I am sure that there were already organic chemistry textbooks available. But, from a student's point of view, that won't matter unless the professor chooses to use this book. It has always been confusing to me why professors choose expensive options for their students.
I think the point of the article is that if some government DID spend the money to properly research this, it would take time, as in MANY years. I remember many decades ago that Vitamin E was thought to be a great supplement to reduce coronary heart disease etc. It was then studied by following 10,000 people for 4.5 years [1] and it was determined that the hint of benefit seen in observational studies turned out to be false hope. So with much time and money, it could be found that there is benefit in ivermectin. But the current state is that the FDA [2] and CDC [2] recommend AGAINST ivermectin use for treatment or prevention of SARS-COV2 infection / Covid-19.
Like the article says: science is slow, pandemics are fast.
There is a constant tension in the USA between the republican vs democratic parties as to the relative wisdom of bigger (more centralized) vs laissez faire (smaller, less regulated) government. I find it fascinating to see such experiments played out in the real world, via different approaches in other countries. I ask readers here, do you think this move by China, to redistribute wealth from the wealthy to increase standard of living of those more poor, will make them a stronger country? A more formidable adversary to the US? Or by curtailing the rewards of successful business persons, will it strip them of innovation and lead them to become weaker in comparison to USA?
When there is a problem with car manufacturing, there is a recall and life goes on. When there is a problem with vaccine manufacturing, there must be a conspiracy.
Vaccine manufacturers are indemnified, at least in the US. If car manufacturers were, I'd wonder if the powers that made it so had something to hide, too.
Although it was just analogy, are you familiar with the Ford Pinto?
The Ford Pinto had a serious safety issue where rear-ending it would lock the doors and explode. They knew about the issue but did not recall it because the cost-benefit analysis told them not-recalling was the most profitable move
So, car manufacturers weren't exactly indemnified, but the costs of doing wrong continue not to be great enough to matter.
Late reply. Viewing comments, I realize my initial comment was a bit too snarky. I was not at all trying to shield the manufacturers from being held responsible for harm from a defective product. I was mostly concerned that people would use the situation to decry all vaccines, denying their benefit. To extend the analogy of the Ford Pinto, I didn't want someone to say that because Ford made a dangerous car, that all cars were bad, that Ford was trying to kill off American citizens, and that one should never ride in or drive a car.
I find the graph that others link to [1] to be confusing at best. It seems to be tabulating *absolute harm* over all users. So if a substance has many users, it has more total harm. But then the substances are ranked in a way that seems to imply the intrinsic danger of it all by itself. Thus alcohol may cause more damage on a national level than crack cocaine. But tracking the lives of 1 user of alcohol vs 1 user of crack cocaine would show, IMHO, the cocaine use to lead to more problems.
A similar analogy would be to compare the relative danger of automobiles to atomic bombs.
A big part of life expectancy statistics includes infant mortality. If all adults live to age 100 yrs, but half of all babies born die, then the average life expectancy would be age 50 yrs. So sometimes it can be confusing to understand what is being said.
