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

fiercebiotech.com

291–300 of 1001 posts

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

#291
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure we don't understand the long term risk of getting COVID either right? I mean it has not even been around for 2 years. Plus we do know it is possible only 1 infection would kill you.

That’s a straw man argument, when you take this drug you already have 100% covid19. Presumably that means you’ll have that risk, plus additional unknown risk. Perhaps the drug works like advertised, but we’ve seen better and more successful studies for things like ivermectin and anti-body treatments. Which have a known risk profile. It’s the same for the vaccine. You still have the risk of what ever the vaccine risk…

The long term risks for either is not knowable.

Hospitalisation is an acute scenario that can lead to death, negating any concerns about the long-term in the first place. The short term risk of hospitalisation in the unvaccinated versus the vaccinated is well-known. Given what we know, it still makes sense to get vaccinated, and it may make sense for those at risk of hospitalisation (vaccinated or otherwise) to take an antiviral proven to cut the risk of hospitalisation.

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

#292
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Prions are "just" proteins that should get broken down by the body. But they don't, and they cause ‎Creutzfeldt-Jakob in over 10 years after ingesting.

Are you suggesting that every new molecule should be treated as if it were a prion?

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

#293
post #265
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 comb…

It's a combo regimen that includes ritonavir and PF-07321332 which does not have a generic name yet. Both are protease inhibitors.

Oh thought that was some id name for ritonavir. Seems you are right:

> PF-07321332 is designed to block the activity of the SARS-CoV-2-3CL protease, an enzyme that the coronavirus needs to replicate. Co-administration with a low dose of ritonavir helps slow the metabolism, or breakdown, of PF-07321332 in order for it to remain active in the body for longer periods of time at higher concentrations to help combat the virus.

So the main job is done by PF-07321332 even, while ritonavir is only there to keep PF-07321332 a bit longer from being destroyed by the body.

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

#294
post #169

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 guess 5 miles difference magically makes COVID much more contagious.

In my nearest town (in the UK) there are two supermarkets. In the budget one (Aldi) nobody wears a mask, in the upmarket one (Waitrose) everybody does.

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

#295
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except now we have a federal government which thinks it knows best and will force medical decisions on you.

We've done that for decades in this country. > All 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) mandate diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, measles, rubella and chickenpox. In addition, every state except Iowa mandates immunization against mumps. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/08/states-have...

The comparison to mandates for children to receive well-tested and -understood vaccines, against illnesses far more threatening to them than Covid, for the narrow purpose of attending public school, is so dishonest as to be a form of gaslighting.

FWIW I believe Florida is in the process of relaxing mandates for some of the other required vaccinations -- certainly there is now political hay to be made from doing so because the concept has been so poisoned by the Covid vaccine mandaters.

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

#296
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'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 t…

He’s vaccinated, so it seems a little dramatic to be calling OP a bad person and that they suck.

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

#297
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure we don't understand the long term risk of getting COVID either right? I mean it has not even been around for 2 years. Plus we do know it is possible only 1 infection would kill you.

That’s a straw man argument, when you take this drug you already have 100% covid19. Presumably that means you’ll have that risk, plus additional unknown risk. Perhaps the drug works like advertised, but we’ve seen better and more successful studies for things like ivermectin and anti-body treatments. Which have a known risk profile. It’s the same for the vaccine. You still have the risk of what ever the vaccine risk…

Data shows that being vaccinated divides your odds of dying and being hospitalized from covid by about 10. There's no evidence I'm aware of showing that the vaccines create additional risk anywhere close to outweighing that benefit.

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don’t get injections or pills from random people stopping by my house.

You trust the manufacturer and their supply chain on the value of their marketing efforts. That’s OK.

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

#299

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.

It seems to me that you're one of those not understanding COVID death rates, though. Firstly, even though I doubt your number a bit, even a 1/200 chance of death is mighty high enough for most people to seek treatment for something. Secondly, if you're already infected, the pill is probably less risky than those 1/200. Thirdly, the chance of death isn't equal for everyone. A healthy young person might have a 10x redu…

People think 0.5% is low, but e.g. JFK airport has about 500 takeoffs a day, if on average every day 2 or 3 planes that flew out of JFK crashed, how would they feel about air travel?

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

#300

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.

It's fairly clear what the exit criteria is. Hospital capacity. When hospitals are filling up COVID measures are necessary. COVID is endemic now and will ebb and flow over the next decade. As such I would expect COVID measures to come and go based on local health department and hospital capacity needs.

It was a stroke of genius for the powers that be to convince people that they have a personal responsibility to restore/protect a health infrastructure that has been looted out, and structured if not designed to act in a predatory manner. They created new emergency powers and a new moral imperative to avoid contagious respiratory disease out of whole cloth. "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!"
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