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Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%

fiercebiotech.com

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Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the consequence of not taking it is death, I think people would run to the front of the queue, though.

But that's just it, there's less than a 2% chance of dying even if you get COVID.

There is a much higher chance of dying when you're in the ICU with Covid and a doctor thinks it's appropriate to prescribe this new medication.

Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the consequence of not taking it is death, I think people would run to the front of the queue, though.

But that's just it, there's less than a 2% chance of dying even if you get COVID.

The hospitalization rate of the control was over 6 percent. Most people want to avoid hospitalization.

Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the consequence of not taking it is death, I think people would run to the front of the queue, though.

But that's just it, there's less than a 2% chance of dying even if you get COVID.

I don't think you realize just how shitty those chances are.

Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a fair viewpoint from the societal level, but not as much for the individual level, which was implied in the parent message - i.e. how can "I'll take experimental treatment B instead of experimental treatment A" be an argument for not taking experimental treatments in general?

Imagine both the vaccine and the drug offer the same protection, and both come with a risk of 0.00001 that you will die from taking it. Considering not everyone who gets infected gets symptoms, would it be illogical to not take the vaccine, just in case you get infected and get symptoms, but to take the drug once you do get infected and get symptoms?

It wouldn't be necessarily illogical but would still qualify as "taking part in an experiment trial", as put by the parent post.

To determine if this is a rational strategy or not, we'd have to get real numbers (is it really likely that 1 in 100k people die from taking the vaccine?), and compare that against the reduction in probability of dying from COVID by even combining both treatments.

Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%

#157

We had reports of people who wanted to take weird-ass drugs-of-the-day just to refuse getting vaccinated. And screaming "conspiracy" when their efficacy was not confirmed to be as high as they expected. Good that we have something that actually works, bad that some assholes will use it as an excuse not to get vaxxed, completely missing the point (among others, trying to prevent something worse than Delta).

> weird-ass drugs-of-the-day

which ones are you talking about?

Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%

#158
post #86

> This is a completely novel molecule... Then do we understand the risk profile of this thing? That sounds like the sort of innovation that people would want to be at the back of the queue for. Side effects don't have to happen in the next 6 months.

This isn't a chronic exposure kind of drug where you really care about those things. This is a horse pill where safety is pretty directly measurable in a short time.

Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t we establish last week the vaccine is not effective at stopping the spread of the virus?

It's not a binary yes-no question. It is still effective at stopping the spread of the virus, though not perfect.

What exactly you would consider "effective"?

This[1] study suggests that there a brief period of significant reduction (~three months), followed by a period modest to no risk reduction, followed by a period of increased risk.

This[2] study found no correlation between vaccination rates and viral spread.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/

Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same antivaxxers who ”refuse to take experiemental drugs from big pharma Pfizer” will gobble this pill down no questions asked. Which just proves, the anti-vaxxer moment is based on the primitive instinct of ”pain and needles=bad” Being scared of vaccines should be considered the same thing as having a fear of dentists. Or pets hating going to the vet.

Do open random executables that you get in your email? If not, why not?

No, I don’t.

But just like I can trust the things I buy from the grocery stone to not poison me or to have stones embedded inside, I trust medical products taken by millions or even billions of people

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