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We are literally not talking about a wildfire in a neighbouring country. It's a human to human transmissible pandemic in "2020". And then factor in geopolitics: Indo-China border movement, compared with Chinese people travelling to countries in the west (or other countries around China). Actually you could have said this for India-Nepal, even India-Bhutan, and maybe India-Bangladesh as well; but not China and India.

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If it is impossible for India to preemptively develop an antiviral then it is crazy to think the US could. India and China are 2/3 of the world's top 3 economies (after purchasing power adjustments). Arguably China is now the US's superior. And as mentioned something like a quarter of the world's population They don't need the States to step in to fund vaccine development.

It isn't reasonable to blame the US government/big pharma for not preemptively curing all possible diseases. It isn't a sensible standard. If they can then they should, but they probably can't. If they can they should be starting in Africa rather than Asia.

If I converted the currencies correctly, India's annual government spending is about 10% of the US's.

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