Last week pharmaceutical company Merck announced that they have filed for FDA emergency use authorization for their oral COVID -19 pill molnupiravir. It is a five day treatment, potentially shorter if it is used prophylactically. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb,, author of the book Uncontrolled Spread Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How to Defeat the Next Pandemic and Pfizer board member has called the drug a “ a profound game changer”, especially for the unvaccinated. We don’t know when and how widely available it will be. More importantly (for the majority of us) we don’t know how much it will cost.
