Summary List PlacementThe COVID-19 pandemic has upended everything we've ever known, and venture capitalist bets are no exception. With the possibility of evolving variants and the coronavirus becoming an endemic disease, major investors are rethinking the profitability of investing in infectious disease. Since most infectious diseases require only short-term treatment, pharma and biotech weren't motivated to develop new drugs in the space. Cami Samuels of Venrock considered infectious disease a bad investment as recently as March 2020, just as the global pandemic was hit. Almost a year later, Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz thinks otherwise.