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Paxlovid: You'd have expected more

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Re: Paxlovid: You'd have expected more

#41

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

dahdum wrote: post #29
sterlind wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that it was Paxlovid that made you better, rather than coincidentally convalescing? There's a tendency for fevers to break as the body gets the upper hand on an infection, so if you started taking Paxlovid during a high fever your body might have been nearly done mopping up. I'm not saying Paxlovid didn't help you, just that it's tricky to distinguish from placebo without a study.

It worked extremely fast for me, I took it within 16 hours of symptoms that were increasing rapidly. Within 6-8 hours I started feeling much better, instead just dealing with the Paxlovid side effects. I don’t think my body fought off Covid that fast. Anecdotal of course, but I’d take it again in a heartbeat. I did get a rebound infection the next week but I couldn’t feel it, just tested positive for a couple days.

> I took it within 16 hours of symptoms that were increasing rapidly. Within 6-8 hours I started feeling much better

So about 24 hours? I took nothing when I got COVID, and the major fever and body/head aches only lasted about that long. One day I started feeling absolutely awful, and I woke up the next day feeling substantially better but unable to smell anything but smoke for the next week.

It is possible that the paxlovid helped you, but given the few details you've shared so far it's also possible that it didn't do much that wasn't already going to happen.

Re: Paxlovid: You'd have expected more

#43

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

yumraj wrote: post #9
evnc wrote: post #2

Always enjoy Derek Lowe's writing. n=1 here, though I've heard others say the same -- but I (fairly healthy 30s male, vaccinated) found Paxlovid massively reduced symptom intensity for me. Within a day my symptoms went from "top 5 fevers I've ever experienced, normal function significantly impaired" to "feels like a cold; can reasonably handle myself around the house and even take a software engineering interview". I…

Interestingly I had the weird side effect of going from COVID fever to low body temperature by my 2nd-3rd day of Paxlovid. If I remember correctly, it was in 95F-96F range. My doc advised to stop taking it, but after reading on Reddit that a few others had had similar experience, decided to finish the entire treatment.

What did having low body temperature feel like?

Re: Paxlovid: You'd have expected more

#44

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

iamben wrote: post #6
evnc wrote: post #2

Always enjoy Derek Lowe's writing. n=1 here, though I've heard others say the same -- but I (fairly healthy 30s male, vaccinated) found Paxlovid massively reduced symptom intensity for me. Within a day my symptoms went from "top 5 fevers I've ever experienced, normal function significantly impaired" to "feels like a cold; can reasonably handle myself around the house and even take a software engineering interview". I…

Both times I had COVID I went from "worst fever ever / my body feels like I've been hit my a bus" to "I have a pretty average cold" in less than 36 hours. Utterly bizarre. (Vaccinated, good health, 40s male) Edit to clarify: I didn't take anything other than paracetamol and ibuprofen.

Yeah, that's what happened to me too. I felt substantially better the next morning.

Re: Paxlovid: You'd have expected more

#45

Post by cavisne »

nanodeath wrote: post #28
talkingtab wrote: post #22

My experience was odd. And this is just a description with no science. I was vaccinated, got COVID. At no point were my symptoms serious. Because of age and past heart issues I was given paxlovid. Two weeks after the paxlovid (or something like that) I became sick again, more seriously. With COVID. The symptoms I experienced were much worse but not life threatening and I recovered fully. However, it was odd that the…

To add to the anecdata here, I had covid for a week (bedridden but otherwise not that bad), then had a single day in which I tested negative, and then it rebounded for a week, due to Paxlovid. Sounded like it was pretty common. So that was a waste of 15 days. On the plus side, my second week was much the same as the first week as far as symptoms go.

Another example is Joe Biden, who had this exact thing happen (covid twice in a row with paxlovid).

Notable because while the chance of him just catching it again from someone are not 0, but about as low as it can go (an elderly POTUS under intense medical supervision and quarantine procedures).

Re: Paxlovid: You'd have expected more

#47

Post by KennyBlanken »

monktastic1 wrote: post #12
francisofascii wrote: post #7

For most people now, the whole reason to take Paxlovid is the avoid long covid. The hospitalization risk is less of a concern. The article points out at the end that this drug has shown evidence of avoiding long covid.

But only in high-risk patients, it should be noted.

Nothing supports your 'only' comment.

It's a lot easier and less risk to just pop the pills and put up with the disgusting taste and maybe being sicker a bit longer, than it is for you and your doctor to sit down and try to do a whole bunch of fuzzy calculations to figure out just exactly how high-risk you might be and whether that meets the threshold for using paxlovid.

Particularly given we almost certainly don't know all the high risk factors, not every doctor is able to keep up with all the latest research, and the patient and/or treating physician might not even be aware the patient has a particular risk factor.

Depending on how far down the rabbit hole you go - there's an opportunity cost to a physician's time, too, and them spending more time trying to figure out if someone REALLY needs paxlovid means they have less time to spend with other patients.

Re: Paxlovid: You'd have expected more

#48

Post by fn-mote »

thenerdhead wrote: post #39

I believe Science would benefit from a different approach to reporting, as Derek’s analysis over the past four years has been consistently lacking. A responsible science reporter should present the full body of evidence rather than drawing conclusions from a single study. Currently, a 900-person study is exploring Paxlovid’s potential for three clusters of Long COVID patients using a novel ultra-sensitive single-mole…

Your comment does not cite any scientific evidence that contradicts the assertions in the article. The study you mention is ongoing and small. For comparison, one of the articles cited involves 280k patients with 35k treated.

If you're going to call an analysis incorrect, you should should say what's wrong with it.

With a comment this strong, I think you should disclose a little more of your own background / stance on the subject. Have you written a self-published book on Long Covid? (It looks like yes, but tl;dr.) My sympathies if you have suffered it.

Re: Paxlovid: You'd have expected more

#49

Post by bigtimesink »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #46

Paxlovid? You'd have expected more people to be doing more to not get infected & reinfected by COVID, and trying to stop the spread. But here we are. 5 years in.

What do you propose? Continue social distancing and masking? About the only middle ground is masking in medical settings and crowded, non-social spaces. I guess vaccination rates are low, but that should be a good thing for people who are vaccinated.

Re: Paxlovid: You'd have expected more

#50

Post by ulfw »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #36
energy123 wrote: post #17

This appears to be a hasty conclusion. Older people with paxlovid did equally well as younger people without paxlovid. That indicates that paxlovid actually works, given that older age leads to covid mortality! The author's only refutation of this is that the same pattern was observed before Paxlovid was around. But that pattern itself is an aberration that is not true of the general population, it's only true in tha…

> That indicates that paxlovid actually works It had no measurable effect in the measured group. You can't say that it works based on that. If it had a measurable effect in that group, you would expect to see improvement in the treatment group between the two scenarios. If (65-69 no treatment) == (70-74 no treatment) and also (65-69 no treatment) == (70-74 treatment), then (70-74 treatment) == (70-74 no treatment) by…

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