re: remdesivir.

this is the drug that was widely touted as a way to fight ebola and ultimately didn't work. thankfully, we have an ebola vaccine, now. so, my best guess is that they're essentially trying to find a way to profit off of a waste product; the idea of the fda approving this for covid-19 appears to be driven by capitalism, rather than science.

but, i remember there being concerns about this drug not only not working in disrupting rna replication, but it actually leading to mutations in translation. if you think about it, that actually makes sense - if you're trying to interfere with replication, and you don't actually succeed in stopping it, you're probably going to at least succeed in messing with it. this is very bad, in context.

the claim with ebola was that the mutations were not beneficial, so it didn't matter anyways. but, that sounds more like good luck than predictive science.

the primary thing we should be concerned about right now is preventing mutations - that's why there needs to be so much testing. approving a drug that doesn't actually work and may instead increase the mutation rate is the absolute worst thing that could be done.

now, as was the case with the hydrocholoroquine, maybe there's some other reasoning behind this that will clarify itself in time.

but, given that this drug has not worked well in the past, my primary concern would be about it's effect on the mutation rate - that is a potential disaster in the making.