Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

merck.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 294 posts

Re: Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

#191

Post by smnrchrds »

shrubble wrote: post #163
smnrchrds wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alberta has 173 normal ICU beds. As of this Monday, there were 312 Albertans in ICUs, 265 of whom for COVID [1]. The extra 139 beds were surge capacity, created by shutting down other services, postponing surgeries, and diverting resources to COVID ICU treatments. Even if the number of COVID patients in ICUs halved, we would have 132 people in the ICU with COVID, or 179 patients in total for all causes. It would stil…

Alberta has 4.4 mln or so people. Colorado, with 5.8 mln people, has over 1700 ICU beds. Alberta's been 'running on fumes' re: ICU beds and they got caught out...

I don't think the two jurisdictions count ICU beds the same. Alberta (and Canada in general) have about half as many ICU beds per capita as the US, not 1/10th. If I had to guess, I would say the number for Colorado includes other types of ICU (neonatal, cardiac, etc.) that the Albertan number doesn't. Alberta has 8,513 acute care beds. How many of those would be counted as ICU beds per the Colorado definition, I don't know.

https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/about/about.aspx

Re: Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

#192

Post by jonnycomputer »

DominikPeters wrote: post #58

I enjoyed this article explaining in more detail how the drug works, though much of it goes over my head: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-021-00657-8 Briefly, it causes the copying process of viral RNA to go wrong by increasing the number of G-to-A and C-to-U mutations. A potential worry is that such mutations will also increase in places where we don't want them, such as in host DNA, but apparently at least f…

The wikipedia article on the drug mentions worry about it being a mutagen with some kind of controversy. Difficult for this layman to evaluate.

Re: Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

#193

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

rory wrote: post #86
lsternlicht wrote: post #43

Phase 3 trial was stopped on a positive interim analysis by DSMB and in consultation with FDA Interim analysis was performed on approximately half of the total enrolled patients (775 of the 1550). Trial included many delta and other variant patients ————— Efficacy • ~50% reduction in hospitalization (14.1% PBO vs 7.3% drug) • 100% reduction in deaths (8 PBO vs 0 drug) ————— Safety • fewer adverse reactions in the dru…

Is 40% adverse reaction to a placebo typical? Really makes me wonder how many "side effects" are in our heads..

Please read the excellent popular science book "Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body" by author/journalist Jo Marchant. It gives an excellent overview of all things placebo related.

ps. the answer to your question seems to be "quite a lot".

Re: Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

#194

Post by ipaddr »

BobbyJo wrote: post #170
avianlyric wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the VCs get a better deal here, they end up with equity. If followed that model, then the taxpayer would own at least 50% of the patents generated (via shares the corporate entity that owned the patents). Under the current model the taxpayer gets nothing, which hardly seems reasonable given the amount of capital they provide.

Don't we already own a portion of what gets created though? If Merck makes a boatload of money off of this, the taxpayers will indeed be taking a cut.

No we decided that corporate taxes should be low so the company can reinvest. The shareholders benefit.

Re: Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

#195

Post by kungito »

barbazoo wrote: post #162

Disclaimer: I'm not promoting Ivermectin here, don't get me wrong. I just want to cover my bases as this announcement is definitely going to be used by people to support their conspiracy theory. Earlier this year Merck the manufacturer of Ivermectin issued this [0] statement saying that Ivermectin isn't useful for preventing/treating Covid-19 and people shouldn't take it. Some people explained that with the fact that…

There's an ongoing study: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-06-23-ivermectin-be-investiga... and I've also seen https://web.musc.edu/about/news-center/2021/09/17/trial-of-o...

I've read elsewhere that the problem with Ivermectin treatment for covid is that the dosages showing results have to be higher than for previously tested usages of the drug so side effects are also not explored enough

Re: Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

#196

Post by programmarchy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #147
programmarchy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language still seems slippery because while the formulation may be the same and interchangeable for providers, the legal process bound to the license could be different for the recipient. If the PREP Act still applies, then there’s less recourse for anyone that may experience an adverse reaction.

No change there. Same recourse for both. https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/fda-approval-of-pfizer-vac... > Does PREP Act liability protection extend to Comirnaty? > Yes. The government invoked the PREP Act in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the terms of that act, "covered persons" are granted certain immunity from liability for activities related to "covered countermeasures." Covered persons include essentia…

Ah, even worse than I expected. I should've known. It's funny how they triumphantly phrase it as a good thing that the public should take on all of the risk, while the most powerful take on virtually none. Furthermore, there's now an enormous incentive to lobby for never ceasing the public health emergency, since at that point they'd lose their enhanced liability protection.

Re: Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

#197

Post by dougmwne »

helloguillecl wrote: post #150
dougmwne wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for weighing in. I am hugely excited about this and immediately sent a message to all my family. I know people who died because they didn't know that antibody treatments were available and effective when given early enough. I very likely saved my own father's life by helping him to get an antibody treatment when he and his own doctor knew nothing about it at the time. When we're talking about pre-hospitaliz…

Would you mind to share which antibody treatment were you able to get for your father? I would be useful for the rest of us if we ever find ourselves in this situation again.

It was the Monoclonal antibody treatment that is part of the official NIH treatment recommendations. There are a few formulations with different brand names, but the recommendation is to take whatever is first available and there is not published evidence of one being better than the others. I don't even know which he was given and does not matter at this point. The infusion lasted several hours at our local hospital and required a positive Covid test and needed to be ordered by a doctor stating that there were enough comorbidities to justify the treatment, the went through a lottery weighed on risk factors, then an appointment was scheduled. It is free to the patient but very expensive to taxpayers. It needs to be given as soon as possible after symptom onset to have the greatest effect.

The odd thing is that you have to start pushing strongly on the paperwork to get this fairly invasive treatment when you still feel perfectly well in order to get it in time. You have to act quickly purely on your risk factors and not on how you are feeling.

That's why this pill has so much potential. It could be handed out immediately after a positive test and prescription and is easy enough that it becomes "why not" instead of "why". Of course this is a very new drug, but for certain high risk people it may make a ton of sense.

Re: Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

#198

Post by Pyramus »

rory wrote: post #86
lsternlicht wrote: post #43

Phase 3 trial was stopped on a positive interim analysis by DSMB and in consultation with FDA Interim analysis was performed on approximately half of the total enrolled patients (775 of the 1550). Trial included many delta and other variant patients ————— Efficacy • ~50% reduction in hospitalization (14.1% PBO vs 7.3% drug) • 100% reduction in deaths (8 PBO vs 0 drug) ————— Safety • fewer adverse reactions in the dru…

Is 40% adverse reaction to a placebo typical? Really makes me wonder how many "side effects" are in our heads..

Came here to say that it's not necessarily in our head - you can knowingly get a placebo and still react to it. As far as I know it's a combination of head, genetics and other unknown factors. In my opinion an underappreciated and understudied field.

Re: Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

#199

Post by matt_heimer »

loeg wrote: post #9
mmastrac wrote: post #5

If I understand things correctly, this only helps _before_ hospitalization.

The trial was on non-hospitalized patients, because you can't test impact on hospitalization risk with patients that are already hospitalized. But given the supposed mechanism of action, I don't think there's any reason to believe it would not also be an effective therapy for hospitalized patients.

This drug is an antiviral and isn't the Covid viral load already on the decline by the time that most people are hospitalized? See Fig 2 from https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3862 . Its the other issues like the inflammatory cytokine response, tissue damage, and secondary infections that cause the poor outcomes in most hospitalized patients.

So you'd need to take any antiviral early on. I think they said within 5 days in this study. Also of interest is that the 5 day marker is where the mild and severe cases diverge according to the article I linked to.

Re: Antiviral Molnupiravir Reduces Risk of Hospitalization/Death by ~50 Percent

#200

Post by dham »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #31
_3u10 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway, Sweden, and the UK no longer have mandates, it's a political question not a medical question.

> it's a political question not a medical question. Not as much here in Norway as it is in the UK. Our death rate per unit population is one tenth of the UK and local authorities remain prepared to reinstate restrictions. Here we have been living pretty much normally for months already anyway. And while the government has occasionally overreacted both the government and population have mostly followed the Norwegian P…

> it's a political question not a medical question.

>> Our death rate per unit population is one tenth of the UK and local authorities

It's a fat question at the end of the day. Norway doesn't have many fat people.

Post reply on HN