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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%

#221

Post by timr »

AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #197
dontcare007 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's the problem - "even if you get COVID". At the start of pandemic we could have hoped that it will pass in half a year, in a year or so. Now we know that it is probably here to stay. So eventually you will get COVID. Depending on how long has passed after your vaccine, what variation of virus you will get, how old you are and etc will depend if it is more like 5% or 1% or so. In my office I have 200 or so collea…

> Depending on how long has passed after your vaccine, what variation of virus you will get, how old you are and etc will depend if it is more like 5% or 1% or so.

This is fear-mongering. There is no example of a risk of death post-vaccination that gets this high. The few studies that document a decline in efficacy show a modest decline, against symptomatic illness. The vaccines remain highly effective against severe disease and death.

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

#222

Post by resoluteteeth »

School-Cotton wrote: post #128
resoluteteeth wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be somewhat ironic if antivaxxers latch onto this drug, because it actually has a possibility of turning out to have bad side effects that will only show up much later (increased rates of cancer), which is a major reason that is given for people not wanting to get vaccinated. Edit: Actually I was confusing this with molnupiravir; this drug is presumably perfectly safe.

Why is the probability of late-appearing side effects higher for this than for the vaccine?

Sorry I was confusing it with Merck's molnupiravir which could potentially cause genetic errors in humans. The drug this article is about is unlikely to have side effects that appear later.

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

#223

Post by woodruffw »

colordrops wrote: post #110

Does anyone have a sense as to when US society will completely eliminate COVID measures? Is it just me or is there no clear exit criteria anymore? This will go on forever without exit criteria.

NYC's vaccination rate is trending towards 75%, and life is essentially back to normal with the addition of vaccine requirements for indoor dining and events (which strikes me as perfectly reasonable, given that we have a large tourism industry).

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

#224

Post by orra »

sjg007 wrote: post #103
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If everyone was vaccinated it would make a big difference.

People act astonished the COVID vaccines aren't perfect. You mentioning universal vaccination is such a key point. Let's look at smallpox.

We eliminated smallpox. Amazing! Yet, first, the smallpox vaccine wasn't perfect. It was 95% effective against infection. I would bet it's actually less than that. They probably mean symptomatic infection, because who was widely testing asymptomatic vaccinated people for smallpox? In contrast, symptomatic smallpox patients are pretty obviously and unambiguously infected with smallpox.

Second, what's particularly interesting is if you were the only smallpox-vaccinated person in a house of a couple others, the vaccine efficacy fell to about two thirds.

This isn't a world apart from the COVID vaccines. Two doses protects you 92-95% against severe disease. And two doses reduces the rate of transmission, if you end up infected, by 50% (this was 80%, pre Delta).

As I said, people act astonished the COVID vaccines aren't perfect. In reality, they're just focusing on COVID efficacy in ways they never have with other vaccines. The COVID vaccines are substantially more effective than your typical seasonal flu jag, or the BCG. COVID vaccines are not a world apart in efficacy than the Smallpox vaccine—and we beat smallpox! Smallpox elimination required universal vaccination, but we managed.

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

#225

Post by isolli »

Sindisil wrote: post #95
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No. The vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing spread (nor for preventing serious illness, for that matter). That is not even remotely the same as "not effective". In practice, the vaccines (with the possible partial exception of the J&J single dose) provide significant reduction in both spread and serious illness.

That vaccines reduce spread significantly is possible, and we can hope that they do, but it is not proven yet.

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

#226

Post by jb1991 »

yosito wrote: post #207
roenxi wrote: 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.

> Side effects don't have to happen in the next 6 months. If this is a molecule with a short half-life that is broken down and expelled by the body, it isn't going to have random side effects that show up months in the future.

Unless it were to change something in the body while it was still active, and those changes didn't show any signs for a long time.

I'm just playing devil's advocate, but it doesn't seem impossible.

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

#227

Post by dymk »

dragonwriter wrote: post #196
wincy wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Kansas and have basically forgotten COVID is a thing. The people who wanted to get vaccinated like me have and those who haven’t, haven’t. Nobody asks about it and no businesses have any sort of mask requirements. Half of the people at the grocery store wear masks and the other half don’t. Everyone seems to be getting along. Next door in Kansas City Missouri I stopped at a gas station and an employee was sh…

> I guess 5 miles difference magically makes COVID much more contagious. No, 5 miles means you have a different government with a different policy response. (The difference itself doesn't justify either side.) That's just inherent in the existence of political borders.

Yeah, that’s the joke

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

#228

Post by thr0w72594 »

AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #197
dontcare007 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's the problem - "even if you get COVID". At the start of pandemic we could have hoped that it will pass in half a year, in a year or so. Now we know that it is probably here to stay. So eventually you will get COVID. Depending on how long has passed after your vaccine, what variation of virus you will get, how old you are and etc will depend if it is more like 5% or 1% or so. In my office I have 200 or so collea…

Unless you have a significant number of people working in your office over 70 years old, or if half of your colleagues are at least 60, it's more likely that nobody will die than 4-5.

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

#229

Post by twofornone »

jolts wrote: post #216

Lets ignore the fact that its basically ivermectin with more side effects. Except ivermectin is 30 cent per dose and not under patent..

Well, they are both protease inhibitors. It is quite plausible that if this drug works that ivermectin also does indeed work. But this isn't new information and every time I post it I get downvoted for spreading "misinformation".

But big pharma would never skip an existing, cheap, off patent treatment in lieu of guaranteed multi-billion dollar, liability free vaccine contracts, right? We can totally trust these guys, it's a pandemic after all, how low would you need to stoop to use that as an excuse to make billions of risk free dollars? It's completely implausible that for example, the former FDA commissioner, who now sits on Pfizer's board of directors along with the CEO of Reuters, would pressure the FDA to ignore an existing, safe, cheap medication to instead pursue vaccines based on a novel, widely applicable tech ology and new, expensive, patentable medication. We're only talking tens of billions of guaranteed, risk free dollars here, contractually free of any liability.

Nope, no need to worry about regulatory capture, about self serving past mistakes that harmed hundreds of thousands of people in the past on behalf of characters like Fauci (see his AIDS debacle), no, its totally impossible, this is a global pandemic after all and industrial executives are known to be shining beacons of honesty.

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

#230

Post by acdha »

djrogers wrote: post #124
matsemann wrote: post #106

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.

Sounds like the consequence of not taking it is a 0.5% chance of death, so probably not a lot of running for those who understand COVID death rates.

The study was for patients “who were at high risk of progressing to severe illness”, where the hospitalization/death rate was 6.7% without it and 1% with. You probably wouldn’t give it out to everyone but that’s the kind of risk decision doctors make routinely.
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