A daily pill to treat COVID-19 could be just months away, scientists say

chevyontheriver said:

Is it really preferable in your opinion?

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Judging by your posts, that is a question you should ask yourself.

HARK! said:

You mean like the bleach that the powers that be are pumping into the water supply? I hope that the powers that be don't pump this drug into the water supply; and then bill the unsuspecting pigeons through the resulting inflation.

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I'm sorry, but I can't take posts serious that reference the government as "the powers that be".

Yeah, they're making so much money off of the vaccines, what with spending so much to develop, produce, and distribute them, and then giving them out for free... oh wait

Nithavela said:

I thought the vaccines were the big bucks play?

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Well, had they not pretended no medicines existed to treat early cases and just sacrificed them, they could not push the vaccine and mandates on everyone possible. We already had antivirals by the way. Anyone with a functional brain would take a treatment that works first, before a brand new injected technology never before used in humans.

So they had to pretend nothing would help anyone (and all except the doctors were who subsequently deplatformed bought it) push jabs first, and when nearing the end of that milking that cash cow of multi billions of dollars, they then now happy to also produce a pill that will undoubtedly need many doses. (eyeroll).

"Confusion started online after Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla tweeted on Sept. 1 that tackling the pandemic would likely involve both treatment and vaccines.

However, the daily oral drug for COVID-19 is a treatment for people who already have the virus – not a preventative measure like the vaccine. The drug, currently in the second phase of trials, is designed for non-hospitalized adults who are at low risk of severe illness.

"This does not have to do with vaccinated adults," Pfizer spokeswoman Jerica Pitts said via email. "It is for those who are diagnosed with COVID-19 to treat symptoms – it is still being studied and not approved."

I see vaccines as our stop gap.

I would hope that for long term management they will take time to craft some PROPER studies with some SOLID results for some of the other prophylactic options.

I'd like to see some good science around ivermectin as the current science, though promising, has some significant holes in its quality.

Hank77 said:

In June, the Biden administration announced it had agreed to obtain about 1.7 million treatment courses of Merck’s molnupiravir, at a cost of $1.2 billion, if the product receives emergency authorization or full approval.
COVID treatment pill is months away, oral antivirals may limit spread

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Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said early results showed patients who received the drug, called molnupiravir, within five days of COVID-19 symptoms had about half the rate of hospitalization and death as patients who received a dummy pill.

essentialsaltes said:

Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said early results showed patients who received the drug, called molnupiravir, within five days of COVID-19 symptoms had about half the rate of hospitalization and death as patients who received a dummy pill.

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Good news!

RestoreTheJoy said:

We already had antivirals by the way. Anyone with a functional brain would take a treatment that works first, before a brand new injected technology never before used in humans.

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We had antivirals that didn't work.

Remdesivir is an antiviral, and we had it since 2020. Overweight, 75 year old President Trump got it, for goodness sakes, and recovered almost immediately, calling it "miraculous". Had this really been about saving lives, the early hospital patients would have gotten it, come hell or high water, but were just left to die. Dexamethasone has been around since the 70s, also.

Remdesivir reduces Covid hospitalizations when given early, study shows

tps://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/use-of-dexamethasone-remdesivir-against-covid-19-varied-widely-across-us-health-systems

The early patients were not treated at all, and slapped on ventilators when they got bad enough.

No Cookies | The Chronicle

Strathos said:

Yeah, they're making so much money off of the vaccines, what with spending so much to develop, produce, and distribute them, and then giving them out for free... oh wait

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Free my jab-free shoulder!

Pfizer, U.S. strike 100 million COVID-19 vaccine deal with 70 million due by June

Nothing government does is free, the cost is simply hidden and passed on.

(That's just Pfizer, in 2020. It goes much deeper)

GOD Shines Forth! said:

Free my jab-free shoulder!

Pfizer, U.S. strike 100 million COVID-19 vaccine deal with 70 million due by June

Nothing government does is free, the cost is simply hidden and passed on.

(That's just Pfizer, in 2020. It goes much deeper)

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Compared to $8.3 billion dollars to develop them...

Britain authorizes Merck’s molnupiravir, the world’s first approval of oral covid-19 treatment pill

Regulators in Britain granted approval to the experimental drug molnupiravir from U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck on Thursday, marking the first authorization from a public health body for an oral antiviral treatment for covid-19 in adults.

The U.K. medicines regulator approved the use of the treatment in people who are above 60 years old or have at least one other factor that puts them at risk of covid-19 developing into severe illness, such as obesity and heart disease. The agency found it “safe and effective” at curbing the risk after “a rigorous review.”

RestoreTheJoy said:

Had this really been about saving lives, the early hospital patients would have gotten it, come hell or high water, but were just left to die.

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[my emphasis]

Man I wish comments like this could be grounds for libel. Instead, we can just think they are stupid.

RestoreTheJoy said:

Well, had they not pretended no medicines existed to treat early cases and just sacrificed them, they could not push the vaccine and mandates on everyone possible. We already had antivirals by the way. Anyone with a functional brain would take a treatment that works first, before a brand new injected technology never before used in humans.

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A lot of false info in this paragraph.

As I've elaborated on before, with regards to the vaccines, they're not "a brand new technology"

mRNA technology has been explored in a number of large clinical trials going back over a decade. Moderna - (formerly known as Mode-RNA) was a company created with the specific purpose of researching that particular technology back in 2010 after it showed promise in other trials for the purposes of cancer treatment.

Clinical trials (in phase II and III) have leveraged that technology in larger trials going back to 2009 for a variety of things ranging from other viruses, to asthma, to various forms of cancer.
Search of: mrna | Completed Studies - List Results - ClinicalTrials.gov

And viral vector technology (like J&J and AstraZeneca) has been around since the disco era.


And I'm not aware of any medicines that existed that would've been helpful in treating early cases. They tried a bunch (several doctors and researchers were throwing everything against they wall they could to see if they could find something that would stick), each of things they tried produced less-than-impressive results.

ThatRobGuy said:

And I'm not aware of any medicines that existed that would've been helpful in treating early cases.

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Dexamethasone was available and did turn out to be very helpful in treating severe COVID-19. A fact they only learned by doing a careful clinical trial, of course.

sfs said:

Dexamethasone was available and did turn out to be very helpful in treating severe COVID-19. A fact they only learned by doing a careful clinical trial, of course.

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Correct, perhaps I should've more carefully worded my post to say something along the lines of "that we knew would work"

But even with that particular steroid, I don't know how many of the early deaths could've been safely mitigated had doctors just started handing them out like candy back in early 2020. (the previous poster was suggesting that in the early goings, they knew there were safe effective drugs, and were withholding them and letting people die in order "push a vaccine")

They didn't even know it was safe or effective for that purpose until late June 2020 (if memory serves).

And even for that particular steroid, the results are what I would call modest for the majority of recipients.
In the dexamethasone group, the incidence of death was lower than that in the usual care group among patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation (29.3% vs. 41.4%; rate ratio, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.51 to 0.81) and among those receiving oxygen without invasive mechanical ventilation (23.3% vs. 26.2%; rate ratio, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.72 to 0.94) but not among those who were receiving no respiratory support at randomization (17.8% vs. 14.0%; rate ratio, 1.19; 95% CI, 0.92 to 1.55).


However, the ironic part with dexamethasone in particular, is that many who want to rely on therapeutics (with modest benefits) instead of a vaccine, is because they're worried about side effects (or claim to be).

If someone is worried about negative side effects, they should be staying away from dexamethasone at all costs (and certainly not trying to take it as an early prophylactic) Dexamethasone carries both a higher prevalence and higher severity of side effects than any of the approved covid vaccines. And the withdrawal coming off it (even after a 10-20 day cycle) is a rough process for many of the people who take it.

And people relying on the hydroxychloroquine and z-pak combo as a prophylactic was downright irresponsible. Anyone who knows anything about antibiotics knows that taking azithromycin for a long period of time carries with it several pitfalls. IE: destroying gut bacteria (it is a broad-spectrum antibiotic after all), and too many people doing it runs the risk of creating antibiotic-resistant strains of bacterial infections that were once easily treatable.

HARK! said:

You mean like the bleach that the powers that be are pumping into the water supply

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You realize people have been putting bleach in their own wells for years, decades, longer perhaps? You can put in just enough to kill bad stuff, and it's diluted and safe for drinking. I've done it forever and the only side-effect is this elbow I have growing out of my ear. But, the water is fine.

Seriously, shocking your well is what country folks do.

Disinfecting Your Well Water: Shock Chlorination | UGA Cooperative Extension

public hermit said:

You realize people have been putting bleach in their own wells for years, decades, longer perhaps? You can put in just enough to kill bad stuff, and it's diluted and safe for drinking. I've done it forever and the only side-effect is this elbow I have growing out of my ear. But, the water is fine.

Seriously, shocking your well is what country folks do.

Disinfecting Your Well Water: Shock Chlorination | UGA Cooperative Extension

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lol.

Correct.

People seem to have a hard time of understanding the concept that "concentration is everything". There are things that, in high concentrations, would be dangerous, but in low concentrations, are benign or even beneficial.

The usual thing I hear them making that complaint about is fluoride.

"Did you know that fluoride is used as a pesticide?!?! And they're putting it in your water!!!"

My usual snarky response is:

"Did you know potassium is explosive?!?! And it's in the bananas you buy at the grocery store!!!"

Adding trace amounts of fluoride and bleach to water supplies isn't trying to "poison people" anymore than potassium enriched foods are trying to "make people explode"