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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%

#971

Post by spurgu »

okaram wrote: post #944
swader999 wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had one vaccine dose with severe issues. So maybe I'm skeptical, I won't get a second or third dose. Most people in this camp will just use ivermectin. Including myself, it works and is safe.

There is no evidence ivermectin works against COVID. There is still one large study running, I think, that might show a small effect, but definitely not a big effect. Sorry you had a severe issue with your vaccine.

> There is no evidence ivermectin works against COVID

Does that mean that there is no evidence that it doesn't work either? :)

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

#972

Post by ganzuul »

tsol wrote: post #863
ganzuul wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 deaths with placebo... Medical ethics are confusing. Maybe this field needs more oversight. Especially on the corporate level.

Patients enrolling in a clinical trial know they may get the placebo control. It wouldnt be more ethical to give it to all patients as in the case the medication does have a side effects you are only guaranteeing everyone gets hurt. As House put it-- >Just to shortcut this discussion.. People should not be testing drugs because they're desperate. But, people won't test drugs unless they're desperate. We need drugs to…

Has anybody said anything as insightful about preventative medicine?

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

#973

Post by neltnerb »

prox wrote: post #829
lekanwang wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should -- protease inhibitors inhibit replication, but existing viruses should be more than enough to generate a durable response in most individuals.

If I remember correctly, it’s not Covid that kills you directly , but a runaway immune response. What was the name… Cytokine storm?

Is it not always the case?

Do we say that Ebola doesn't kill you directly, it's the hemorrhaging and multi-organ failure?

Of course it doesn't kill you "directly" for some sufficiently narrow definition of direct.

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

#974

Post by nradov »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #906
anamax wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising includes drug samples given to doctors, which many/most of them give to patients who can't afford said drugs. How many of them are you willing to cut off?

BS, doctors give the samples to friends and family, and some to patients. Doctors can't know a patient is poor. In private practice, the doctor assumes the patient isn't poor.

Doctors usually pretty well know which patients are poor based on how they dress and speak.

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

#975

Post by nradov »

Alex3917 wrote: post #901
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.

> I can be pretty sure you'll get less drug R&D. You'd get more R&D. There were way more new drugs released before Bayh-Dole.

Maybe not. Most of the low hanging fruit. It's becoming much more difficult to find novel small molecule drugs. The possibilities are finite.

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

#976

Post by nradov »

geraneum wrote: post #835
claytongulick wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose some people would lump me in with "anti-vaxxer" because I don't want to get the Covid vaccine. I'm not anti-vax, btw. I have a medical condition that requires me to receive regular vaccination against several diseases, and I'm strict about doing that on time. I've made a calculated decision in the case of this specific vaccine based on that fact that I've now had Covid twice (first time was a bit nasty, sec…

I hear you and your argument sounds rational. I wonder what do you think about receiving it for the sake of potentially vulnerable people around you. Just to reduce the likelihood of spreading it to someone who, unlike you, might be in real danger. I personally didn’t mind the side effects, but mainly got it because I thought: What if I get Covid and give it to someone and something happens to them? And then I though…

I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated to protect themselves against severe symptoms, but that does little to protect vulnerable people. Vaccinated people also transmit the virus. Since the virus is endemic and can't be eradicated, everyone will be exposed multiple times throughout their lives.

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

#977

Post by semi-extrinsic »

refurb wrote: post #886
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #702

Earlier 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…

> Promotional spend has a positive ROI (or you wouldn’t do it).

That's incorrect; promotional spend on prescription drugs is the globally suboptimal result of a prisoner's dilemma where the prosecutors are going around saying "hey, that guy over there snitched, so should you". There is absolutely no guarantee that ROI is positive.

> Who do you think provides capital for drug development? The Grenadier Guards?

Most of basic drug development happens in labs e.g. at universities that are funded mainly by public sources.

Per the latest PhRMA member survey, drug companies spent about $13 billion per year on preclinical R&D, which was about 15% of their total R&D spend. Meanwhile the NIH alone provides about $40 billion per year for preclinical research. So funding for actually finding new drugs and therapies is dominated by other funding sources than drug companies.

If you look at e.g. Pfizer and J&J, more than 85% of their revenue comes from drugs that were invented elsewhere. Just to clarify, I'm not saying clinical trials isn't a necessary and expensive thing. But in large part it's not developing drugs, it's checking that there are no big side effects and that efficacy remains what you saw at small sample sizes.

For instance mRNA vaccines were invented in publically funded laboratories. Monoclonal antibodies that work against inflammation is another example. And of course CRISPR, which is very promising.

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

#978

Post by thenewnormal »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #583

So no we have the Pfizer vaccine (which I got) who cuts the risk of both catching the virus and the risk of severe complication by a lot (forgot the number but it's big) and in addition to that we now have Pfizer oral medication that can be given to positive cases and which reduces both hospitalization and death risk by 85%. When can life go back to normal?

I feel sorry for those in the US. You have made a miserable new normal for yourselves (and, as you say, despite everyone dutifully wearing masks and getting vaccinated, and now having the option of an effective treatment).

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

#979

Post by stjohnswarts »

jiggawatts wrote: post #892
refurb wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

$1B in R&D can often result in $100B in sales, so it is "even more" self-funding. “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

Sure but how many drugs get pitched that also cost $1 billion to find out that they were bog useless and had to be tossed in the garbage.

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

#980

Post by colordrops »

tehjoker wrote: post #761
colordrops wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There isn't any evidence that covid would continue to grow exponentially at this point if measures are removed. There are entire states where there are no measures, and it hasn't gone exponential there, even with low vaccination rates. The places with the strictest measures right now also have the highest vaccination rates.
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