I see what you're saying and to an extent I agree with you, but it's a sliding scale.

On one hand, it's absolutely true that companies are profiteering. We saw it with epipens -- $500 per dose from less than $100 per dose, and it's just epinephrine, not a proprietary drug.

On the other hand, remdesivir is a breakthrough antiviral. There were basically no real antivirals on the market before this. It's a miracle drug. You don't do miracles for free. If you did, then someone else would have done it. You don't take the risk of making a miracle drug without a big payoff, because most miracle drugs don't pay off.

Frankly, 5-figures for a miracle drug to cure a virus that collapsed the world economy isn't that bad, and within my lifetime the drug will belong to the public, so we could see a time where viral infections are just as treatable as bacterial infections. That's huge.

There's an engineering joke I've thought was funny but also true:

There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Many years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multimillion dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, "This is where your problem is." The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges. The engineer responded briefly: "One chalk mark $1. Knowing where to put it $49,999"