Humans have found cures for COVID-19. It should be a national outrage that these treatments are not available to patients in the Isle of Man.
According to the Isle of Man Government’s “Public Health” report, the Isle of Man continues to have one of the highest rates of infection in these Isles. People in the Isle of Man are continuing to die from COVID-19, and in addition to the reported deaths, there are reports of people suffering long-term effects from the virus.
An adult society would recognise that in the midst of a global pandemic, the cost/benefit analysis of whether to allow new drugs must consider the people who are currently dying from the virus. But our public health “experts” are apparently terrible at such analyses.
The absurdity of the current situation
This explanation from more than a month ago perfectly captures the absurdity of the current situation:
The trial was stopped due to ‘ethical considerations’ for being too effective. You see, we live in a world in which:
1. It is illegal to give this drug to any patients, because it hasn’t been proven safe and effective.
2. It is illegal to continue a trial to study the drug, because it has been proven so safe and effective that it isn’t ethical to not give the drug to half the patients.
3. Who, if they weren’t in the study, couldn’t get the drug at all, because it is illegal due to not being proven safe and effective yet.
4. So now no one gets added to the trial so those who would have been definitely don’t get Paxlovid, and are several times more likely to die.
5. But our treatment of them is now ‘ethical.’
6. For the rest of time we will now hear about how it was only seven deaths and we can’t be sure Paxlovid works or how well it works, and I expect to spend hours arguing over exactly how much it works.
7. For the rest of time people will argue the study wasn’t big enough so we don’t know the Paxlovid is safe.
8. Those arguments will then be used both by people arguing to not take Paxlovid, and people who want to require other interventions because of these concerns.
9. FDA Delenda Est.
Covid 11/11: Winter and Effective Treatments Are Coming
The mechanics of the treatment
Eric Topol explains how the pill works, and discusses the science in significant depth:
First let’s review the mechanism of action. Paxlovid, a small molecule that is orally active, was specifically designed to tackle SARS-CoV-2. It is not a repurposed drug, but actually derived from a precursor that was active against SARS. It binds to the virus’s main protease (Mpro) as shown here, a key upstream step before it gets into high gear replication (steps 4-6). Inhibiting Mpro is a choke point for the virus, making it unable to replicate.
Why Paxlovid is a Just-in-Time Breakthrough
Media reporting on the effect of the treatment
Despite its remarkable ability to save lives, to date, there appears to have been no mention of Paxlovid (or other drugs, for that matter) in Manx media outlets. Instead, from elsewhere:
On Monday, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer released more data on its anti-COVID-19 drug, named Paxlovid. The company had released its initial data on the drug in early November, and it looked extremely promising: a drop in hospitalization and death of 89 percent in high-risk patients. But preliminary results like that don’t always hold up, as we saw with a drug from Merck. But there’s good news in this case: Paxlovid appears to be just as effective once more patients and numbers from a second trial are included….
…In the high-risk group trial, there’s now data from over 2,000 participants. And the results are in line with what was seen earlier. Less than 1 percent of the people who received the drug were hospitalized, compared to 6.5 percent of the placebo control group. Nobody receiving the drug died, while nine in the placebo group did. The drug appeared roughly equally effective when administered as late as five days after symptom onset.
Pfizer’s anti-COVID drug still looks effective after further analysisPfizer’s anti-COVID drug still looks effective after further analysis
