Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85% • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by politician » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

tsywke44 wrote: post #160

politician wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do open random executables that you get in your email? If not, why not?

No, I don’t. But just like I can trust the things I buy from the grocery stone to not poison me or to have stones embedded inside, I trust medical products taken by millions or even billions of people

People in urban areas like yourself only get food from the grocery store, so they naturally treat everything behind that as a black box. You have a learned belief in the “API of the City”, and that’s OK. The API tells you to inject yourself with random concoction that you can’t independently verify and so you do it.

People in rural areas see how food grows directly— from the ground or from livestock. They can get food from the grocery or from their backyard: sometimes the backyard food is fresher and better. These folks don’t trust the “API of the City” to provide for them. That’s OK too. The API tells them to inject themselves with a random concoction that they can’t independently verify and so they refuse.

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

#262

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

dontcare007 wrote: post #161

HelloMcFly wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except this is studied and dosed appropriately vs. tacking a bunch of Ivermectin and shitting your intestines out based on a half-truth you read about from Facebook.

Like what happened with Joe Rogan, oh wait, he recovered.

As have people who didn't get ivermectin.

As have people who didn't get any treatment.

That's why we rely on data from more than one case, to figure out relative effectiveness of different treatment methods.

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

#263

Post by GhettoComputers » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #243

GhettoComputers wrote: post #219

The title is all marketing. What’s the control? > The rates of hospitalization or death in the Paxlovid and control arms were 1% and 6.7%, respectively, resulting in a risk reduction of 85%. Most people that get COVID don’t go to the hospital nor do they die. How much is from a null hypothesis; people who wouldn’t have complications anyway? It’s barely significant if you use 5% as the minimum, and it can still be noi…

If you read past said title, the article literally includes details on the control group. > The rates of hospitalization or death in the Paxlovid and control arms were 1% and 6.7%, respectively, resulting in a risk reduction of 85%. > Pfizer used data on patients who were treated within three days of symptom onset as the headline finding in its press release. In that subpopulation, the rates of hospitalization or dea…

My point was that we don’t know anything about the control. Age, BMI, health, vaccination status, sex.

The effectiveness is very low.

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

#264

Post by cblconfederate » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #211

I thought the Mechanism of action section for this drug on Wikipedia was quite interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molnupiravir#Mechanism_of_acti...

This is not molnupiravir. That one is mutagenic, (which makes a lot of people skeptical about its use).

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

#265

Post by bvm » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #251

shusaku wrote: post #19

I think it’s hard to overstate what a big deal this is for science. This is a completely novel molecule that appears effective as an antiviral. This would a huge achievement for the field of drug design, and will hopefully lead to all kinds of great medicine.

> This is a completely novel molecule that appears effective as an antiviral. This would a huge achievement for the field of drug design, and will hopefully lead to all kinds of great medicine. According to the Pfizer press release [0] Paxlovid uses Ritonavir [1], which is a known HIV antiviral, originally patented in 1989. At the start of the covid pandemic, chinese scientists even tried Kaletra, a generic that comb…

It's a combo regimen that includes ritonavir and PF-07321332 which does not have a generic name yet.

Both are protease inhibitors.

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

#266

Post by HelloMcFly » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

dontcare007 wrote: post #161

HelloMcFly wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except this is studied and dosed appropriately vs. tacking a bunch of Ivermectin and shitting your intestines out based on a half-truth you read about from Facebook.

Like what happened with Joe Rogan, oh wait, he recovered.

Do you believe that to be some sort of counter-argument or opposing view for anything I said?

Regardless of the answer, I'm not interested in debating the wisdom of taking dog medicine in unstudied doses for an unstudied treatment with unstudied effectiveness that has a clearly documented ability to strip the lining of your intestines. You want be a trailblazer with every Facebook remedy? Be my guest.

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

#267

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

GhettoComputers wrote: post #263

ceejayoz wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read past said title, the article literally includes details on the control group. > The rates of hospitalization or death in the Paxlovid and control arms were 1% and 6.7%, respectively, resulting in a risk reduction of 85%. > Pfizer used data on patients who were treated within three days of symptom onset as the headline finding in its press release. In that subpopulation, the rates of hospitalization or dea…

My point was that we don’t know anything about the control. Age, BMI, health, vaccination status, sex. The effectiveness is very low.

> My point was that we don’t know anything about the control. Age, BMI, health, vaccination status, sex.

This information will absolutely be part of the FDA's EUA process, and as such, it's a silly idea that Pfizer would've set up a study that doesn't account for these.

> The effectiveness is very low.

Bullshit.

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

#268

Post by thr0w72594 » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #110

Does anyone have a sense as to when US society will completely eliminate COVID measures? Is it just me or is there no clear exit criteria anymore? This will go on forever without exit criteria.

Subramanian Kumar 2021 [1] found that there is no correlation between vaccination rates and new case rates on a country-wide level, or a county-wide level in the United States.

This tracks with Dr. Vanden Bossche's assessment [2] from March of this year that mass vaccination with prophylactic vaccines will actually prolong and worsen the pandemic due to shedding of infectious variants.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/ [2] https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/

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

#269

Post by wonderwonder » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

dontcare007 wrote: post #136

matsemann wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the consequence of not taking it is death, I think people would run to the front of the queue, though.

But that's just it, there's less than a 2% chance of dying even if you get COVID.

Would you get on a plane if there was a 1.5% chance of it crashing every time?

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

#270

Post by mdtancsa » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

jb1991 wrote: post #226

yosito wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Side effects don't have to happen in the next 6 months. If this is a molecule with a short half-life that is broken down and expelled by the body, it isn't going to have random side effects that show up months in the future.

Unless it were to change something in the body while it was still active, and those changes didn't show any signs for a long time. I'm just playing devil's advocate, but it doesn't seem impossible.

I guess my question is what is probable rather than possible or is that a risk that's even addressable to any reasonable degree