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The sprint to stop an epidemic - Corona virus

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash


I was reading about the developing efforts for a vaccine reflected through the stock market. It happened to have a few shares of the VIR Biotechnology (VIR) company when the chase of finding a vaccine started. It was an incredible ride, even for a guy accustomed with the up-and-downs of the shares in a company and the political game played when companies are bought or acquired. Just for illustration, please see the chart of this stock for a three month period.


There is excitement, at the beginning  of March about the possibility of developing a vaccine for Corona virus, and the stock surpasses 70$/share when before is was lingering under the 17$/share threshold. There are many companies in the race - Moderna (MRNA), Gilead (GILD), Inovio Pharmaceuticals (INO) and probably a few of them will find a virus.

What I don't understand is the effort spent in parallel of fighting the same cause. It is a lot of brain power and, as I understood the whole process, the testing and going through tests and approval phases takes a lot of time. But in this case, when economies are just bending under the stress of people isolating in their houses, the private companies should unite in expediting the whole process. From an article aggregated by Yahoo, there are 70 companies rushing to test a vaccine. If the testing phase gives you any indications, what are the probabilities of the companies on finding a safe candidate, because the safety and efficacy are the most important factors in releasing a vaccine against the virus.

The other problem with so many companies in the race is the peril of choosing the ones which were the first on the finish line but cannot be the best choice in the long run. As in any Business 101 theory, being first in the market can crush all other candidates due to the economic advantages of capturing the majority of the market - who can afford to wait more time when there is a valid vaccine?

On the other side, if the process is rushed (and USA is prone to choose that path due to the presidential elections in November) and there are some side effects not discovered in testing but with damaging consequences to people, all subsequent candidates will be even more pushed back due to raised fears of the winner-curse.




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