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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%

#731

Post by laurent92 »

mchusma wrote: post #714
delecti wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think skepticism of vaccines largely doesn't transfer to the broader medical field. The ineffective fad treatments (ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine) are still medicine, but are still "popular" with vaccine skeptics. It's not rational, but I think vaccine skepticism is largely not rational to begin with.

Anecdotally, hearing from doctors working in COVID wards, they consist almost entirely of anti-vaxxers who are now seeking (and receiving) treatments only recently approved. So while not everyone will take this, I think probably many would once they have symptoms. That said, this does work better it seems if taken early, before the anti-vax sentiment may have worn off. Hard to say. What it does signal is really the "…

This. Being antivax when one has 93% if not facing the virus ≠ refusing drugs when infected. At that point, it’s worth doing everything because the risk is realized.

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

#732

Post by ashtonkem »

noir_lord wrote: post #142
chadash wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's expensive. The cost of R&D to bring a new drug to market is around $1 billion, and this doesn't include the cost of marketing (though it does include the cost of drugs that fail the approval process)(see https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762311 ). At these numbers, it's hard to raise the money unless you think the drug is gonna be profitable.

On the one hand, yep absolutely. However on the other hand I look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Queen_Elizabeth_(R08) which cost $4 billon to build. A billion is a lot of money but not for governments, it's kinda tragic when you look at what we spend on some things that we haven't figured out a more sensible way of allocating resources.

And we’re lucky if those billion dollar military projects even work. More often than not you get a F-35; expensive and underperforming.

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

#733

Post by nkozyra »

tshaddox wrote: post #721
delecti wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think skepticism of vaccines largely doesn't transfer to the broader medical field. The ineffective fad treatments (ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine) are still medicine, but are still "popular" with vaccine skeptics. It's not rational, but I think vaccine skepticism is largely not rational to begin with.

The fad treatments are "still medicine," but crucially are not generally approved of by the "mainstream medical establishment." This lack of approval is the key feature of these treatments.

> This lack of approval is the key feature of these treatments.

Lack of approval + length of use as medicine. There's a narrative that drug X has been used for 50 years (despite what it's used for) and therefore the pharma industry is uninterested in its success because they can't get rich off of it.

The latter is a common thread, along the lines of "what THEY don't want you to know."

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

#734

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

penultimatebro wrote: post #676
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mRNA vaccines do not, and never have, reduce the spread of the virus from one infected person to someone else That's simply not correct.

Well I’m convinced. Case closed, you win.

I can see your comment history, and you made the same false statement 3 days prior to this one. You were given long responses with links then. ( e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29078217 )

The same thing 5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29058624 you were given a response that you ignored.

Those didn't make any impression on you; you carried on saying the same false thing. So there was no point in trying to convince you this time, it's clear that would be simply a waste of my time to try to change your mind again. You aren't here for that.

I'm merely marking your misinformation for the benefit of others.

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

#735

Post by greeneggs »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #702
sokoloff wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has interesting implications when we consider how much money drug companies “should” be paid for inventing important new life-saving medicines. I frequently hear/read complaints of "that's outrageous [that this medicine costs $X]!" Well, maybe it is; maybe it isn't, but if you make sure it costs $X/100, I can be pretty sure you'll get less drug R&D.

Pharma companies in the US spend about twice as much on advertising as they do on R&D [1]. Recent data compiled by the House Oversight Committee shows the biggest pharma companies spent $56 billion more on stock buybacks and dividends than they did on R&D over the past five years [2]. Very little of the ridiculous prices that US citizens pay for medicine (directly or via insurance) actually goes towards R&D. [1] http…

Your first link is from 2008, and analyzes data from 2004. I don't see how this proves anything, or even suggests much, about the industry today.

Your second link shows that the pharma companies spend almost as much on R&D as on stock dividends and buybacks. Is there any other industry that spends as much on R&D? Apple, for instance, seems to be spending ~6x as much on stock buybacks and dividends as on R&D (approximately, based on the first Google hits).

Even your own links contradict your claim that very little goes to R&D.

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

#736

Post by UnFleshedOne »

jollybean wrote: post #710
GhettoComputers wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately, it's the opposite. Anti-Vaxx people seem to absolutely love non-vax treatments. I don't know if the rationalization is sound, but I'm not sure it's really that. The anti-vaxx stigma pre-COVID I think has had it's toll. The notion of 'government pushing you to take something' as well. Whereas, 'you get sick, you take a pill' is an easy concept. My fear is that a lot of people won't bother with a vax if…

I think the main difference is one has to necessarily take on vaccine risk without catching covid, so you balance chance of vax complications vs chance of getting covid multiplied by chance of getting bad case of covid.

So 1 * P(bad vax) vs P(getting covid) * P(bad covid case).

While most of other proposed treatments are after you already got it.

So P(bad side effects) vs 1 * P(bad covid case).

Depending on your priors and health, those balance very differently.

Also, if the new pill ends up as effective as they say it is, there is no reason to push for 100% vax uptake anymore -- it would turn covid into a slightly more dangerous cold.

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

#737

Post by oezi »

stevev wrote: post #558

I do think early treatments are important and that we have strong case studies to support the effectiveness of Ivermectin and high dosage of Vitamin D intake. https://c19early.com/

Why are you linking to such a page? This isn't a trustworthy source.

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

#738

Post by ufo »

stevev wrote: post #558

I do think early treatments are important and that we have strong case studies to support the effectiveness of Ivermectin and high dosage of Vitamin D intake. https://c19early.com/

There's enormous amounts of evidence that ivermectin doesn't work.

If did work, we wouldn't have over 600,000 dead here in Brazil. A sizeable portion of the population, encouraged by our goverment, made use of ivermectin as a so-called preventive treatment. It didn't work, and hundreds of thousands died despite it.

The only thing that is actually working is the advance of the vaccination campaign. While it started late, we thankfully are have a very large support for vaccination, and very few antivaxxers.

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

#739

Post by [deleted] »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #549
penultimatebro wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mRNA vaccines do not, and never have, reduce the spread of the virus from one infected person to someone else. The only thing they do is reduce symptoms. That has been known from clinical trials. Everything else is a talking point not based on a peer reviewed scientific study. Or if you think you have a study that refutes this, please post.

> The mRNA vaccines do not, and never have, reduce the spread of the virus from one infected person to someone else That's simply not correct.

[deleted]

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

#740

Post by docmars »

oezi wrote: post #737
stevev wrote: post #558

I do think early treatments are important and that we have strong case studies to support the effectiveness of Ivermectin and high dosage of Vitamin D intake. https://c19early.com/

Why are you linking to such a page? This isn't a trustworthy source.

Oh? It only links to dozens of peer-reviewed journals and studies. Totally suspect.

Can't win all the jab religion followers, it seems ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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