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

fiercebiotech.com

341–350 of 1001 posts

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

#341
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7996102/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7996102/

Almost as if after clinical evidence (sure, arguably week) and a promising mechanism of action (yeah, in silico) a widespread, double blind RCT should have been conducted a year ago...

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

#342
post #333

> [...] patients who received Paxlovid within five days of symptom onset [...] I wonder how well it will do on people who are farther along in their COVID infection? There are a lot of people who don't get vaccinated, don't take precautions to avoid COVID, dismiss their early symptoms either because they believe COVID isn't worse than a typical cold or flu or because they think that is probably what they have, just t…

I wonder if having an effective oral antiviral readily available will result in someone who would have acted in the manner you suggest seeking this treatment instead.

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

#343
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A more charitable reading is that the people involved in OP's story suck.

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

#344

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.

No. There's a big difference between drugs and vaccines. The drug doesn't generally illicit an immune response, but the vaccine is designed to do exactly that.

But by definition, anyone taking this drug is already infected. So their immune system has already been exposed to the virus.

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

#345
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as your definition of "good" doesn't include public health and you know "not killing other people", sure... it's as "good".

People should get vaccinated. But at this point making claims that the vaccinated don't spread covid is not supported by the science.

On the other hand, claiming that the vaccinated spread the disease 63% less even in close household situations is supported by the science.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.14.21264959v...

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

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does matter. If it's expensive - we'll have government printing more money to afford the pill, like they've been doing for the vaccine, and the general populace for the past 2 years. But the vaccine is free! Yep... sure.

Do you think there's a significant increase in government spending for paying for these pills? It's trivial compared to things like enhanced welfare benefits or military spending

Yes, by sheer volume. It’s not trivial. Monoclonal antibodies are thousands of dollars per treatment for instance and the idea of business loans or small business aid is that it’s going to investment. Of course none of this matters in 2019 a repo crisis was triggered: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_events_in_the_...

They needed to inject liquidity into the economy and justified it with COVID.

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

#347

Before everyone becomes super excited, I want you all to read this article from Nov 2: https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635 Read it carefully. Pfizer falsifies clinical data and covers up significant adverse effects. FDA knows about all of that and covers their asses. Whatever comes from Pfizer will be authorized without any questions being asked. It's not even a legislation, but a straight up internal arrangeme…

One of Pfizer's trial vendors falsified information.

https://www.cbs17.com/news/north-carolina-news/fact-check-re...

> The Pfizer Phase III trial involved 44,000 people and 153 locations. From August 2020 through Sept. 17, 2020 — when she was fired — Jackson told CBS 17 that Ventavia accounted for at least 1,200 of those people and accounted for three sites.

The author of the BMJ piece is quoted as saying “people are going to use this to push a political position because that’s what they’re interested in”, so congrats on demonstrating that.

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

#348

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 could see things starting to really ease up once all children have had a chance to be vaccinated and everyone else has had a chance to get their 6 month booster shot.

Children aren't at risk from Covid at all. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01897-w In the US, 340 children under 17 have died from Covid. Total. During the same period, 187 have died from the flu, and over 51,000 children have died from all causes:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Se...

They are more likely to be injured by these vaccines and neurotic parents stuffing them into masks for hours at a time.

Sweden halts Moderna: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-moderna-sweden-ha...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-08/iceland-j...

117 children murdered for profit. https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/we-will-kill-117-kids-to-...

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

#349
> Pfizer’s phase 2/3 trial randomized non-hospitalized adult COVID-19 patients who were at high risk of progressing to severe illness to receive placebo or Paxlovid, a combination of the protease inhibitors PF-07321332 and ritonavir. The efficacy analysis is based on 1,219 patients.

One noteworthy feature is the newness of this drug:

> PF-07321332 was developed from scratch during the current pandemic. It’s a reversible covalent inhibitor that reacts with one of the main protease’s cysteine residues. Owen [director of medicinal chemistry at Pfizer] also discussed the chemistry involved in scaling up the compound. The first 7 mg of the compound were synthesized in late July 2020. Encouraged by the early biological data, the Pfizer team aimed to scale up the synthesis. By late October, they’d made 100 g of the compound. Just two weeks later, the chemists had scaled up the synthesis to more than 1 kg. Owen said 210 researchers had worked on the project.

https://cen.acs.org/acs-news/acs-meeting-news/Pfizer-unveils...

Less than two years from lab to clinic is highly unusual. If approved, I believe this would be the fastest lab-to-approval for a small molecule drug in the history of the FDA.

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

#350

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.

When hospitalization rates are down. In many metro areas the ICU are still full of un-vaccinated COVID patients, which means people with normal emergencies can't get a bed. Thus, COVID precautions are necessary to reduce the rate of infection to levels that do not overwhelm the healthcare system. And all those areas that have "returned to normal" are sending their COVID patients to regions that are still masking beca…

The medical cartel has had 2 years to adapt at this point. How have they failed to scale capacity despite charging record prices?
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