am I the only one who thinks that the 5 yr, 10,000 patient trial was a bit of an artificial barrier being put up by big pharma to protect their existing IP?

No, that crossed my mind too.  There are a lot of games that they may be playing.  

I say let's go it alone, warp speed.  The dilution will hurt but we will not be sharing revenues with anyone.  And the revenues could be record breaking.  If, and its a big if, we can actually generate revenues within a year from a Covid treatment under an emergency authorization then the dilution of supporting BETonMACE2 would be mitigated.

Let just get on with it!!