Sudden peril has a remarkable way of focusing the mind on more serious matters, and people realize that the quickest and most likely path to coronavirus treatments and vaccines runs through America’s world-leading pharmaceutical innovators.

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George Orwell sardonically noted the ease with which some preach pacifism from behind the protective curtain of the Royal Navy.  To wit, a sense of security cultivates a lazy inclination toward empty virtue-signaling. 

So it was for years and even decades as opportunistic politicians and pundits spanning a disturbingly broad stretch of the political spectrum cynically maligned “Big Pharma” in pursuit of cheap applause lines.  

For example, during a January 2008 debate between the Republican candidates for president, Mitt Romney to his credit rebuked John McCain, “Don’t turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys,” to which McCain crudely responded, “Well, they are.”  Attacks from the political left were even more incessant and unseemly. 

Meanwhile, American pharmaceutical innovators continued to produce lifesaving and life-improving medicines like nowhere else on Earth, year after year. 

Now, as we find ourselves amid a deadly worldwide coronavirus pandemic and desperately seek vaccines or treatments, notice a sudden deafening silence:  Slurs against “Big Pharma” have disappeared from everyday political discourse. 

And with good reason.  Sudden peril has a remarkable way of focusing the mind on more serious matters, and people realize that the quickest and most likely path to coronavirus treatments and vaccines runs through America’s world-leading pharmaceutical innovators. 

The numbers justify that trust.  The United States accounts for just 4% of the world’s population, and approximately 25% of the world’s economic output.  But we account for a staggering two-thirds of the world’s new pharmaceuticals.  There’s simply no nation that approaches our legacy of producing new lifesaving drugs. 

And Coalition Against Socialized Medicine Executive Director Marc Palazzo detailed this week, the same holds true for research and development investment: 

As the world races to develop a vaccine and new treatments, systems that encourage – not punish – investment and innovation provide the best chance for success.  The U.S., for example, is responsible for more than half (58 percent) of the world’s R&D expenditures, with Japan a distant second (13 percent), and in both countries, the engine of innovation is on overdrive in search of a cure.  When push has come to shove, the world is looking to the very innovators vilified by the likes of Bernie Sanders and his far-left comrades as “crooks” for deliverance. 

America’s unrivaled leadership in pharmaceutical innovation is the direct result of our legacy of strong intellectual property protections, including patent protections for pharmaceutical developers, and more market-based public policies relative to the rest of the globe.  American innovators can invest and experiment with greater assurance that their massive investments in time, dollars and regulatory review will be rewarded. 

Amid the sudden coronavirus pandemic, we’re already making quick progress. 

Just this week, Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories announced that it has devised a coronavirus antibody diagnostic test, and can even ship one million to customers across America by the end of the week.  The new tests determine whether someone has already acquired the disease and developed natural antibodies, which immunize them from future infection.  That’s critical, because those who have developed natural defenses to the coronavirus can return to work and public life safely, while continuing to allow isolation and protection of people still vulnerable.  That can accelerate the necessary process of getting people back to work and reigniting America’s economy. 

Elsewhere, remember how mere days ago we were warned that the nation faced a looming shortage of ventilators that could cause catastrophic effects?  Well, the private sector started rapidly producing ventilators, and instead of running out of them within days we now experience a surplus. 

Those are just two examples among many.  Across America, the world’s leading pharmaceutical innovators work around the clock to defeat this pandemic, just as we defeated polio, AIDS and other diseases that once meant a death sentence. 

Meanwhile, internationalist bureaucracies like the United Nations World Health Organization continue to disgrace themselves by providing cover for China’s misconduct and mishandling of the coronavirus since its origination. 

For years, American pharmaceutical innovators endured the gratuitous slings and arrows of grandstanding critics, while maintaining our standing as the world’s leading producer year after year of new lifesaving and life-improving drugs. 

Now, in this moment of need, people recognize that those innovators offer the best hope for new treatments for coronavirus.  Better late than never.