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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%

#251

Post by est31 »

shusaku wrote: post #19

I think it’s hard to overstate what a big deal this is for science. This is a completely novel molecule that appears effective as an antiviral. This would a huge achievement for the field of drug design, and will hopefully lead to all kinds of great medicine.

> This is a completely novel molecule that appears effective as an antiviral. This would a huge achievement for the field of drug design, and will hopefully lead to all kinds of great medicine.

According to the Pfizer press release [0] Paxlovid uses Ritonavir [1], which is a known HIV antiviral, originally patented in 1989.

At the start of the covid pandemic, chinese scientists even tried Kaletra, a generic that combines Ritonavir with another HIV antiviral, and found it to not improve outcomes [2], but this might have been due to them not giving the drug early enough in the infection, but only to hospitalized patients, while Pfizer gave it to non-hospitalized patients with a risk of later hospitalization.

[0]: https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-det...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritonavir

[2]: https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2001282

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

#252

Post by rndgermandude »

dontcare007 wrote: post #136
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.

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

If you die of Covid, your loved ones will not care if the chance of that happening was low. You won't care either, you'll be dead. All it really takes is that one previously-undiagnosed comorbidity to put you in the front of a the line for a casket-fitting even if you're young(-ish).

If you survive but get permanent damage e.g. due to the blood clots that a lot of COVID patients develop, or due to the side effects of medications and treatment e.g. (partial) blindness from high-dose steroids or reduced mobility up to no use in your limbs especially your legs due to ECMO, then I am pretty sure you won't be running around (in the latter example because you physically cannot anymore) telling people how COVID only kills so-and-so tiny percent of the population.

Even if you escape realtively unscathed, spending a month or two in the hospital followed by some weeks of recovery or in a rehab facility (e.g. to learn how to walk again after a few weeks of coma and maybe some ECMO hoses in your legs), then that probably still would be an experience you'd like to avoid.

And that isn't even yet considering what effects you may experience in the future, "long covid" and all that.

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

#253

Post by fspeech »

acdha wrote: post #230
djrogers wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The actual death rate for the trial cohort is close to 2%:

Pfizer said 0.8 percent of patients who got the drug combination within three days were hospitalized within four weeks — three out of 389 patients — compared to 7 percent of patients who got placebos, or 27 out of 385. And seven of those who got placebos died, Pfizer said. No one who got the treatment died within a month.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/pfizers-new-covid-pi...

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

#254

Post by 10x-dev »

wincy wrote: post #169
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.

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've always found it strange that some Americans focus on politeness above all.

Of all the problems in your story, the employee shouting is the least 'wrong'. You've got a woman who won't wear a mask, yourself who sneaked in without a mask, and that's just in that moment of time, but somehow the employee who has to deal with that behavior all day every day is the bad person because they lost their cool.

It's one of those 'everyone sucks here' stories.

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

#255

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#256

Post by datameta »

stronglikedan wrote: post #125
RicoElectrico wrote: post #50

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).

> some assholes will use it as an excuse not to get vaxxed Well, they've succeeded in holding out long enough, now that there's no longer a good reason to get vaxxed. Because, as most people are starting to realize, the pandemic is over (at least in the US).

It's potentially almost over thanks in large part to all the people who made the sensible society benefiting decision of taking the vaccine and/wearing a mask when in a non-dining public indoor space.

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

#257

Post by hehetrthrthrjn »

dontcare007 wrote: post #136
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.

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

You're ok with a 1 in 50 chance of dying?

I know that people can have difficulty interpreting probabilities, but given the outcome, you don't think those are really terrible odds? Of course the medicine also has a risk profile but it's clearly much, much lower.

Also it should noted that even when covid doesn't kill you it can have debilitating effects that linger or are permanent.

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

#258

Post by seniorThrowaway »

timr wrote: post #221
AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sever…

https://archive.ph/5LWlK

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

#259

Post by reureu »

twofornone wrote: post #229
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,…

Ivermectin isn't a protease inhibitor though?

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

#260

Post by jayknight »

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.

This is a good article. I'm firmly on team do-what-it-takes-to-stop-the-spread, but no one has an exit strategy. I got a booster and we have appointments for two of our three kids to get there first shot. By mid-December I'm hoping to not have to think much about it anymore.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/11/what-amer...

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