Kodak Stock Triples as Trump Announces $765MM "Loan" to Produce Pharmaceuticals?

[Tanuki]

6. Reminds me of what has been going on in Japan with Fujifilm and covid

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/japan-tests-coronavirus-drug-despite-danger-of-birth-defects-11583492886

"Japan is racing to test a homegrown drug against the novel coronavirus despite doubts about its efficacy and its potential for causing birth defects.

The tests of the Fujifilm Holdings Corp. drug, called Avigan, reflect the need for medicines that might attack a virus for which no proven treatments are known, doctors say. It could eventually play a role in combination therapy, they say. Still, some experts pointed to ethical challenges.

“They should be really careful,” said Leen Delang, a virologist at the Belgian university KU Leuven who has studied Avigan. “Women between, let’s say, 18 and 40—they’re not really a risk group” for the coronavirus “so I would not take them along in the trial.”

....

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a golfing partner of Fujifilm’s chief executive and recipient of some $28,000 in Fujifilm political donations in 2017 and 2018, touted Avigan by name at a nationally televised news conference Feb. 29. Mr. Abe didn’t name two drugs from American companies that Japan is also testing against the virus— Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir and AbbVie Inc.’s Kaletra."...(more)