Ha. I think everyone who tried it said this. I think every conversation I've had with a sick person has included the phrase "this over the counter stuff doesn't do anything". The most cursory search of the internet finds an article from 2006 with the literal phrase "There's just one problem. Phenylephrine doesn't work, and most in the pharmaceutical industry know it."
It's been pretty common knowledge for years that it doesn't work. That doesn't mean that common knowledge was right, but it certainly isn't a case of everybody only now claiming they knew it.
Nope, I remember the first time I tried to use a phenylephrine based cold tablet it after the big uproar about putting pseudoephedrine behind the counter - this is more than a decade ago. I’ve always had relief from pseudoephedrine but I felt absolutely no effect from the phenylephrine tablets (apart from the paracetamol they also contain, but zero decongestant effect). I looked it up and other people were reporting the same, I was so annoyed I never bought it again and from then always ask for the real thing.
Weird thing was the pharmacists always want to know why you’re asking (even beyond doing the drivers license check) and I had to say every time that the off the shelf tablets do literally do nothing for me.
If it took that long for regulators and the drug industry to figure out that phenylephrine is worthless, I certainly don't hold out much hope for more advanced cures.
The same is true if corruption rather than incompetence is the explanation.
Actually, it's funny. My parents aren't Libertarian, but they kinda lean that way in terms of not trusting the government - etc. When they restricted pseudoephedrine, they immediately were suspicious about phenylephrine and eventually came to the conclusion that it doesn't do anything. They'd demand pseudoephedrine and claim that phenylephrine was just a way to restrict pseudoephedrine while allowing pharma to rip us off, yada yada. That's where my strong disdain for phenylephrine came from. Once I was in college buying my own medicine, I came to the same conclusion that one worked and one didn't. Pseudoephedrine was just a miracle drug to me, I remember stopping taking it too early and feeling blegh within hours.
It never worked for me, but I thought that was a "because me" thing.
It makes me both exhausted and unable to sleep, and although I'm not very good at very many things, I'm generally an exceptional sleeper so this was something I wasn't willing to experiment on dosage experiments to make it work.
Easy to say now once it’s proved.