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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%

#921

Post by whymauri »

dekhn wrote: post #867
whymauri wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I was thinking, especially for an entirely novel molecule. I wonder how novel the scaffold is. Whichever med chemist led this initiative is an artist -- amazing job.

it's not hard to find other molecules with similar scaffolds. Simply train an unsupervised network (autoencoder) over SMILES strings taken from ZINC. Convert your molecule of interest to a vector using the encoder, then find N nearest neighbors and decode. Those molecules will likely have similar scaffolds. There are other methods, graph substructure similarity is common. More to your actual question, it was derived…

Right, it's not technically difficult to match a scaffold -- you can probably parallelize a big RDKit job, but it's nontrivial to scale to a gigascale set. And, like you mentioned, there's rule-based substructure matching (sometimes easier for those willing to venture a bit outside SMILES). Anyways, it was more a curiosity question -- thank you for the details on Lufotrelvir!

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

#922

Post by lborsato »

jjwiseman wrote: post #767
zapdrive wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being in BC, Canada sucks. I went in to an Apple store to buy the fully loaded MacBook M1 max, with 6000 dollars in my hand (literally). And was told to leave the store because my mask didn't cover my nose. I'm buying a Razer 15 now. And I'm fully vaccinated. Not because I was scared of getting sick (i already contacted COVID twice before the vaccine, including the Delta variant), but because I was shamed into gettin…

If you don't understand by now that vaccines significantly reduce transmission, you just need to google "do covid vaccines reduce transmission". The top results are links to the CDC, Nature, New Scientist, the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and more, all saying that vaccines significantly reduce transmission. Vaccines significantly reduce transmission, so if someone is telling you they don't, you need t…

The Lancet you say?

“Individuals who have had two vaccine doses can be just as infectious as those who have not been jabbed.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59077036

Study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

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

#923

Post by onecommentman »

nradov wrote: post #462
jeffbee wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know but I haven't had a cold or any other infection in 18 months so I hope that wearing masks on trains, planes and buses stays forever. Also, shaking hands was always barbaric and I don't miss that, either.

What a horrible idea. I'm not willing to wear a mask just to avoid a cold. We cannot allow irrational germaphobes to seize control of our society in the name of "safety".

In Japan, it seems that people wear masks when they are ill as a consideration to others to avoid passing on the illness in a crowded area. Also as a red flag to others, e.g. to the elderly or immune compromised, that they may want to avoid you right now.

I frankly don’t mind that. It’s only for a limited time (while you feel ill, or suspect you are coming down with something), it’s very cheap and only mildly annoying. There is the side benefit that it makes you think twice before you go out if you think you might be infectious (is this trip really necessary?).

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

#924

Post by atleta »

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #736
jollybean wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's the opposite. Anti-Vaxx people seem to absolutely love non-vax treatments. I don't know if the rationalization is sound, but I'm not sure it's really that. The anti-vaxx stigma pre-COVID I think has had it's toll. The notion of 'government pushing you to take something' as well. Whereas, 'you get sick, you take a pill' is an easy concept. My fear is that a lot of people won't bother with a vax if…

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…

This is true, however we are pretty certain about the numbers and they are overwhelmingly point towards getting the vaccine. (Maybe except for the very young, by witch I mean under 25 maybe under 20. But I don't know those numbers, so that might even not be a question either.)

One thing to keep in mind is that P(getting covid) is about 1. But for sure greater than 50%, especially if people don't vaccinate in large numbers (I mean others, of course) and if we do away with masks and restrictions.

When doing this kind of comparison, vaccines are tricky, because if you vaccinate close to 100%, then you'll have very few cases, so P(getting covid) will be rather small and then it will seem that the vaccines may not be worth it. But if you don't, then it will be high and that's what you should base your decision on. BTW, this is why antivaxxery could become such a phenomenon lately (even before covid): too few children died or got paralyzed in the past quite a few decades so the usual diseases somehow started to seem not such a big deal. Because people just didn't experience the other side of the equation anymore.

Also, on a side note, I'd expect that an antiviral will have more side effects than a vaccine.

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

#925

Post by ummwhat »

azinman2 wrote: post #802
Redoubts wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Operation Warp Speed is, to me, an indication of the power of government "intertia". We call this the Deep State

I find this whole deep state thing very strange. It's meant to sound ominous, but really it's just a bunch of career diplomates that have worked over many administrations who are the ones that make anything that works, work. We should be doing our best to preserve their knowledge and capability.

It's not meant to sound ominous. It's a phrase that's been coopted.

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

#926

Post by geerlingguy »

sdenton4 wrote: post #805
mchusma wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, hearing from doctors working in COVID wards, they consist almost entirely of anti-vaxxers who are now seeking (and receiving) treatments only recently approved. So while not everyone will take this, I think probably many would once they have symptoms. That said, this does work better it seems if taken early, before the anti-vax sentiment may have worn off. Hard to say. What it does signal is really the "…

The first three days of symptoms for an anti-vaxxer are obviously just a flu, because covid is fake. It's not covid until they're hooked up to a machine...

There are many who won't even get a test now, to check if it's COVID. They ride it out, and won't know if they just had a flu, cold, or COVID. And thus it seems we've currently plateaued in case counts in the US :(

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

#927

Post by nieve »

orra wrote: post #144

I am thinking: if and when this is approved, we have to think about distribution. This drug is fantastically effective at preventing hospitalisation and death, if administered within three days of symptom onset. That gives quite a long time! But we still need to make it easy to take. Do pharmacies give it out? ER rooms? We don't want to wait until people are hospitalised; we are trying to avoid that. So when you test…

I highly recommend Derek Lowe's post on it for some of the details. It links to the press release which contains this information showing it was very effective still starting at 5 days from symptoms onset:

> Similar reductions in COVID-19-related hospitalization or death were observed in patients treated within five days of symptom onset; 1.0% of patients who received PAXLOVID™ were hospitalized through Day 28 following randomization (6/607 hospitalized, with no deaths), compared to 6.7% of patients who received a placebo (41/612 hospitalized with 10 subsequent deaths), with high statistical significance (pThose extra two days (three versus five) could make a huge difference.

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

#928

Post by lborsato »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #678
skrbjc wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that people read the same data with such different interpretations. This is why I feel like the insistence of "just look at the data" rarely leads to a clear decision, and anyone working at a company that has dealt with giving data to people to make decisions will know this intimately. People use data to make their point, and if the data doesn't agree, then they slice it or adjust it or reason their way ou…

There are several problems, but a big one is just the way the news works. ICUs are designed to run at near capacity and are overwhelmed all the time if, for example, there's a big car accident. Right now, all eyes are on the pandemic and I'm sure it's true that there's places in the country where ICUs are full up with pandemic patients. But the way the news cycle works, "ICUs at capacity with COVID patients" gets a l…

ICUs typically run around 85% occupancy and up. At 68% it is difficult to pay the bills.

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

#929

Post by whateveracct »

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?

What's so different now exactly? I can go to restaurants, the store, the movies, fly.

I gotta wear a mask indoors to some degree, so I guess we're at like 99% normal.

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

#930

Post by HelloMcFly »

pjkundert wrote: post #832
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.

The LD50 for Ivermectin is 10mg/kg. The standard dosage range is .1-.5mg/kg. (from memory... YMMV) So, you would have to guzzle 20 times the recommended dosage of a foul-tasting elixir to get near a lethal dose. It sticks around in your system for ~4days, so there could be a cumulative effect if you guzzle enough over a few day period. But still, much less dangerous as Tylenol (toxic at 10g dose; typical therapeutic…

> So, you would have to guzzle 20 times the recommended dosage of a foul-tasting elixir to get near a lethal dose. 1

This is a straw man. Lethality isn't the only negative consequence. You don't have to die to hurt yourself for no reason.

> But still, much less dangerous as Tylenol

Another drug I'd rarely if ever recommend taking. Could have saved you the lecture.

>... many people are likely to experience Jarisch–Herxheimer reaction to the death of intestinal parasites

I'm sure some are. My money is on shitting intestine lining being more likely, but whatever.

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