That's the equivalent of 'a mere matter of engineering'. Developing anti-viral drugs is hard, for plenty of viruses we have vaccines but no anti-virals, for RNA based viruses (which mutate rapidely) anti-virals are even harder.
Thank you. I'm not aware of the complications of developing an anti-viral for this disease (and I'm not going to go into the debate around existing anti-virals). I did not intend to be dismissive of the effort involved. I'm coming at it from a place of real frustration.
I can't see how this pandemic ends without an effective treatment.
We missed the 'golden window' early on in the epidemic when (for instance like SARS-CoV) it could have been contained. But now we have a real problem. The big difference between SARS-CoV and COVID-19 is that the former first gives you symptoms and then makes you contagious and with COVID-19 it is the other way around. That simple fact alone possible made it impossible to contain this. But we never really tried (except for a very few countries).
