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

fiercebiotech.com

411–420 of 1001 posts

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

#411

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…

> covers up significant adverse effects.

I can't find that in the article you linked, can you cite the relevant parts of the text?

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

#412
post #320

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...

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.

Actually, the vaccines they used decades ago are definitely not the same ones they use today. For starters, vaccines from centuries ago tended to have actual non-zero mortality rates.

Vaccines are never tested "for decades" either, because people kind of assume that it is highly unlikely that there are super-long-term side effects from small acute doses. I would tend to agree.

The argument is therefore not garbage at all.

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

#413
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…

This already went through Phase III trials. It's closer in analogy to having the entire QA team on standby at their desks to do a full test as soon as you submit a PR at 1:38am for a feature that has to go live ASAP.

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

#415

> compared to 41 hospitalizations and 10 deaths in the placebo cohort This makes me weirdly sad. Can you imagine entering the trial for a long sought drug against a deadly disease that turn out to be working, and end up in the control group? I know that there's more to it (it's necessary, they knew, it could have not worked, plainly be nocive, etc.) but it's like being unlucky twice in a row and die out of that while…

Some patient next to them are not even offered to be part of this draw, and winning this draw (i.e. getting the real medicine) may lead to severe adverse effects.

It would be unethical if this placebo was given in place of a known working alternative treatment.

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

#416
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.

> Side effects don't have to happen in the next 6 months.

If you're willing to go that route, the same could be said for COVID itself.

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

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quoted post unavailable.

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

#418
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

VAERS is a great thing, but it's deeply unfortunate that antivax conspiracy theorists have used it to spread lies like yours. https://www.science.org/content/article/antivaccine-activist...

There is no conspiracy theory here. Stop using that term to minimize the importance of things. VAERS is a data point. Check out similar data points from other countries. Numbers DO match.

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

#419
post #144

I am thinking: if and when this is approved, we have to think about distribution. This drug is fantastically effective at preventing hospitalisation and death, if administered within three days of symptom onset. That gives quite a long time! But we still need to make it easy to take. Do pharmacies give it out? ER rooms? We don't want to wait until people are hospitalised; we are trying to avoid that. So when you test…

Who is the market for this? The assumption is that you give it ASAP and people want to take it. If people aren’t interested in vaccinations they may not want it either, and the vaccines are already very effective at preventing these issues.

The vaccines are 92–95% effective at preventing hospitalisation and death. (They also reduce spread significantly.) That's great.

However, that means something like this is still very useful because of that 5–8%, especially for the elderly and the immunosuppressed, etc.

(I share your skepticism anti vaxxers would be interested in an effective treatment.)

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

#420
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.

What’s good about this pill is that it’s only given to people who have tested positive and likely it’ll only be prescribed to people with risk factors. In the trial, the placebo group saw a 7% hospitalization rate. That is very high, and many of the other 93% surely had a bad time as well. The risk of possible long-term side effects when weighed against a very real risk of hospitalization is an easy choice. It’s different from vaccines in that way. Vaccines are given to healthy people, so there is basically zero risk tolerance.
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