far enough along in development that can be good enough to make a real difference.”
He emphasized, however, that “These drugs need to prove they're safe and effective for intended use. The worst outcome would be fools gold,” adding that although these drugs won't be an absolute solution, “they can be a bridge to vaccine and interim step powerful enough to restore confidence; save lives. Coupled to tools of public health, with a drug in our bag, we can make #COVID19 a manageable threat.”
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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