Reflection: "What's in the Medicine Cabinet?"

  Essential workers in my opinion are health-care workers and the scientists who develop the new drugs. Physicians and nurses would face an overwhelming number of patients per day during a pandemic. They are the ones who can help. The amount of doctors is very low in Canada, about 1.9 physician/1000 people. If they get sick, who is going to treat the sick? The health care system of the country will be paralyzed, and the impact of the pandemic will be more significant. The scientists who develop the drugs should get the early treatments, too. They should be protected from the disease so that they could continue to discover new, more effective drugs that can cure people. Also, they taking the drugs would be a way to show the public that the drug is trustworthy—the people who come up with it even dare to consume it. Besides that, it could also ensure that the quantity of the drugs. Scientists themselves have to take the drugs before giving them to the public. 
  We should have amantadine and rimantadine as back-ups although they have unwanted side effects. By interfering with the viral protein M2, amantadine and rimantadine can as effectively as neuraminidase inhibitors. Plus, they are a lot cheaper than the neuraminidase inhibitors. They can somewhat suppress the pandemic. Every drug has side effects, it is unreasonable for drugs to be stopped using because of them, especially under such special conditions. The pharmaceutical companies should warn their costumers about the negative effects in advance, so it's up to the costumers to decide.  However, government should not spend a lot money on amantadine and rimantadine, they can only be used as back-ups.
  We should invest more money into stock piling than developing new drugs. Tamiflu is the best of the four currently available anti-in fluenza drugs. Also, the effects of the virus on the populations are unknown: which age group is most likely to ill, how fast is the virus would spread and how ill would people get. If there is no enough drugs, we have to prioritize the treatment groups, which can lead to ethical controversies because everyone has same right, why can one person get the protection over another because of their identity? However, if we have ample amount of drugs, this would not happen. Everyone will then could have the chance to be protected from the flu. If we spend a lot of money on developing new drugs, supposedly they are developed successfully and better than the previous, the population will still suffer because it's all too late to produce enough for everyone. For those reasons, the WHO is strongly supportive about stockpiling drugs as well. They have been using all its persuasive power to get the government place the orders now.