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

merck.com

231–240 of 294 posts

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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a lot of added potential risk for anyone at low odds of being hospitalized for Covid. https://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/global-literature-on-novel-coro...

Curious why this is downvoted. Is this person wrong? It seems like an important detail if the drug is actually mutagenic in mammalian cells.

It is misleading but not directly wrong. Excessively high doses lead to mutations, but that's true for aspartame too. Nothing suggests that a therapeutic dose for a short time will give you cancer any more than X-rays from plane travel (i.e. there's a causal mechanism, but it's not statistically significant.)

See my reply to them for more details.

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

#232
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it halves hospitalizations, it'll have a pretty drastic effect on overwhelmed ICUs but there's probably still a ways to go before ICU levels return to normal and we can skip mandates.

remember that in exponential growth, halving the people going to hospital buys you one extra doubling time. (ie, if numbers increase every two weeks, halving the growth buys you two extra weeks.) You need to make sure that the growth has stopped, not just halved.

Yup, and with an R value for delta between 5 and 8 on a two week infection cycle... well thats about 3 days... even with 100% of people vaccinated it will buy about a month, assuming the vaccine numbers hold and 1/35th of the vaxxed vs unvaxxed get hospitalized.

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

#233

This is not my field. But if there is a pill that can reduce death by 50% from the virus, I would like to know more about it. > Bright's concerns that similar drugs in its class have mutagenic properties As a layperson, this instantly raises a red flag in my mind. Should I be concerned? Why, or why not? More importantly, where can I find research that elucidates this for me?

It reduces death by 100%. It’s hospitalisation that’s reduced by 50%.

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

#234

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…

Drug companies have lots of products. Did J&J discontinue their baby powder because they secretly knew talc powder cures covid but they wanted to sell more vaccines?

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

#235

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…

Here is why this is a conspiracy theory and likely complete bull: there are 190 somthing countries in the world. Many of them have public health systems with socialized healthcare. Many of them are completely free of influence from Merck or the FDA. Ivermectin is cheap and widely available. There is no way Merck and the FDA could suppress a global consensus if the drug was strongly effective.

Conspiracy thinking often relies on a simplified model of the world, one in which other countries, other governments, and other healthcare systems simply do not exist. One where a single centralized entity could have ironclad control over a messy, complex and heterogeneous world.

If you are engaging in these patterns of thinking, I recommend you step back, get out of your bubble and your normal context, diversify your information diet and try to ask more pointed questions of the viewpoints you are taking in. And please stop wiggling your eyebrows at us.

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

#236
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually a multitude of treatments beyond waiting for thing to get bad enough that you need to go to the hospital: https://aapsonline.org/covidpatientguide/ This is also worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAHi3lX3oGM

Document link goes to AAPS web site. Wikipedia: "The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a politically conservative non-profit association that promotes medical disinformation, such as HIV/AIDS denialism, the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, vaccine and autism connections, and homosexuality reducing life expectancy."

That's terrifying. The website looks completely legit at first glance and my first clue that something was off was the Ivermectin. I had a bunch of cognitive dissonance trying to figure out why this very legit association of doctors was publishing crap. If I had less information about current standard of care they would have got me. How putrid.

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

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-fda-pfizer/fact-ch... > The FDA state that Comirnaty has the same formulation as the EUA-approved (Emergency Use Authorization) Pfizer vaccine and is interchangeable (here). Their website says: “Providers can use doses distributed under EUA to administer the vaccination series as if the doses were the licensed vaccine. For purposes of administration, doses distributed…

"Reuters is seeking comment on the legal specificities of the FDA approval and will update the check in due course." How convenient. Pfizer states that both vaccines are legally different. Meaning even with the same formula 'Pfizer' vaccine has no liability for compensation claims, 'Comirnaty' has but it is not being supplied

"I can't be bothered to Google" and "convenient" aren't quite the same thing. The information you seek is readily available.

The two have the exact same liability setup.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/30/false-cla...

> “There are no liability or compensation differences between a countermeasure approved under an EUA or one that has received full FDA approval,” confirmed an HHS spokesperson.

Pfizer also has a more specific comment on the legal specifics in this article:

> “The statement that the products are ‘legally distinct with certain differences’ refers to the differences in manufacturing information included in the respective regulatory submissions,” said Pfizer spokesperson Sharon J. Castillo in an email. “Specifically, while the products are manufactured using the same processes, they may have been manufactured at different sites or using raw materials from different approved suppliers. FDA closely reviews all manufacturing steps, and has found explicitly that the EUA and BLA [biologics license application] products are equivalent.”

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

#238
post #202
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reliable evidence that healthcare workers wearing proper PPE are exposed to extremely large viral loads. Nor is there evidence that symptom severity depends on initial viral load (beyond some minimum threshold for infection). It's a plausible hypothesis but the human challenge trials necessary to prove or disprove it haven't been done yet.

> Nor is there evidence that symptom severity depends on initial viral load (beyond some minimum threshold for infection). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19057-5 > It's a plausible hypothesis It's extremely plausible, and been demonstrated before in influenza, poxviruses, and other viruses. The human challenge trials necessary to prove a dose-dependent relationship between fall height and lethality haven'…

That study you linked isn't relevant to my point. The question is whether the initial viral dose at the point of infection is correlated with symptom severity later in the disease course. That remains unknown. The study looked at the relation between current viral load and symptoms after infection, which is an entirely separate issue.

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The opportunity for prophylaxis with an oral antiviral is also amazing.

I definitely would not want to be taking a mutagenic prophylactically.

I was talking about post exposure prophylaxis. This drug does have mutation concerns.

If I'm choosing between a taking the drug right now for 2-3 days in lower doses Vs a 50% chance of taking much higher doses for 2 weeks, id take the former.

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

#240

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…

Here is why this is a conspiracy theory and likely complete bull: there are 190 somthing countries in the world. Many of them have public health systems with socialized healthcare. Many of them are completely free of influence from Merck or the FDA. Ivermectin is cheap and widely available. There is no way Merck and the FDA could suppress a global consensus if the drug was strongly effective. Conspiracy thinking ofte…

> If you are engaging in these patterns of thinking, I recommend you step back, get out of your bubble and your normal context, diversify your information diet and try to ask more pointed questions of the viewpoints you are taking in. And please stop wiggling your eyebrows at us.

I am not. I clearly pointed out that I think this is a conspiracy theory. However I should still be allowed to ask questions that help me point people that believe in these conspiracy theories into the right direction. That doesn't make me a conspiracy theorist.

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