And here we have a beautiful, chaotic clusterfuck of an intersection between capitalism, evidence-based medicine, shitty politics, and typical American CYA practice highlighted potentially in one of the most recently memorable absurdist spotlights.

I'd been ree-ing skepticism ever since ACTT-1. When a publisher-funded study belies that marginal of a clinical benefit (and further makes sketchy claims like "trending towards significance" re: mortality), it's a safe bet that the post-marketing data to follow will be even more underwhelming (if it even "whelms" at all). I don't think I could have possibly been less shocked when the SOLIDARITY pre-print made the rounds, abolishing even the demonstrated benefit with the time to recovery. I'm sure Gilead knew it was coming too.

But, as has been stated in numerous other places in this thread, it is still technically indicated and an approved treatment for COVID-19, that they are now able to charge an abhorrent amount more than the cost of production (reminder that the drug molecule is around a decade old at this point), what with their paper-thin excuse of charging a fraction of the average cost of admission per day per treatment course. The amount my facility has spent on this drug in the past month alone could have paid my salary for the next 1-2 years. Funny, that, given how short we are on PharmDs in my department.

So who were the real winners here? Gilead, their executives, and their shareholders. And I'm sure they knew that by the time post-approval data started hitting the print, they'd be far and away long gone, laughing all the way to the bank.

As a wise man once said: "We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death."