Live data from Hacker News

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

fiercebiotech.com

761–770 of 1001 posts

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

#761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When hospitals are filling up COVID measures are necessary. They are only "necessary" if you are optimizing the metric "make sure hospitals run smoothly" over any other concerns. I hate this framing that Covid restrictions are ever forced on us, rather than being a policy choice with pros and cons.

I'd imagine that scaling up ICU capacity has to be more efficient than constantly enacting mandates on the entire population for a decade.

Pandemics are an exponential process, so scaling capacity linearly buys you only a few days or weeks of time unless the exponential is controlled. It's not useless, but it's also decidedly not a lone solution.

That also doesn't account for the damage people contracting the virus accumulate that doesn't register on that metric.

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

#763
post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting to see how that data compares with other diseases. For instance heart disease, which is largely preventable and kills more people

I think altering your diet and lifestyle to prevent heart disease (assuming it's non-heritable) is harder than getting two shots to prevent COVID.

3 shots now, Israel is preparing for 4th...

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

#764
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Antibiotics https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02884-3

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

#765

> As a protease inhibitor, Paxlovid is free from the theoretical DNA-alteration risk tied to the mechanism of action of Merck’s molnupiravir. This is the line I was looking for. Not that I know how protease inhibitor works, but looks more like a traditional anti-viral approach v.s. the potentially DNA altering molnupiravir.

I doubt we’ll see molnupiravir getting approved in this context now. I think the mechanism just has too much risk.

Already approved in the UK:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59163899

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

#766
post #131
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C19ivermectin.com - which includes well done and poorly done studies - lists 86% reduction with prophylaxis treatment. You'll believe and weight a single study done by the company looking to make billions via a new patented drug over many third-party studies of a cheap off-patent drug though, won't you?

No, that site is anonymous for a reason: the information presented hasn’t passed scientific review and relies on various methodological and analytic errors to show positive effects. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111...

Do you think mentioning the site being anonymous gives any strength to your argument?

Have your links been peer reviewed by competent individuals who aren't toeing the line?

I wonder if https://mobile.twitter.com/alexandrosM has analyzed your links yet, I'll ask him. He's been debunking "long form"/poorly done "deep analysis" for awhile now - including people trying to show flaws in Ivermectin studies but where their methods are selective and showing bias; and then arrogant people like you jump in claiming they 100% know the truth.

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

#767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much the same story in South Carolina. Outside retail workers, mask usage in my hyper local area is about 2%. Life has been basically completely normal since June 2020.

Being in BC, Canada sucks. I went in to an Apple store to buy the fully loaded MacBook M1 max, with 6000 dollars in my hand (literally). And was told to leave the store because my mask didn't cover my nose. I'm buying a Razer 15 now. And I'm fully vaccinated. Not because I was scared of getting sick (i already contacted COVID twice before the vaccine, including the Delta variant), but because I was shamed into gettin…

If you don't understand by now that vaccines significantly reduce transmission, you just need to google "do covid vaccines reduce transmission". The top results are links to the CDC, Nature, New Scientist, the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and more, all saying that vaccines significantly reduce transmission.

Vaccines significantly reduce transmission, so if someone is telling you they don't, you need to re-evaluate whether you should trust that person and any information they're giving you.

(P.S. SARS-CoV-2 is a virus with airborne transmission that loves nasal passages, so it's probably pretty important that your mask cover your nose. So far, there's no evidence that the virus cares at all about how much money you have in your hand.)

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

#768
post #97
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One one side: great job, pharma industry! We're gonna live forever! On the other side: what are you folks not curing, with your magic powers, just because you know you won't be able to make a buck from it...?

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.

Found the big pharma PR guy. The people in pharma are 100% not in this for the right reasons. Not one. Look into Every Single one of these companies just a tiny bit and you'll see how absolutely evil they are and by working for them you are complicit. You don't have to agree with reality, but that's reality.

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

#769

> 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 reversi…

Is the similiarity of COVID-19 to other coronaviruses also a speed up? We are not starting from complete scratch in that case.

Aren't we? I thought that until SARS the scientific consensus was that coronaviruses are not interesting. And SARS died out too quickly to achieve much. But I might have not paid enough attention.

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

#770
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I saw the “masks required in this county” sign, but I really needed to pee. I knew I was going to be driving through that county for about 20 more minutes, so I checked my car for a mask. I couldn’t find one as there’s no mask mandate in my area so I’ve stopped carrying a mask around. I then held my shirt up as best I could as a “mask” and made a bee line for the bathroom. If they’d had masks at the door I’d…

> I’d be mad if I was being threatened with fines by the local government for having maskless people in my establishment too. Ha. Perhaps she was mad because she was at risk of being exposed to Covid all day long due to boneheads who were incapable of reading, or wearing a mask, and some of them turned around and gave her grief for it?

That could be it. But there's of course no way to know what the source of her neurosis is with no further information.
Post reply on HN