Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Less than two years from lab to clinic is highly unusual. I assume like most other COVID vaccines/treatments, the timeline is shrunk by going straight to more expensive phases of the trial instead of having preliminary ones of escalating cost and confidence. Or at least prepping for them. For instance, all the vaccines started setting up commercial production around the same time they started trials, because it's no…
The Latest article in BMJ about the failures in scientific integrity in the pfizer trials are a likely consequence of your last paragraph I would guess.
Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
891–900 of 1001 posts
Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
#892Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Terrible take. Your first source vaguely tries to estimate promotional spending (not advertising as you deceitfully claim). Promotional spend has a positive ROI (or you wouldn’t do it). So spending $1B in promotion gets your $1B+ in sales (it’s self funding). Plus stock buybacks and dividends are being criticized? Returning money to investors is “bad”? Who do you think provides capital for drug development? The Grena…
“Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.” – James W. Frick
Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
#893Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 prio…
> one has to necessarily take on vaccine risk without catching covid Thankfully that risk is tiny. > 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. No, vaccination remains far cheaper. Mass vaccination also reduces the risk of mutation, and of infection others. If everybody gets vaccinated…
Only if the vaccine is effective enough. With these moderately effective vaccines, there is a danger that breakthrough cases will generate new variants.
Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
#894Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't call it "back to normal". In addition to the mask mandates, which are more bothersome than you make out (e.g. it's pretty tiring to do cardio at the gym with a mask), there are other restrictions. Parents aren't allowed on our school campus, we don't have any in-person school events, kids get tested once a week, kids have to stay at 3 feet from each other at school, no wind instrument classes.
> e.g. it's pretty tiring to do cardio at the gym with a mask Those restrictions are on their way out: https://abc7news.com/amp/face-masks-mask-mandates-bay-area-i... > Parents aren't allowed on our school campus, we don't have any in-person school events, kids get tested once a week, kids have to stay at 3 feet from each other at school, no wood wind instrument classes. Not sure where you are but in my very urban CA…
Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
#895Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because theres no reason to believe it does. Firstly the study that Ivermectin-for-covid is based on in vitro(cell-in-petri-dish) studies of rhesus monkey liver cells[1]. Additionally. Rhesus monkeys have differing bodies sizes and in order to get an equivalent dose in humans would require overdosing on ivermectin, which can and has lead to death. Ivermectin targets the host nuclear transport importin α/β1 heterodime…
Well it felt like I never really got over it. Aside from a brief period of fever, everything else stayed until ivermectin. Headache, fatigue, sob, cough, sense of smell issues, brain fog, all kinds of erratic heart problems. There's a lot of speculation that long covid results from the virus migrating into the body and organs where it persists. This makes sense with what I experienced. Symptoms I've never had before…
(That's what the studies are for, and thus far, they've shown little sign of the effect you describe on statistically significant populations.)
Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
#896Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't call it "back to normal". In addition to the mask mandates, which are more bothersome than you make out (e.g. it's pretty tiring to do cardio at the gym with a mask), there are other restrictions. Parents aren't allowed on our school campus, we don't have any in-person school events, kids get tested once a week, kids have to stay at 3 feet from each other at school, no wind instrument classes.
Isn't the point of doing cardio work to be tired? To stress your lungs and heart? That's why extreme athletes wear masks while doing cardio... I'm sure a little surgical mask isn't as difficult as this: https://www.trainingmask.com
Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
#897Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it's not really researchers that I'm worried about, it's their bosses.
You ascribe far more rationality to the process of developing drugs than is actually applied. Pharma mostly avoids low-profit avenues, but at least partly because that would be a good way to go out of business. However, to suggest that they intentionally suppress researchers with the goal of reducing costs seems a bit far-fetched.
Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
#898Earlier quoted context omitted.
trifluoroacetyl is a pretty stable substituent, as far as the fluorines go. trifluoromethyl as a substituent is a classic "medicinal chemist's favorite" and will not be labile. for example: efavirenz, fluoxetine, celecoxib all have a TFM. It's true fluorine chemistry is generally tricky, including some organofluorine chemistry, on the other hand in this case trifluoroacetic acid, trifluoroacetyl chloride etc are comm…
I'm fairly certain that all of those compounds derive from some fluorine gas that was incorporated into the source molecules. The molecule I worked with in grad school, 5FU, contains a fluorine, it's a very effective anticancer drug which ultimately came from fluroacetyl which is highly toxic. In fact most of the molecules I worked with in grad school that had fluorine were toxic specifically because of fluorine. Not…
1. that compounds derive from some difficult to handle gas is only a problem for the process chemists. In this case because the TFA-based precursor is available this is not a problem. Though technically, the production of that commercially available TFA will probably have involved F2.
2. Though indeed there are quite a few toxic compounds that incorporate fluorine, such as 5-fluoro-uracil, fluoroacetate etc this is not quite a general rule, as there are also plenty of non toxic medicines and materials that incorporate fluorine. It seems decently compatible with life compared, certainly compared to some other elements or classes of compounds generally.
3. specifically concerning nucleoside/-tide/-base analogs I wouldn't quite pin their cytotoxicity on fluorine, as a class these will tend to be toxic because they are similar enough to nucleosides to get where they need to be but dissimilar enough to cause problems and make systems that deal with nucleobase derivatives malfunction. Instead of 5-fluoro you can also put 5-iodo, 5-TFM, sulfur, alkynyl, etc there and get antiviral like, cytotoxic compounds
In any case, when it comes to this specific pfizer drug, I would say the presence of some fluorines is not a production problem and certainly not a toxicity red flag. For example, Derek Lowe, whose amusing post on some of the more dangerous fluorine chemistry you cite, also has the following to say about fluorine and medicinal chemistry:
"We med-chemists just love our fluorines - as long as we don't have to use, like, fluorine itself to make them - because they armor-plate parts of our molecules against being metabolized and can change the binding profiles of the parent structures like nothing else can."[0]
[0]https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-ways-fluorinat...
Re: Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
#899Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it's not really researchers that I'm worried about, it's their bosses.
You ascribe far more rationality to the process of developing drugs than is actually applied. Pharma mostly avoids low-profit avenues, but at least partly because that would be a good way to go out of business. However, to suggest that they intentionally suppress researchers with the goal of reducing costs seems a bit far-fetched.
Mine was not a conspiracy-innuendo, but rather a simple critique of profit-driven research in health-related sciences. Humans can do wonderful things when they work together, so it's rather sad that we seem to do that only when there are riches on the line.