COVID-19: How Long To Treatment? How Long To Vaccine? – Above the Law

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I ask my outside law firms the obvious question: Will we win at trial?

I always hear the same responses: We havent yet finished discovery. We dont know. Or: Juries are always unpredictable. Or: Ill get back to you five minutes after the jury renders a verdict.

Its exactly the way one should hedge ones bets, but its not what the questioner is looking for.

So, too, with COVID-19. Will hydroxychloroquine treat this problem? We havent yet finished the clinical trials. And, like Sergeant Schultz, we know nothing until five minutes after we see the results of the clinical trials.

Thats crap. You know something. Youre just hedging your bets, and youre afraid to speak.

So I asked a couple of physicians to go out on a limb for me anonymously, of course and tell me whats really going to happen, even though we of course dont know anything until the results come in. Heres what I heard.

COVID-19 causes serious trouble breathing physicians call it acute respiratory distress syndrome, but Im leaving the fancy words to people with medical degrees. Serious trouble breathing has been causing people to be admitted into intensive care units ever since they invented intensive care units. As you would expect, because this has been a problem for decades, physicians have been studying it for decades. But they havent yet found a cure. Theres no decent medication for the problem. Many, many drugs dont work. In the words of one recent study: We found insufficient evidence to determine with certainty whether corticosteroids, surfactants, Nacetylcysteine, statins, or betaagonists were effective at reducing mortality in people with acute respiratory distress syndrome. I dont even know what all those words mean, but you can tell it aint good.

Theres some evidence that if you turn up the ventilator a little higher, that helps patients. But, for the most part, physicians have spent decades trying to cure acute respiratory distress, and no one has come up with anything that works.

President Donald Trump says that hydroxychloroquine might work. President Trump tells us that hes a smart guy, and he feels good about hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, then says that hed be more cautious; hed wait for the results of the clinical trials to come in.

Translation: This is way too optimistic. I have to correct the president in a way that wont get me fired. Weve been working on the problem of breathing difficulties for decades, and no one has yet solved it. What are the odds that a drug that has been on the market for 50 years and is not aimed specifically at this virus is going to be the cure for COVID-19? Its conceivable, of course, but the odds are overwhelmingly against it.

Not only that: About half of the patients with COVID-19 who are put on ventilators die. Suppose a drug works. Perhaps it reduces the mortality rate from 50 percent to 40 percent of those put on ventilators, which would be a great treatment. Even with a 40 percent mortality rate, we still have a heck of a problem on our hands. Scientists hit singles and doubles more often than they hit home runs; its very unlikely that were going to unearth a miracle.

How about the other ideas for treating COVID-19? Theyre interesting, but theyre all crapshoots. Dont count on em.

How about a vaccine? Thats far more likely. As Fauci said, proving that a vaccine is safe and effective will take a year to 18 months. A year to 18 months is a long time to wait.

After the vaccine is developed, it will not be 100 percent effective. Perhaps it will be 70 or 80 percent effective.

So how will this all play out?

COVID-19 will not disappear. It exists, and it will exist for a long, long time.

But COVID-19 appears to be seasonal. The virus appears to spread far less in warm weather.

Thus: We now have flu season every year. Flu season arrives in the winter. Some people choose to get a vaccine, which is not 100 percent effective. Some people choose not to get a vaccine. Every year, the flu kills tens of thousands of people.

Starting two years from now, we will have COVID-19 season every year. It will arrive in the winter. Some people will choose to get a vaccine, which will not be 100 percent effective. Some people will choose not to get a vaccine. If enough people take the vaccine to create herd immunity, then relatively few people will die from COVID-19. Otherwise, every year, COVID-19 will kill tens of thousands of people.

And well live with it, just as we live with the flu, and people dying in car accidents and plane crashes, and the many other deaths that regularly occur in the background noise of society.

But dont expect a miracle cure in the next month or two.

The jury wont come back by then.

MarkHerrmannspent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author ofThe Curmudgeons Guide to Practicing LawandDrug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy(affiliate links). You can reach him by email atinhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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COVID-19: How Long To Treatment? How Long To Vaccine? - Above the Law