On January 13, 2020, a groundbreaking paper introduced a potential therapy that could fight all known strains of the flu. Just a week later, the first confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 marked the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., overshadowing other medical research. Interestingly, the team behind this flu therapy had also been investigating a similar approach to treat coronaviruses. David Markovitz, M.D., professor at the University of Michigan Medical School, shared that their original focus was MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) due to its high mortality rate of 35%. MERS had c…