I think it's one of his worst articles, and I gave several counter points similar to yours when the question was first raised on Twitter yesterday. It falls into typical article of over generalization by journalists.
HCV is unique. $GILD's problem isn't curing HCV, rather to manage the cycle of HCV warehousing already known but still difficult to predict precisely. As discussed repeatedly through the years on this board, large portion of HCV patients are undiagnosed and disproportionately fall into social and economic underclass, plus those with F0-F2 don't have strong incentive to be treated now since they are asymptomatic for very long period of time. Comparison to HIV which is fatal in relatively shorter period of time is inappropriate. If HCV treatment were chronic like HIV rather than curative, significantly fewer people with HCV would have been treated. This might be more predictable for GILD business, it isn't necessarily better. Using GILD stock price as measure miss the point because it wouldn't have been that high anyway.
Now it gets to the hard part for HCV, find the patients and get them treated. Initiatives in HIV diagnosis are much stronger, and most people don't realize how much effort rare disease companies put into identifying patient by patient to get them treated. Comparison with gene therapy can't be any further off mark.
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