And good news anyway, even if it is cynically appropriated: Pfizer seeks FDA approval for a
COVID treatment pill that's even more effective, and a lot cheaper and easier, than monoclonal antibodies.
Now if they can just resist the temptation to lie about the treatment's pros and cons and to make the treatment mandatory.
I'm not sure the CDC/NIH/NIAID will take it. Based on reporting I've read about responses to the emergence of HIV/AIDS there seems to be an almost ideological bias in those organizations towards vaccination rather than treatment. At one level this is reasonable since actually contracting a disease is an event fraught with both predictable and unpredictable consequences that largely outweigh the risk of complications from vaccination but it does leave us dependent on a single 'golden syringe' when a multi-pronged effort might be more effective. If the primary benefit of vaccination is a reduction of disease severity and avoidance of hospitalization then a treatment that can be administered outside a clinical setting would seem to be a good thing to have.
ReplyDeleteI see little evidence that the Biden administration & its supporters have any *desire* for an exit ramp; if they did, they wouldn't be cranking up the pressure with more edicts. Numerous possible reasons for this behavior could be adduced; one reason, I suspect, is that Biden wants to be able to brag about what a huge number or percent increase of people he got vaccinated, somewhat like the Soviet factory manager who wanted to maximize tonnage of output, irrespective of how useful the products were or even whether they included all necessary parts.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find noteworthy about the Pfizer pill is the treatment plan tested seems awfully familiar. IF you take a dose EARLY, a few days from the first detected symptoms, THEN you will have a milder, less dangerous bunch of symptoms, later.
ReplyDeleteBut the HCQ and Ivermectin official testing that I read about described a treatment plan that kicked in LATE, after severe symptoms presented or even hospitalizations had become necessary. At which point the drug didn't help.
The advocates of HCQ, Ivermectin, (and for all I know, the acupuncturists and chiropractors) all insisted the tests on their recommentations were incorrectly done. Or so I remember. HOw did Pfizer get their test done, differently?
Is that a trick question? This is the same Pfizer that held off the good news about its vaccine tests until a few days after the 2020 election.
ReplyDeleteRumor has it that the Pfizer 'treatment' is re-formulated Ivermectin.
ReplyDeleteAt a hefty multiple of the price.
They're both protease inhibitors, as I understand it, but while Pfizer's tests showed a 90% reduction of severe symptoms and 100% reduction of death, Ivermectin so far hasn't yielded reliable clinical results. There are suggestive results for in vitro disruption of the virus, and suggestive results of prophylactic results in populations, and that's about it so far. That's not to say that Ivermectin might not prove valuable if we de-politicized the controversy and looked at it more honestly, but so far the results aren't there. I wish they were, because it's pretty easy to get hold of Ivermectin. I've got a drawer full of it at all times and have had for decades.
ReplyDeleteUp to now, I've been highest on monoclonal antibody treatments, which really are startling effective, but the Pfizer pill seems to have proven even more effective than the monoclonal antibodies, and is both cheaper and easier to administer.