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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%

#51
post #5

> There were six hospitalizations and no deaths among the 607 patients who received Paxlovid within five days of symptom onset, compared to 41 hospitalizations and 10 deaths in the placebo cohort. How does this work? You sign up for the program when you're sick and you might get meds that help you? That would really suck if a loved one was in the program and died because they happened to get the placebo.

Keep in mind, it can go the other way as well. That the drug leads to worse outcomes than a placebo. This is why there are trials. This is why they are voluntary.

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

#52

Did anyone hear NPR's reporting on this? They said the early study was originally halted BECAUSE of it's positive effects at preventing hospitalization and death... very weird, I hope it is a typo or I'm understanding it wrong...

When something obviously works, it's standard practice to halt the study and seek out emergency use authorization.

> There were six hospitalizations and no deaths among the 607 patients who received Paxlovid within five days of symptom onset, compared to 41 hospitalizations and 10 deaths in the placebo cohort.

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

#53

Did anyone hear NPR's reporting on this? They said the early study was originally halted BECAUSE of it's positive effects at preventing hospitalization and death... very weird, I hope it is a typo or I'm understanding it wrong...

Maybe to reduce risk to the control group?

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

#54

Did anyone hear NPR's reporting on this? They said the early study was originally halted BECAUSE of it's positive effects at preventing hospitalization and death... very weird, I hope it is a typo or I'm understanding it wrong...

I didn't hear the NPR story, but studies can be halted when it's shown that the treatment is so clearly effective that it becomes unethical to continue administering non-treatments/weak treatments to your comparison groups. This usually indicates that research can and should advance to the next stage immediately.

Here's something to read on this (note the three criteria for a TL;DR): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5024796/

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

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm excited to hear the results of the pill among the vaccinated. Cutting the risk of severe symptoms among high-risk vaccinated people, and the risk of long covid for everyone is very important. The vaccines are great, but not silver bullets themselves.

"Long covid" is an urban legend.

Really? I don't think so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID#Further_reading

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

#56

Did anyone hear NPR's reporting on this? They said the early study was originally halted BECAUSE of it's positive effects at preventing hospitalization and death... very weird, I hope it is a typo or I'm understanding it wrong...

I guess halted because meaning they are confident enough to go to phase 3 with larger amount of trial participants?

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

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For protecting yourself, probably, for protecting others and helping prevent the virus from spreading and mutating, no.

Didn’t we establish last week the vaccine is not effective at stopping the spread of the virus?

It's not a binary yes-no question. It is still effective at stopping the spread of the virus, though not perfect.

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

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm excited to hear the results of the pill among the vaccinated. Cutting the risk of severe symptoms among high-risk vaccinated people, and the risk of long covid for everyone is very important. The vaccines are great, but not silver bullets themselves.

"Long covid" is an urban legend.

as someone who definitely had and suffered through long COVID, I would like to know what you think you are accomplishing by making false claims like this.

do you think you're being edgy? what possible work is your ignorant comment doing?

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

#60
post #13

> Pfizer used data on patients who were treated within three days of symptom onset as the headline finding in its press release > There were six hospitalizations and no deaths among the 607 patients who received Paxlovid within five days of symptom onset, compared to 41 hospitalizations and 10 deaths in the placebo cohort. > Like Merck, Pfizer excluded people vaccinated against COVID-19 from its late-phase study. No…

Monoclonal antibody treatments are also commonly administered about 3 days after symptoms onset. They have proven to be somewhat effective in real life, although they still aren't being given to some patients who could potentially benefit.
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