Protect the innovation that brought us COVID vaccines – Daily Bulletin – DLIT

The breakneck pace of COVID-19 vaccine development will go down in history books as one of the great triumphs of modern medicine.

Just over a year ago, few had even heard of the novel coronavirus. Now, COVID-19 vaccines are being administered to millions of people every day. These vaccines have marked a turning point in the pandemic response — particularly for high-risk populations, like seniors.

And yet, these are precisely the kind of medical breakthroughs — albeit accelerated — that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry routinely delivers to patients.

If there was ever a doubt, the pandemic has made clear that protecting the innovation ecosystem is critical to combat large-scale health crises and save the lives of the most vulnerable among us.

Not long ago, it was unthinkable that two safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines would be authorized for emergency use in the United States by December 2020. As many were quick to point out, previous vaccines had taken years — sometimes over a decade — to come to fruition. Before COVID-19, the fastest vaccine ever developed took four years to reach patients.

In addition to their quick development, both of the authorized vaccines — from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech — have proven roughly 95 percent effective at protecting against illness. And both are essentially 100 percent effective against hospitalizations and death. These numbers far surpass public health experts’ wildest expectations. Back in August, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s foremost infectious disease expert, noted that a successful COVID-19 vaccine might be just 50 percent effective.

For seniors, these expectation-defying vaccines have offered hope in an otherwise bleak time. After all, older patients have far more to fear from the pandemic than their younger counterparts. To date, roughly 8 in 10 deaths from COVID-19 have been among Americans age 65 and older. Thus, the release of effective vaccines has a more pronounced effect on the health of older Americans — not to mention on our peace-of-mind.

The vaccine campaign advanced so rapidly for a number of reasons. Government support — through programs like Operation Warp Speed — was certainly a factor, as was the massive global cooperation among scientists that the pandemic spurred.

But the effort could not have succeeded without the research ecosystem that drug companies — specifically, American pharmaceutical firms — have been nurturing for decades.

Researchers at the Massachusetts-based biotech Moderna have been refining mRNA technology since the company’s inception in 2010. Meanwhile, the founders of BioNTech, the German firm that partnered with New York-based Pfizer to create an mRNA vaccine, have been studying mRNA for over 25 years. The time — and money — these companies invested into mRNA research provided the necessary building blocks to develop effective mRNA vaccines in record time.

Innovation is an arduous undertaking. Fewer than 12 percent of drugs that reach clinical trials receive FDA approval. Accounting for this high failure rate, developing just one viable medicine takes nearly $3 billion over the course of more than a decade. In effect, the most successful few have to compensate for the losses incurred by all of the experimental medicines that never make it to patients.

Despite the enormous risks involved, drug companies continue to invest heavily in innovation — and because they do, we benefit. In 2018, the year before the pandemic emerged, the U.S. pharmaceutical sector invested $102 billion in research and development. This ecosystem is exactly why we’re able to envision a post-pandemic world.

Lawmakers in Washington should keep this in mind the next time they consider reorganizing the pharmaceutical sector in the name of lowering prescription drug prices.

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Seniors are often the principal beneficiaries of medical innovation, from cancer treatments and diabetes management to vaccines for shingles, pneumococcal illnesses, and now COVID-19. Standing in the way of such progress pits lawmakers against the solution to today’s — and tomorrow’s — gravest public health threats.

Saul Anuzis is president of 60 Plus, the American Association of Senior Citizens.