I’m encouraged by these reports as I believe these treatments will be as important as vaccinations. These treatments will be the final piece of the puzzle needed for opening borders, in my opinion.
Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) on Tuesday said its antiviral COVID-19 pill showed near 90% efficacy in preventing hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk patients, and recent lab data suggests the drug retains its effectiveness against the fast spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
This will be tremendously useful to have if/when we reopen after CNY. Hospitalizations in the 1000s is unavoidable even with the milder Omicron variant and the high vaccination rates. This would really help us get back to “normal”.
It’s great news. The results are fantastic. It’s not dewormer and from big pharma so the usual suspects ignore the news.
With treatments like these I think zero covid policy in Taiwan should soon be abandoned (well in a few months ).
Well yeah. But they said that about vaccines. It turned out to be not entirely accurate out in the real world.
High-risk individuals are “high risk” for a reason, and I seriously doubt that any pill is really going to “save lives” in that context. Even if it works, I’m not convinced that will encourage politicians to just leave us alone. I suppose we can but hope.
As for omicron, I’m sure the drug does retain its effectiveness against a virus which (to date) seems invariably non-fatal 
Zero covid policy?
The goalpost for that moves to 2023 (sometime then, maybe summertime if lucky and some other entity hasn’t taken over political control of the island)
So you didn’t read the clinical trial results it seems.
They were not ambiguous . They saved lives already.
The trial involving 2,246 high-risk adults** with at least one underlying condition found it will reduce the viral load in a patient treated with the tablet by 90pc and will lessen their chances of ending up in hospital or dying by 89pc.
In the trial itself, 697 adults were given the drug within three days of first having symptoms and just five ended up in hospital after 28 days. None died
This compared to 44 out of 682 people who received the placebo being hospitalised after 28 days, with nine deaths in this group.
Nine deaths (placebo ) vs no deaths (drug)
Fixed it for them.
There’s a reason vaccines didn’t make any difference to all-cause mortality.
Also worth pointing out that similar claims were made for “horse medicine” in multiple papers. But of course that was all fraudulent. Unlike Pfizer’s vaccine trials. Oh, wait, they were fraudulent too, weren’t they? Ooops.
Honestly, I’m fairly pragmatic about this. I don’t give a rat’s ass if it “works” or not, and I doubt anybody else does either. But if it gives them a face-saving way to stop the BS and leave us alone, I’m all for it. I just don’t see that happening.
In that case let it go please and leave it to the people who do care. Not every thread can be a meta discussion.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Goal posts keep moving, new shit keeps coming out, and I’m still forced into 14-day quarantine with 6 pcr tests. Taiwan might even get this pill by 2024 judging by their vaccine roll out which took major donations to even accomplish. Luckily I can get the medigen booster though.
But you just saw it
No way in hell are they opening until mid-2022 now. People will go ballistic. Taiwanese love to flock to hospitals with only the most minor of symptoms. They will need at least 60% of the population with 3 doses first.
You don’t worry some countries will require boosters but not accept Medigen? I’ll probably do Moderna just in case.
The Taiwan-based company reported a 100% recovery rate for patients with mild to moderate pneumonia due to COVID-19. As such, it will apply to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorization in March, per a Yahoo report.
The recovery rate for patients who were given the oral COVID medicine was 97.8% after 14 days, and 100% after 28 days, Yahoo reported. This was for an Antroquinonol dose of 100 milligrams administered twice daily, orally, for 14 days.
I wonder what the recovery rate for the control group was? The trial registration page shows “no results posted”.
The “placebo-controlled” descriptor is a bit scary. Are they suggesting that the people in the control arm were untreated?
How is this normally handled?
The normal control arm would be the best-practice treatment. The intervention arm would ideally be a single-factor intervention, i.e., best-practice plus the drug (possibly at different doses, depending on whether dosing had already been established).
I’m feeling off today. I think it started yesterday with a weak workout then falling to sleep quickly and sleeping a solid 8-9 hours (something I never do anymore). Today, I have no energy and have some muscle soreness. It might be the start of a cold, but this feels different.
What are the symptoms of the newest strains of covid?
These symptoms also sound very similar to the Flu. One of my colleague just came down with the A strain and a few students in my daughter’s kindergarten also caught it last week. See a doctor asap and take plenty of rest. I got the Flu back in 2012 and it was the worst feeling ever, like being run over by a truck.