Pfizer Hikes Price of COVID Antiviral Paxlovid From $530 To Nearly $1,400 (arstechnica.com) 169
Pfizer this week revealed that it raised the list price of a course of Paxlovid -- its lifesaving antiviral drug used to reduce the risk of severe COVID-19 in those most vulnerable -- to nearly $1,400, more than double the roughly $530 the US government has paid for the treatment in the emergency phase of the pandemic. From a report: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla had noted in an investor call at the beginning of the week that the company would increase the price of Paxlovid as it moves from government distribution to the commercial market at the end of this year. But, he did not announce the new list price then. Instead, the company revealed the more than twofold increase in a letter to pharmacies and clinics dated Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the list price of $1,390 after viewing the letter.
A Pfizer spokesperson told the Journal that "pricing for Paxlovid is based on the value it provides to patients, providers, and health care systems due to its important role in helping reduce COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths." A cost-effectiveness analysis last year determined the value of Paxlovid at between $563 and $906 per treatment course, according to nonprofit drug-pricing watchdog The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review.
A Pfizer spokesperson told the Journal that "pricing for Paxlovid is based on the value it provides to patients, providers, and health care systems due to its important role in helping reduce COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths." A cost-effectiveness analysis last year determined the value of Paxlovid at between $563 and $906 per treatment course, according to nonprofit drug-pricing watchdog The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review.
This is a responsible way (Score:5, Funny)
They admit it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They admit it (Score:5, Insightful)
What they said, in plain english, is "We believe we can get this much from people who don't want to die."
Rather than basing the retail cost on the manufacturing cost.
It's literally "Give us money or we'll let you die."
And the current administration will let them get away with it. (The last one probably would have, too.)
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The difference isn't two parallel worlds, one with expensive new drugs, and cheap new drugs. It's one with expensive new drugs, and far fewer new drugs.
Medicine isn't a timestamp of technology level, that you then skip around like Johnny Appleseed tossing it out for free.
It's an ongoing fight against death, the same old foe humanity has had forever, and our worst problem. Remember that other issue you get so bent out of shape over? Yeah, this is worse.
God knows, I, too, wish for things to magically appea
Re:They admit it (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether it's a dollar or a dime, the greedy man will grasp at it. Why not make it a dime?
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Which world is the one where Paxlovid's advertising budget absolutely dwarfs its development costs.
Re:They admit it (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, there may not be "wonder drugs" (although Ozempic is beginning to look kinda wonderous) but that's not the same as no progress. Cancer has made big strides:
The recorded U.S. cancer death rate peaked in 1991 and has been going down every year since, according to the ACS report published Jan. 12.The 33 percent drop means that, for a city with a population hovering around 100,000, about 70 fewer people died of cancer in 2020 than in 1991. Overall, the rate dropped from an average of 215.1 annual cancer deaths per 100,000 Americans in 1991 to 143.8 in 2020.
Five-year survival rates have also been increasing for an even longer period of time. The overall cancer survival rate was 49 percent in the mid-1970s. It currently sits at 68 percent.
https://www.cancercenter.com/c... [cancercenter.com].
People with HIV are not "cured" as of yet but today they can be put into what is effectively remission, which is wild compared to the effective death sentence it was in the 80's and 90's
Same can be said about chronic diseases like Parkinsons and MS, it's not cured but people with those diseases have access to medications that greatly extend and enhance their quality of life.
And you know what, maybe I am just not knowledgeable enough but even the HPV vaccine was developed in the last 20 years and that had a huge effect on certain cancer rates like cervical cancer.
Even everyone's favorite pharma punching bag insulin has huge developments. People who have diabetes have a way better quality of life with the modern formulations. The old idea of "it was discovered in the 1950's and is cheap", well the insulin from back then sucks shit and people have literally died from it compared with the time release synthetic versions we have today.
Maybe those thing don't meet your bar for wonderous but for people who are sick there's some really wonderous things today.
(Note none of this excuses the piss poor practices of pharma companies the system issue with US healthcare)
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I believe the proper economic term for that kind of pricing is "what the market will bear."
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Re:They admit it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Your point? It's still "Give us money or we'll let you die."
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Your point? It's still "Give us money or we'll let you die."
You must be new to health care. It may be the patient, their insurance company, or a single-payer like government that pays the bills, but everyone in the system from the pharma companies, the doctors, on down to the people who clean bedpans and do laundry do expect to get paid.
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Paying living wages is part of the cost of manufacturing the drugs.
They're not basing the retail price on the cost of manufacturing the drugs. They said they're not. They said they're basing in on what they can make people pay. They literally said "Give us as much money as possible or we'll let you die."
That's their statement. Suck their dicks all you want - and you know you want to - they're still profiteering on people's deaths.
Re:They admit it (Score:4, Insightful)
TL;DR: It's a legally sanctioned scam.
Starting mildly off-topic here, but let me share an anecdote about treatment costs and the insurance industry. I'm making a case for how crooked it all is.
I got a CAT scan of my jaw recently. My insurer refused to let my TMD's (TMJ doctor) provider do it. They insisted I go to their hospital instead. I boggled. Do it in a hospital? These guys had a portable CAT, at their office, that was going to cost a very economical ~$400. They were ready to do it right then and there. A hospital charges three times that, and it takes weeks to schedule it.
Sure enough, at the hospital it is listed as around a $1,200 procedure (nailed it) for someone paying out of pocket. In my insurer's network at their hospital? Their negotiated discount was around $900, because it's their hospital. Which boils down to a $300 CAT scan. Hurry up and wait, and we want your money in our system. Screw cost-effective. Screw advances in medical equipment (the CAT was ancient). Screw convenience. Screw the medical consumer.
I suffered severe, cannot chew plus migraines, jaw pain for weeks because I couldn't get started on an orthotic until the CAT was taken. That's why it's at the TMD's office. That's why it has a reasonable price and convenience. I should have just paid for it fully out-of-pocket, but I didn't know what was going on. Next time I'll know better because, a week after getting that orthotic, the pain had mostly resolved.
The insurance industry loves this stuff. They keep charging higher and higher premiums based on out-of-whack list prices, like exaggerating the square footage of your condo, and they use this to lock insurance into being a mortal necessity rather than a means of hedging your bets against big medical expenses. And I have really good health insurance through the state. Most people aren't nearly as lucky.
So out of pocket is rigged, and it's rigged to raise your premiums. Back on the topic of drugs now...
In the case of drugs, the various manufacturers have "discount cards" for their latest drugs. Their drugs cost, say, $1,600 a month plus, up to and including 10s of thousands of dollars. Insurance companies will make a healthcare consumer pay 10-20% of that, because it's non-formulary and hella expensive. So for that $1,600 drug a $160-$320 out of pocket for the consumer is normal, even with a Cadillac plan. This inhibits uptake in the use of the drug in the market. The "discount card" gets you down to, say, a $10-20 copay. The manufacturer is literally eating $150-$300 for months (6 to a year) off that list price, They don't care. It's overpriced and they know it. That "discount card" is actually an adjusted market correction card. Then the discount card expires and you still need this treatment, and all of the sudden you're on the hook for your full contribution to list price. It's legal "first one's free." The manufacturer demonstrated they clearly did not need the money for an entire year, perhaps never. It's the ultimate in "too good to be true."
For one of my drugs, the discount program never expired until it went generic. In that case, it was a $1,600/mo. drug, which is why I chose that price example. Generic cost $1,200/mo., the real price for the drug, but still profit-mongering to be sure. Now my insurer is giving me it for a $5 copay. Before generic, I needed a pre-auth and was slated to pay 20%. So my insurer is screwing me until it goes generic, but they're basically paying the same thing for my use of the drug afterward. Then the generic drops to $500 in a few years to increase usage. So a $1,600 drug that actually costs $1,200 at market rate, and then drops to something a bit more reasonable after a year or two. And screw you if it's a good drug for you and you don't have the right insurance. You can't pay $500 for it.
Read your EOBs guys and then actually try to do something to lower costs for your insurer when you see the crazy numbers involved. You literally can't. Market forces are not in effect here.
What these guys should get in return for these coordinated behaviors is a RICO prosecution, not higher premiums.
The current administration doesn't have a choice (Score:4, Insightful)
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Let them get away with it? What they are doing is perfectly legal in the U.S. What law, to be precise, do you wish to charge them with violating?
The problem in the U.S. is how we pay for medicine via the free market. Any product is priced at what people will pay to get it, drugs (legal and illegal) are no different.
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RICO. There is a coordinated effort by all the different arms of the healthcare sector: pharma, treatment centers, emergency services, and insurance. They all exaggerate prices and then cut deals with each other for the real prices and then base your premiums on the inflated prices they list. And no doctor can give a true out-of-pocket discount for someone who doesn't have insurance. It's either not legal or will get them dumped by an insurer if they notice, depending on what's happening. So mandated health
Or, alternatively... (Score:2)
A Pfizer spokesperson told the Journal that "pricing for Paxlovid is based on the value it provides to patients, providers, and health care systems due to its important role in helping reduce COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths." A cost-effectiveness analysis last year determined the value of Paxlovid at between $563 and $906 per treatment course
A different way to interpret this statement is that Pfizer has set the value of a human life under $1000.
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They have set it quite a bit higher. The value of a human life is the sum total of all of their lifetime healthcare costs, not the cost of a single drug.
Go ahead and oversimplify for impact, but health care is a lot harder than that.
Re: Or, alternatively... (Score:2)
Seems fair ... it's about the same worth as having a child to the IRS
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A Pfizer spokesperson told the Journal that "pricing for Paxlovid is based on the value it provides to patients, providers, and health care systems due to its important role in helping reduce COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths." A cost-effectiveness analysis last year determined the value of Paxlovid at between $563 and $906 per treatment course
A different way to interpret this statement is that Pfizer has set the value of a human life under $1000.
Bad calculation. Since the death rate of COVID-19 in the US over the course of the pandemic averaged 1% (mostly before vaccines), this means they set the value of saving a human life at a hundred times that: $100,000, not one thousand dollars.
(Including a lower death rate after vaccines became widespread, somewhat greater than that.)
By the way, the lower the number the better. This is the price per life saved, not per life lost.
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A Pfizer spokesperson told the Journal that "pricing for Paxlovid is based on the value it provides to patients, providers, and health care systems due to its important role in helping reduce COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths." A cost-effectiveness analysis last year determined the value of Paxlovid at between $563 and $906 per treatment course
A different way to interpret this statement is that Pfizer has set the value of a human life under $1000.
Bad calculation. Since the death rate of COVID-19 in the US over the course of the pandemic averaged 1% (mostly before vaccines), this means they set the value of saving a human life at a hundred times that: $100,000, not one thousand dollars.
(Including a lower death rate after vaccines became widespread, somewhat greater than that.)
Ah, but the death rate from before vaccines is moot. The current mortality rate of omicron-derived strains in a post-vaccination world is what determines how much money you'd have to spend to save one life today, not the historical death rate for an ancestral strain that has at this point likely been completely eradicated. The current rate is more like a tenth of a percent.
By the way, the lower the number the better. This is the price per life saved, not per life lost.
And my numbers were somewhat optimistic. Best case is maybe a 30% reduction in deaths, so it's actually 3x that high. So basically,
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A different way to interpret this statement is that Pfizer has set the value of a human life under $1000.
...
... So basically, at the current price, it costs probably $3 million to save a life with Paxlovid,
You just casually stated "oh, my original number was wrong by a factor of three thousand"?
Least you could do is say "oops".
My original number was a million.
> So they're valuing a life at up to almost a million dollars ($906 times the number of people that would have to be treated to save one life).
Not oops.
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My original number was a million.
My bad. Scrolling up, I see it was user "flippy ( 62353 )" who posted the "under $1000" figure, not you.
Apologies for the lazy scrolling and the misattribution.
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My original number was a million.
My bad. Scrolling up, I see it was user "flippy ( 62353 )" who posted the "under $1000" figure, not you.
Apologies for the lazy scrolling and the misattribution.
No worries.
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Since the death rate of COVID-19 in the US over the course of the pandemic averaged 1%
CITATION NEEDED
Re:They admit it (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why healthcare cannot be responsibly left to market forces. There is no effective competition to invoke market forces.
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This is why healthcare cannot be responsibly left to market forces. There is no effective competition to invoke market forces.
Hmm? Pfizer can do this because the Government allows it. It's not a "free market" situation. They've eliminated competition by handing out monopoly privileges to pharmaceutical companies. This is why healthcare cannot be responsibly left to government forces.
Re:They admit it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They admit it (Score:4, Interesting)
Good luck repealing copyrights, patents, and the many safety regulations that interlock to block entry to the market.
That and the ever present threat of snake oil.
It used to be much less regulated, then a bunch of kids were dosed with antifreeze and died.
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>"This is why healthcare cannot be responsibly left to market forces. There is no effective competition to invoke market forces."
As a blanket statement, that is not true at all. But you can pick certain PARTS of it, like patented medications, and say there is no effective competition. If consumers have to actually pay for things, and there are choices, then healthcare costs plummet. When they are fully "covered" and don't have any skin in the cost and make no decisions, prices rise. Often, insurance
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Patents are only part of it (but there's an amazing number of patents there). There's also back room deals to keep generics off the market, very expensive testing for what would be a low margin generic, etc.
add in that few consumers are even vaguely qualified to determine what drugs should be used to treat any given condition. It's not like shopping for a good deal on a mattress.
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Oh, it will be based on what it costs to make as well, in that the cost to make it will be a lot lower. They will never ask the price based on "value" if that gives lower prices.
The whole statement is a statement of pure evil, nothing else.
Re: They admit it (Score:2)
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They are in a position of power. They have a patent, so they can set the prices.
Positions of power like this are attractive to greedy, evil people. For some people, attaining this kind of power and wealth is truly their only motivation. They focus their entire lives on getting into such positions, and have no inhibitions at all about playing dirty pool any time they think they can get away with it.
So, even if you removed these greedy bastards from this position, their replacements will be just the same.
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As bad as this system is, there IS a silver lining on that cloud. Their ability to price-gouge like this gives them tremendous incentive to invest loads of RnD money into developing medicines that actually work. The "actually work" aspect of the medicines is what makes people want it, and thus provides the profit incentive. When RnD like this is funded by taxpayer dollars, the whole enterprise takes on a much more bureaucratic character, which results in tremendous amounts of taxpayer money wasted on ideas that show little promise. It's hard to keep projects like this in the budget.
Actually it allows them to invest in advertising and other forms of propaganda, though they do pay for the safety trials of the publicly researched drugs.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health... [www.cbc.ca]
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Indeed I damn near fell out of a my chair when I read that. Such refreshing honestly in a "fuck you, pay me" kind of way.
Someone is getting fired for that.
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The medical industry often uses "your money or your life" pricing.
How much is your life worth?
Re:They admit it (Score:5, Informative)
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They said the Covid shot was 98% effective.
Except it turned out to not prevent transmission. Did not prevent getting Covid. Killed some people and harmed others. And you now need 6 shots at last check.
Go ahead, mod down CDC published fact. I expect it.
Re:They admit it (Score:5, Informative)
That may have been true a year ago, but not now [wiley.com].
The reason for the initial weak conclusions from the Phase III Paxlovid trials was that the overall hospitalization rate in both the treatment and control groups was anomalously low. This means you couldn't really conclude anything about its effectiveness from the trial. Nonetheless the drug was given emergency use authorization and has since proven itself according to recent review papers.
Re:They admit it (Score:5, Insightful)
When the government was involved the price per dose was around $500.
Once the government got out and let the "free market" take over, the cost has tripled.
Seems like "trust in government" won here.
Re: They admit it (Score:2)
Don't worry, once we've settled on it being Biden's fault that price increase will be considered acceptable.
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Paxlovid has never shown any real efficacy.
Efficacy of about 86% [yalemedicine.org] reduction in COVID-19 related hospitalization.
Alternate source: https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
Why anyone would be stupid enough to sign up for the paxlov rebound is beyond me.
You mean, why would any self-respecting conspiracy-theory believer sign up for paxlovid?
Then again, you idiots around here never stopped trusting the government.
You're confusing paxlovid, an antiviral, with vaccines.
It's vaccines that conspiracy believers are accusing the government of pushing. Antivirals the conspiracy believers merely accuse the drug companies of pushing. Get your conspiracies right if you want to post on slashdoe.
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Efficacy of about 86% reduction in COVID-19 related hospitalization.
If I drive twice as fast to work the chance of my vehicle being hit by a meteor on the way to work in my underground bunker is 50% less. Should I drive twice as fast to avoid the 50% increased risk?
To even entertain this question it seems at the very least I would need to know what my risk of being hit by a meteor is on the way to work. Then I can calculate what the new risk if I decided to drive twice as fast. Say for example if by taking the precaution my chance of being struck is reduced to 0.00000007
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Short version: if they tell you the % change of your odds of event instead of the new and old odds of event then they're lying.
Re: They admit it (Score:2)
What benefits? The boomers are too busy draining the living shit out of it for it to be any use
Re:There are competitors, right? (Score:5, Informative)
There are other perfectly fine COVID19 vaccines out there, so this should just lead to Paxlovid's sales dropping like a rock right?
Paxlovid isn't a vaccine. It's a treatment for people who are symptomatic with COVID. Pfizer's vaccine is Comirnaty.
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Whoops, forgot all the dumb names they came up with...
A vaccine is around $120 out of pocket too (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't the vaccine though (Score:2, Informative)
How's the vaccine $120? As far as I know, they're still having insurance companies pay for it, have government programs, etc... I'm getting my vaccine for it next week for free, as long as they still have it in stock.
Crummy insurance plan or not, they want to pay for it, because it's cheaper than the alternative.
In this case, a drug that costs $1400 now.
Consider the odds:
Vaccine reduces the chance of hospitalization level covid like 90%.
Odds of getting covid(eventually) if you're not vaccinated: Nearly
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>"How's the vaccine $120? As far as I know, they're still having insurance companies pay for it, have government programs, etc... I'm getting my vaccine for it next week for free, as long as they still have it in stock."
My mother got the current COVID-19 vaccination two weeks ago at a local pharmacy. They charged Medicare $200 for it. And $100 for the flu vaccination (she paid $0 for both). Now, would that be the same price with commercial insurance or no insurance, I don't know.
I have no current inte
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Fairly quickly after Paxlovid was approved, the guidance became "only give it to high risk patients and only within the first 5 days". I forget the exact age, but if you're generally health below age 55 or 60, the odds of Paxlovid making a statistically significant different in your recovery are near zero, so they don't recommend it below whatever that age is.
So in short, it's only recommended for high risk people who go to the doctor early in the infection. For everyone else the benefit is near zero.
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Actually, if you have early symptoms, it doesn't really matter whether it's covid or a common cold. Both Paxlovid and molnupiravir are likely to blow either one away within a day or two if you literally take it within hours of noticing that you have a scratchy throat or runny nose.
Nirmatrelvir (the main active ingredient in Paxlovid) is well-known to have potent antiviral activity against rhinovirus (the #1 cause of "common colds").
Molnupiravir was literally developed to be a blockbuster general-purpose ant
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In the post Affordable Care Act world, insurance is required to cover vaccines and other preventive treatments at $0 out of pocket. You can find examples of insurance companies trying to weasel out of this obligation with fine print, it happens, but generally speaking they have business incentive not to do this. The vaccine is a lot cheaper than Paxlovid. Paxlovid is a lot cheaper than hospitalization.
Generally, the trick to getting what you want out of an insurance company is viewing it through their
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> In the post Affordable Care Act world, insurance is required to cover vaccines and other preventive treatments at $0 out of pocket
The fact that insurance will pay for the vaccine with $0 out of pocket is of little comfort to the 1 in 12 Americans of all ages who do not have health insurance...
=Smidge=
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Whose fault is that when medicaid is available for free to those making 300% the national poverty income and the ACA provides subsidies for coverage for those who aren't medicaid eligible?
If you're still uninsured in America that's pretty much by choice. I've chosen to fly without health insurance, between jobs and such, but there were always options available to me.
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> Whose fault is that
Since Medicaid is administrated at the state level, probably Republicans...
> If you're still uninsured in America that's pretty much by choice
Bullshit. For starters, the national average for qualifying for Medicaid is 138% of the Federal poverty level, not 300%. And the actual threshold varies by state because, again, Medicaid is administrated at the state level.
If you live in Alabama, for example, to qualify for Medicaid as a single individual you need to have an income under $93
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Citation?
Obamacare requires preventative vaccines to be free of copays.
Vaccines continue to be free of charge when delivered by an in-network provider.
https://www.healthcare.gov/cor... [healthcare.gov]
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That expensive? I am getting the current variant next week at $80 total cost and I only have to pay because I am not really in a group with elevated risk (then it would be free). Of course, that is in Europe...
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More variants means more demand for vaccines. Sounds like pfizer disovered the cheat code that activates the infinite money glitch.
Re:A vaccine is around $120 out of pocket too (Score:5, Insightful)
holy shit for the love of god please stop this
you are one person, your personal experience has literally (and i mean fucking literally) fuckall, less than zero, worthless information bearing on what public health policy should be
for all we know you're a fucking liar who's had covid 6 times or you got incredibly lucky, or you weren't exposed as you though, or you were non-symptomatic (did you ever get fucking tested) or you just had some extra antibodies
seriously what the fuck are we supposed to do with this knowledge of "I never took the shot and never got sick." you are the ones fucking virtue signaling with talk like this. fucking stop already.
Clinical trials vs. personal anecdotes (Score:5, Interesting)
Hate to say this, but the guy who rudely said your own personal experience is worthless for determining policy is pretty much right.
For all we know you're a mutant and not representative of most of the population.
Me, my personal experience, is that I know of 20 or more friends-of-friends who are dead from COVID. COVID damn near killed me--I ended up with a pulmonary embolism thanks to COVID (my medical professionals I'm working think this), and that's definitely life-threatening. I absolutely had a DVT due to COVID according to my medical professionals. When I got it I was 53 years old, got lots of daily exercise, and was barely overweight, so not excessively high risk.
But the point is that your personal experience and my personal experience don't prove much of anything. You look at lots of people across a whole population, do studies, and trials, you know, science?
And what does the science say? That the immunizations helped a lot, probably staved off a lot of misery worldwide, and didn't really cause anything like the problems that COVID caused.
And be careful what you wish for--if you get COVID, you might not be lucky: it might make a blood clot in your brain, and turn you into a drooling idiot.
Heck, initially, *I* thought I was getting a week off with just sniffles and a bit of coughing. The blood clots didn't hit me until a bit later, and then my life changed. You feeling lucky? Really want to take a chance?
*My* personal experience is that COVID isn't a joke at all. Wasn't so much fun either for my 20 dead friends-of-friends, killed by COVID.
--PeterM
Re:A vaccine is around $120 out of pocket too (Score:4, Insightful)
I love it, you cannot imagine my statement to be true.
No plenty of us believe you. It's just entirely fucking irrelevant. I've been electrocuted twice, so go grab the live end of a bare wire, I guarantee you based on my experience you will have 100% chance of living.
And if you don't, well we'll have one less idiot who doesn't understand how their experience does not in any way even remotely invalidate wide real world data.
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So I assume you have no car insurance, because you've never had an accident? No homeowner's insurance (if you have a home, which is questionable), since your house has never been hit by a natural disaster?
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You are obviously well off-- even though there are few natural disasters that threaten Italy (especially with Berlusconi out of office), being able to shrug the cost of construction materials and labor must be nice. I live in a modest house in an area with low cost-of-living, but it would still be tens of thousands of dollars just in materials to replace my house. Living in Florida, I'm one major hurricane away from an unlivable house.
I also work with a number of the scientists doing research on Covid, as
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Well, talk about being a moron _and_ being proud of that. But stupid is only sexy (to other morons) as long as not too many are doing it. When it takes over, society collapses.
not at all a bloodsucker (Score:5, Funny)
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"Close that curtain! I have.. an allergy to sunlight!"
They have a pill for that.
Didn't learn from Martin Shkreli? (Score:2)
I thought the outrage brought on by Pharma Bro would have had some kind of preventative effect of this kind of price gouging.
Ah well, I guess rampant greed and unregulated capitalism is still alive and well...
"Pricing is set to maximum ripp-off" (Score:2, Troll)
Is what they actually wanted to say. But since that sounds really immoral and evil, they create the illusion that there is a "market" (there is not) that "values" this product as it is priced now (only because whoever needs it has no alternatives).
"I can't believe it's not ivermectin" (Score:4, Informative)
". There was no significant difference in mortality from any cause at 28 days between the Paxlovid plus standard treatment group and the standard treatment group (absolute risk difference [ARD], 2.27; 95% CI â'2.94 to 7.49, P = 0.39). There was no significant difference in the duration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA clearance among the two groups (mean days, 10 in Paxlovid plus standard treatment group and 10.50 in the standard treatment group; ARD, â'0.62; 95% CI â'2.29 to 1.05, P = 0.42). The incidence of adverse events that occurred during the treatment period was similar in the two groups (any adverse event, 10.61% with Paxlovid plus standard treatment vs. 7.58% with the standard, P = 0.39; serious adverse events, 4.55% vs. 3.788%, P = 0.76)."
https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
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". There was no significant difference in mortality from any cause at 28 days between the Paxlovid plus standard treatment group and the standard treatment group (absolute risk difference [ARD], 2.27; 95% CI â'2.94 to 7.49, P = 0.39).
*blinks*
Usually articles in the Lancet are pretty solid, but this immediately sets off red flags. If the number of deaths in your sample population is single-digit, your confidence interval has a factor of 2.5 between the two ends, and a 37.5% reduction in deaths isn't statistically significant, that means that your sample size is too small to be meaningful, and you need to stop writing your paper immediately and get a larger data set.
There was no significant difference in the duration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA clearance among the two groups (mean days, 10 in Paxlovid plus standard treatment group and 10.50 in the standard treatment group; ARD, â'0.62; 95% CI â'2.29 to 1.05, P = 0.42).
This one, of course, proves that it is probably very nearly useless as a
Should've bought the patent (Score:2)
Hindsight is 20/20 but one of the things I didn't understand about the behavior of the government during the pandemic was the willingness to sort of do a business as usual with pharmacy firms. I am not normally
I think the US should have bought the patents of the initial mRNA vaccines and related therapies like Paxlovid. Pay a fair price, but also make Pfizer an offer they couldn't refuse. I'm not normally into the govt getting to run roughshod over private firms, but two cases....war and pandemic seem
If they're dying, they'll pay anything we ask!!! (Score:2)
Drugs should be priced as percentage of income. (Score:3)
I'm not normally a communist, but.... (Score:2)
...it's time to start seizing assets. Governments have the power to acquire property for public use when it serves the public good. I think this qualifies.
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You've read the 5th Amendment right? Yes, the Government can "acquire" property for public uses. After it provides "just compensation". I have no idea how you'd attach a value to pharmaceutical patents but I guarantee it would be a very large number. Congrats, you just shifted the cost from private health insurance companies (who, side note, never pay the full retail price) to taxpayers. For extra bonus points, now you've removed incentive for research into new drugs.
Regarding retail price, I just got
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Firstly, we lost millions of jobs before lockdown because the first sniffle of a problem caused every major company to enact huge layoffs and lockdowns were never coordinated nationally, it was state-by-state, sometimes town-by-town.
Secondly we didn't have a vaccine the first year of the pandemic so less options to protect people.
Thirdly protecting old people wasn't the impetus for protection measures but rather the fear of overcrowding hospitals which would have started a spiraling effect.
Fourthly can we s
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So I'm not sure of the efficacy of the "vaccine"
The vaccine was never going to keep all vaccinated people from getting the disease. Rapidly mutating respiratory viruses don't work like that. We have decades of history with the influenza vaccine to tell us that. The relevant public health authorities did society a huge disservice by implying that the vaccine would be analogous to the measles or smallpox vaccines instead of the flu one. "Just get to herd immunity" we were told. That wasn't gonna happen even with 100% uptake.
I won't call it an outrigh
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I won't call it an outright lie but it certainly was another example of shitty public messaging, the authorities thinking society is too stupid to be told the truth, so let's talk down to the unwashed masses so they make the right decision. Recall the beginning of the pandemic, when we were told "Masks aren't recommended". They knew damn well that masks worked, they were just afraid of a massive run on PPE ('member when you couldn't buy toilet paper? I 'member...) that would leave hospitals high and dry. A few weeks later, when they decided the public should be wearing masks, is it any wonder a movement immediately started questioning their efficacy? I used to do public messaging, Rule #1 is Be Consistent, if you aren't, people tune you out.
Unfortunately, they were screwed either way. As you pointed out, telling people that masks help would have resulted in them being even harder to find than toilet paper. I have no idea if that would have been better or worse than what did happen. They had to pick one without nearly enough information to know the consequences of each.
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The better way to handle it would have been to:
* Tell the public the truth, masks do help, but right now the hospitals need them more than you do. If you already have N95s or surgical masks wear them, if you don't, sew a cloth mask. It won't help you but it might help others if you're infected.
* Use emergency powers (all States have some sort of declared emergency act and the Feds have the Defense Production Act) to ban retailers/wholesalers/warehouses from providing existing mask/PPE inventory to consu
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Thing is parts of society are too stupid, or otherwise refuse to believe what they don't feel like believing, which actually takes intelligence to rationalize.
That became obvious with the run on toilet paper, people buying it by the pallet, basically a lifetime supply. And even now I was with some neighbours, they started going on about the dewormer and how it was the ultimate cure and the reason that Haiti had no Covid, without considering the lack of a functional government in Haiti. At this point to beli
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How do you know what it's like to suck on dirty pennies?!
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My wife is in those COVID "high risk" areas, she barely got a cough and fever. Noting serious. NO Shot, no drugs nothing.
When will some "scientists" examine COVID for REAL! They might see there is some generic enginee
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It is a bit more complex than that. When discussing this stuff, it really matters WHICH vaccine and WHEN it was taken and HOW MANY TIMES and IF and WHEN you actually had COVID-19, etc. Blanket statements are very difficult.
The best I can tell from the endless saga- the first vaccine was very effective, but only until the virus significantly mutated several months after. And they kept pushing that same vaccine for way over a YEAR after we knew it stopped working. It didn't stop people from getting nor t
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According to numbers recently released by UK's Office of National Statistics, there was a slightly higher death rate among the vaccinated compared with the unvaccinated.
Citation?
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https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland
If I'm reading this right, it's 46.1 "Age-standardised mortality rate / 100,000 person-years" for Unvaccinated vs 22.7 for "Ever vaccinated" for Deaths involving COVID-19 in May 2023
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Well post those numbers then since my first question is if they are adjusted to account for the fact that the majority of people in the UK are in fact vaccinated so that would be expected if going off of nothing but total deaths and if they are counting all deaths or just direct-covid deaths?
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Not to mention that approximately all high-risk people are likely either vaccinated or dead by now. At some point, the signal is gone, and you're only measuring the noise floor.
Re:Perhaps a Boon to Investors (Score:4, Funny)
Do you mean to tell me my covid boosters in fact do not profer me immortality against all forms of death?!?!
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According to numbers recently released by UK's Office of National Statistics, there was a slightly higher death rate among the vaccinated compared with the unvaccinated.
Bullshit.
Whip out your stats, let's see what you're working with here.
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Might be time to ban prescription medicine ads again.
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Yup you would reign them in. Then "American Oligarchs" would invest their money elsewhere, and your new "vaccines" and medicine would just not be available. Yes, I agree the cost hike is a money grab. Does it ever look good for a drub company to raise the cost? Simply put, you can't "force" private firms to do anything. I you capped this drug and said you can't charge anymore, then the company would look into profitability and if it wasn't stop making it. If you're other countries forcing a low price,
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>"the free programs and the cost-effective programs are GONE because of"
Once the severity of the infection dropped tremendously, and the transmission dropped a lot, and the effectiveness of the vaccinations waned. Do you think they should be mega-subsidized "forever"? Have we done that with the annual flu vaccinations? (Hint- no. Just gone one at Kroger's and they charged the insurance $100 for it; and the current COVID-19 runs about $200).
>"they fought to stop public trans from requiring masks, w