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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%

#361

Post by xanaxagoras »

aj7 wrote: post #285
matsemann wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1/200 chance of death is gigantic.

So are the people who land in that numerator - a correlation that's not permitted in the public discourse apparently.

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

#362

Post by nextaccountic »

lettergram wrote: post #271
jjuel wrote: 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…

This drug might actually save the patient from the risk of dying from covid. It would be the same for the vaccine: the vaccines reduce the risk from dying.

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

#363

Post by tptacek »

darthvoldemort wrote: post #247
yosito wrote: 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.

It's a good thing we're all here on HN to question the safety of novel pharmaceuticals. If we weren't, maybe nobody would, and we'd all just be putting prions into ourselves.

If you have something specific about this particular molecule to talk about vis a vis safety, that's an interesting comment to make. But "aspirin is a molecule but so is Mad Cow Disease so we had better be careful about new drugs" is just about the most boring, banal comment you can make. Drugs: can they be unsafe??? We'll have more at 11!

We need more Derek Lowe-type drug safety discussion here, and a lot less of whatever this is.

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

#364

Post by 40four »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #213
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.

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…

I am wary of stories like this. What you’re saying is probably true true in specific cases in the most populous cities in the country, but I don’t think it’s a general policy that makes sense across the board.

I live in South Carolina & their Department of health website has great data. As of today, there are currently 551 Covid patients hospitalized statewide. 1280 ICU beds are occupied for a 76% utilization rate. Of those beds, 150 are Covid patients. That means 88% of folks in ICU are non-covid related.

https://scdhec.gov/covid19/covid-19-data/acute-hospital-bed-...

This data doesn’t exactly corroborate what your saying. The way you tell it, the ICUs are still overflowing with Covid, and they just aren’t. Not in SC at least. And we’re not exactly known for our stringent Covid restrictions.

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

#365

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #346
brokensegue wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Monoclonal antibodies are thousands of dollars per treatment for instance

And Monoclonal antibodies are not widely rolled out. This is not relevant.

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

#366

Post by tut-urut-utut »

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.

"Please don't talk about risk with so much at stake. Just push that code you wrote this morning to our mission-critical production system."

"We can do proper code review, unit testing, integration testing and full test cycle later on, when the pressure fades away."

We engineers all understand the risk of pushing untested code to production, but when it comes to medicine and other fields, we forget everything and rush it out. We basically act based on fear and hope.

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

#367

Post by woodruffw »

cies wrote: post #308
ralmeida wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this drug less experimental than the vaccines?

mRNA treatment is now also called a vaccine. That type of treatment has never been used on the general population until c19 came along and testing standards were reduced. It is a very interesting type of new treatment, but we lack long term data to say it's truly safe. Same can be said for any patented-molecule treatment. But that's just a new type of molecule, not a whole other type of treatment. Hence I'd say that…

This isn't meant to be a jab or insinuation about you in particular, but: what about an Adenovirus vaccine? You can still (AFAIK) get the J&J vaccine in the US, and the AZ vaccine in most of the rest of the world.

I'd argue that mRNA vaccine development represents the most rigorous that the field of vaccinology has ever been, but those (Adenovirus) vaccines use a well tested, not-previously-experimental delivery technology. Do you have an objection to them?

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

#368

Post by timr »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #322
timr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much higher than that for easily identifiable subgroups -- elderly people and obese people being trivial examples. The control arm of this study had a rate of "hospitalization or death" of 7% because they selected for subgroups at high risk. It's fine to acknowledge that aggregate risk of Covid is low (and indeed, more people should acknowledge that fact), but we must also acknowledge that it is a serious risk f…

Especially when we note that the clinic definition of obesity is much smaller than people think of, and 42% of Americans qualify.

That may be true, but it doesn't automatically mean that 42% of Americans are high risk. This is reflected in the aggregate statistics. Mild obesity is probably not a significant risk factor, whereas severe obesity is a big problem.

The BMI-based definition of "obesity" is a crude qualifier, and the vast majority of the affected will be in the smaller group that is both elderly and obese (esp. considering that age is, by far, the more important factor for serious outcomes.)

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

#369

Post by ralmeida »

unanswered wrote: post #182
ralmeida wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a fair viewpoint from the societal level, but not as much for the individual level, which was implied in the parent message - i.e. how can "I'll take experimental treatment B instead of experimental treatment A" be an argument for not taking experimental treatments in general?

For an individual, the antiviral is better because it means they don't need to take the vaccine with any possible risks, however small, up front. Yes once an individual become symptomatic with covid-19, they're forced to be exposed to one of the risks, but at that point the antiviral is the only choice. In short, it allows an individual to delay taking the unknown risk until there's an actual known downside to not ta…

From a "reducing my risk of dying" perspective, you'd have to balance the risk of dying from taking the vaccine vs the risk of dying from COVID with zero treatments, one treatment, or both treatments.

The numbers could lean either way and would be very sensitive to variations in the probabilities involved - I'm sure it would be very hard to reach any form of consensus on "probability of dying from taking the vaccine". It's also worth addressing wasn't even making the point of which (so-called) experimental treatment has a better likely outcome but rather addressing criticism at (so-called) experimental treatments in general.

From an "unknown risk" perspective, you'd also have to consider that COVID itself could have yet-unknown long-term risks.

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

#370

Post by throwawaymedia »

ceejayoz wrote: post #347
throwawaymedia wrote: post #337

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…

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