[Enginerrrd]

Those both work against symptoms caused by an enormous range of pathologies though.

Compare that to a specific drug targeting a small percentage of the causative agents of the common cold, for which the duration is short enough that by the time you'd get a reliable test back, you'd have gotten over your cold anyway.

There's just not much of a practical use for such a drug.

[throwmeaway_pls]

Sounds like that is the prevailing opinion amongst software engineers on HN. “If the product doesn’t exist, then the market doesn’t exist” isn’t how biology works. I assure you that many in life sciences would kill to get their hands on a successful therapeutic program in this area. There is a wide world of markets available.

[Enginerrrd]

I'm not a software engineer and I used to work in several sectors of healthcare (emergency medicine and family practice). The drug target against rhinovirus already exists and I was explaining why it's not yet on the market. A drug (with potential side effects or allergies) against maybe 10% of 200 some odd common cold viruses (which typically have very little impact) isn't that useful, and I don't know any physicians that would consider it acceptable practice to order and incur the expense of a test and then write a prescription to address an issue that will resolve itself in just a few days anyway.

That's not to say it might not be worth it for someone with COPD, lung disease or serious immunocompromise or something, but you seem to be lacking a pragmatic understanding of the situation described, yet you're readily criticizing me on the basis of an (incorrect) ad hominem argument.

Tamiflu is a much better example than Nyquil (which you offered up earlier) where it does make sense. But in that case, influenza typically lasts longer, it's more serious, it's much easier to diagnose, and the potential complications are much more severe and likely. It's probably more prevalent as well.

[throwmeaway_pls]

Sorry, I was summarizing several replies and wasn’t trying to make a personal attack against you. My hope was to point out that there are other ways of looking at things.

You seem to be coming at things in terms of patient trade-offs. I’m saying that AbbVie loves selling more Humira, and some sort of hypothetical magical anti-infective would’ve been a way to do so.