Alphabet profits are up 68% because people are forced online. If there is cheap and effective COVID treatment, the world goes back to normal. Its a huge conflict of interest. Same goes for Facebook and the other tech companies.
By contrast, look at Apple's muted COVID efforts. They want people out in the real world, mobile, taking photos, comparing expensive hardware and living life.
And then there's the issue that look how many choices there are? And it's still pretty unclear which of all of those is most efficient and how efficient exactly are they, so if you get Covid what do you do? Take 35 different cheap and maybe slightly effective drugs together in a big cocktail?
The other issue is they all mention requiring early treatment, but tests and other ways to detect Covid early aren't readily available or cheap, so do you now take this giant cocktail of mixed drugs every time you have a cold in case it turns out to be early onset Covid? Do you just take them all on a regular basis as a preventative?
My current personal assessment is that the vaccine still absolutely outshines all of these in every single dimension. I really wouldn't say we've found an actual cheap treatment that is truly effective and realistically easy to implement quite yet. While it does seem that we've found multiple vaccines that are.
P.S.: Side note, that website you link is the most random thing, they don't divulge anything about who they are, what's funding it, what's behind them, I only found an FAQ saying: Trust us we're a bunch of smart PHDs not looking for fame and remaining anonymous. Now I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they are truly well meaning expert in the know, but I also find it sketchy as hell, why not actually disclose who you are and how the operation is financed?
This is mostly a self imposed US problem. In many parts of Europe, you can get a rapid covid test in corner stores for 1-2 euros
Also, I thought that even with symptoms the false positive rate was about 30% for rapid tests. If so, just that would possibly offset the effect of the best currently known treatment which based on the OPs website is fluvoxamine and the study here says a 32% reduction. But if about 30% of people who have Covid think they don't because of the false positive rate of the rapid test, they won't take the drug early enough and that could offset the effects.
And there's all the other issues I brought up too. I still feel even with cheap rapid tests, I'm not sure those are effective and practical enough to bet on them over vaccines.
I absolutely think it's great as a complimentary and multi-targeted strategy to fight Covid though. And in some countries without access to vaccines, if fluvoxamine is available, it definitely seems like it can help save some lives, and that's a great thing. It just seems far from a panacea, while vaccines honestly are feeling very close to be a panacea.
I think what's more interesting to me with these, is that they can possibly lead to an understanding of the mechanisms at play that create or mitigate hospitalization, and maybe with that understanding we could pin point some new drugs that targets those more aggressively. Definitely hoping to see more research there.
I don't know if they are subsidized.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fringe-doctors-gr...
It's also worth noting that the site/group has been banned from Twitter for spreading misinformation about treatment options.
People don't think like this except in movies. Any effort to do so would be immediately obvious to the people tasked with implementing it. And people don't keep secrets.
In a better world all rulers and experts would be well-motivated and seen to be well-motivated. In practice some of them do 'get with the program' neither because they are convinced of is correctness nor in a spirit of hand-rubbing glee, but out of mundane fear of losing the esteem of their peers.