Friday, October 1, 2021 at 1:03:00 P.M. EDT
GRA: Is it a coincidence that this pill is being rushed out, while the vaxx is causing so many side-effects? Why take the [bleeping] vaxx from this moment forward?
(ZH) Looks like Merck just beat Pfizer to the punch.
Merck announced Friday that an experimental COVID pill it has developed reduced hospitalizations and deaths by 50% in people recently infected with COVID.
The company will soon ask health officials in the US and abroad to authorize use of the drug.
The news came as a welcome surprise to the public, although COVID cases are already waning in the US and in hard-hit economies in Asia, the drug could create “a real therapeutic advance” that could dramatically decrease the risk of death from COVID.
If approved (and odds are it will be) the drug would be the first treatment for COVID. Some compared it to tamiflu, in that patients should take it within 5 days of COVID infection (like those infected with the flu are instructed to take tamiflu early).
Former FDA Director Dr. Scott Gottlieb told cnbc that the trial results are clearly “profoundly” positive, even though researchers decided to stop the trial early because the drug showed significant success, meaning it would be unethical to keep giving patients placebos. To test the drug, they needed to test more than 700 unvaccinated people in a global study. The people were all considered in the “high risk” category due to factors like age, and other characteristics from their “health profile.”
Per the results, 7% of volunteers in the group that received the drug were hospitalized, and none of them died, compared with a 14% rate of hospitalization and death (include eight who died) in the placebo group.
According to Dr. Gottlieb, “this is a phenomenal result. This is a profound game-changer that we have an oral pill that had this kind of effect on patients who are already symptomatic.”
Dr. Gottlieb also pointed out that the team that developed the drug “also invented the first successful antibody against ebola so this is a very good drug-development team.”
“And remember we have two other drugs in development, one by Pfizer (where Dr. Gottlieb serves on the board) and the other by Roches,” he said.
Patients won’t be taking the drug for very long, typically around five days, which means “the safety profile is probably pretty good,” Dr. Gottlieb said.
--GRA
Nicholas: It has been my experience that those who belittle others do so to cover up their own insecurities.
ReplyDeletePatients won’t be taking the drug for very long, typically around five days, which means “the safety profile is probably pretty good,” Dr. Gottlieb said.
ReplyDeleteThat's quite the idiotic statement.
Another member of the tribe -- interesting academic Lebenslauf: undergrad deg in economics, worked on Wall St for a few years, then went to med school -- how many kids with econ degrees get into med school? -- or even bother to apply?
Tip to 'Anonymous' (Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:32:00 AM EDT):
ReplyDeleteYou may be in the wrong place -- the local blogging hero just posted this:
Affirmative Action Sex Cops Can’t Write English-Language Reports, but the new york post Won’t Tell It Like It is
Seems like a good deal of pauschal 'belittling' going on there ('morally unfit and functionally illiterate') -- he even 'belittles' the NYPost (!) for not 'telling it like it is'.
It's shocking -- he must be terribly insecure.