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Doctors enraged at Trump administration’s botched, opaque distribution of COVID-19 treatment

Doctors enraged at Trump administration’s botched, opaque distribution of COVID-19 treatment

Axios’ Jonathan Swan is calling this a “complete breakdown in communication and coordination within the Trump administration” and it’s hard to argue otherwise. He reports that more than 32,000 doses have been shipped and delivered so far to seven states: Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia. But, he writes, an administration official tells him that many doses went to “less impacted counties.”

“Some went to the wrong places, some went to the right places,” a senior official told Swan. “We don’t know who gave the order. And no one is claiming responsibility.” So we’re off to a great start here, as usual. And it looks like Vice President Mike Pence is getting ready to throw the already teetering HHS Secretary Alex Azar under the bus. Pence supposedly ordered Azar to “take more ownership for getting remdesivir to the places where it’s needed” in a meeting Wednesday. And Azar is trying to pass that buck. “Azar distanced himself from the debacle despite the fact that one of his top officials, assistant secretary for preparedness and response Robert Kadlec, was intimately involved in the distribution plan.”

While they’re busy pointing fingers Jared Kushner is probably intercepting the doses to give them to friends of Trump. Meanwhile, the developer of the drug, Gilead, still hasn’t announced a price for the drug. One academic teams has estimated that it costs about $1 per day to make, and that’s what the company should charge. However, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) says that the company would be justified in charging as much as $4,500 for a 10-day course of treatment. Barring specific legislation preventing companies from price-gouging on treatment or vaccines for coronavirus, Gilead is probably going to go the $450/day price.

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