Live data from Hacker News

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

fiercebiotech.com

311–320 of 1001 posts

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

#311

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…

> A healthy young person might have a 10x reduced risk

The risk doubles every 7 years so it's going to be ~18x between generations, and much greater beyond that. Those who are old and have existing co-morbidities are really pushing the difference as severity of disease is strongly correlated with number and severity of co-morbidities.

Edit: ~18x, not ~30x. It's late here, I can't calculate 2 to the power of 4 without a calculator until I sleep, wake up, and have a strong coffee.

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

#312

If you take an antiviral like this, do you still develop a good immune response to reinfection? I wonder because almost everyone who might end up needing this isn't vaccinated (based on hospitalization rates) so I hope that at the end they also end up having some immunity to catching it again at least. In the moment of course it is better to use than not.

You should -- protease inhibitors inhibit replication, but existing viruses should be more than enough to generate a durable response in most individuals.

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

> for the narrow purpose of attending public school

That doesn't seem all that narrow; 90% of the population goes through the public school system. (Side note: I'm in NY, and our vaccination mandate covers private/religious schools, too.)

> well-tested and -understood vaccines

Like the COVID vaccines, sweet.

> illnesses far more threatening to them than Covid

Missed the chickenpox one, did you? Killed ~100/year before the vaccines. COVID's killed 805 children in the US so far, per https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics.

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

#314
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm suggesting that sometimes a very small amount of a substance can cause catastrophic effects a decade later. That's why we do testing before we release drugs.

And Pfizer isn't the hero here, they never have been.

https://corporatewatch.org/pfizer-six-scandals-to-remember/

This list doesn't even include Celebrex.

1986: Pfizer had to withdraw an artificial heart valve from the market after defects led to it being implicated in over 300 deaths. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdrew its approval for the product in 1986 and Pfizer agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation after multiple lawsuits were brought against it.

2003: Pfizer has long been condemned for profiteering from AIDS drugs. In 2003 for example, it walked away from a licencing deal for its Rescriptor drug that would have made it cheaper for poorer countries.

2011: Pfizer was forced to pay compensation to families of children killed in the controversial Trovan drug trial. During the worst meningitis epidemic seen in Africa, in 1996, Pfizer ran a trial in Nigeria their new drug Trovan. Five of the 100 children who took Trovan died and it caused liver damage, while it caused lifelong disabilities in those who survived. But another group of 100 children were given the conventional “gold standard” meningitis antibiotic as a “control” group for comparison. Six of them also tragically died because, the families said, Pfizer had given them less than the recommended level of the conventional antibiotic in order to make Trovan look more effective.

2012: Pfizer had to pay around $1billion to settle lawsuits claiming its Prempro drug caused breast cancer. Prempro was used in hormone replacement therapy, usually for women going through the menopause. The settlements came after six years of trials and hardship for the women affected.

2013: Pfizer paid out $273 million to settle over 2,000 cases in the US that accused its smoking treatment drug Chantix of provoking suicidal and homicidal thoughts, self harm and severe psychological disorders. Pfizer was also accused of improperly excluding patients with a history of depression or other mental disturbances from trials for the drug. Later, in 2017, a coroner in Australia ruled that the drug had contributed to a man’s suicide. The man’s mother campaigned to change the label on the drug.

2020: Pfizer reached an agreement with thousands of customers of its depo-testosterone drug in 2018 after they sued it for increasing the likelihood of numerous issues, including heart attacks.

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

#315
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'm in a very educated university town, and very few people wear masks here any longer in public.

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

#316
post #218
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop spreading disinformation. This has gone through studies showing significant positive benefits. Ivermectin has small studies with dubious methodology showing possible effects and larger studies with better methodology showing no benefit, along with substantial side-effects. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111... https://www.cochranelibrary.com/content?templateType=full&ur...

I don't know if ivermectin is efficient, but I doubt it has substantial side-effects. Your first link states that ivermectin is "proved to be safe at the conventional dose, although severe adverse effects have occasionally been reported". Occasional is not "substantial". Your second link does not work for me.

The people pushing it as a COVID treatment are usually pushing prolonged usage at higher doses – they routinely dismiss studies showing no benefits as not using enough – and the documented side effects definitely happen at those levels. The lower doses used for parasite treatments also are balanced against high efficacy, whereas this just means you still have COVID along with new problems.

Sorry about the link - it worked earlier when I tested it. You can try this one:

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...

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

#317

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.

Subramanian Kumar 2021 [1] found that there is no correlation between vaccination rates and new case rates on a country-wide level, or a county-wide level in the United States. This tracks with Dr. Vanden Bossche's assessment [2] from March of this year that mass vaccination with prophylactic vaccines will actually prolong and worsen the pandemic due to shedding of infectious variants. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go…

several comments on the quality of its science here - https://pubpeer.com/publications/693A0D3B374ACED0103ADDEA0D9...

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

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: is it necessary to get vaxxed if - all else held the same - the cost is not significantly higher for the antiviral? Wouldn't that cut the risk down so significantly that we can safely say, "Vaccinate if you're at-risk for your own protection, and have negligible risk otherwise"? This changes the entire risk calculation.

Vaccination is in large part about beating the epidemic , i.e. the population-scale prevalence of the pathogen, by preventing most of the infections and therefore disease transmission. This pill is about treating disease symptoms, but while doing nothing to limit disease spread. So while on a personal level, there may not be dramatic differences in death rates etc., on a population level the differences are huge.

Incorrect, mRNA COVID vaccination is about reducing symptoms in infected patients. It does absolutely nothing to slow down or stop the spread of COVID.

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

#319
post #109
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Researchers in pharma are working extremely hard and almost always in good faith. I know this is probably tongue-in-cheek but it's not true.

Yeah it's not really researchers that I'm worried about, it's their bosses.

Can you provide an example of a treatment people would like that 'big pharma' wouldn't produce because they couldn't make a profit on it?

This is such a ridiculous argument, IMO. As a thought experiment consider something like cancer treatment. If some pharma company researcher found a way to 100% prevent or reverse cancer, why would the company hide that? In the best case, they could make a ton of money from it by selling it cheap to everyone. In the worse case, they could make a ton of money selling it to the ultra wealthy with an obscene price tag. If they tried to hide it, the researcher would share the information elsewhere, no?

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

#320
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...

This would be acceptable to me if the vaccinations were in any way comparable. The diseases you speak of have been known for centuries (I am comfortable being wrong on that) and the vaccines have been tested and are understood as part of being distributed for decades.

This is a common argument, and honestly it's garbage.

Post reply on HN