Article

2021-10-02 Science & Technology

"Phenomenal": Merck's new COVID therapeutic may be a gamechanger

[HotAir] -
...For the research, the monitors looked at data through early August, when the study had enrolled 775 volunteers in the United States and overseas. For volunteers who received the drug, their risk of being hospitalized or dying fell 50 percent, without any concerning side effects, compared with those who received placebo pills, Merck said in a news release announcing the findings.

Seven percent of volunteers in the group that received the drug were hospitalized, and none of them died, compared with a 14 percent rate of hospitalization and death ‐ including eight deaths ‐ in the group that received the placebo.

...Just as the vaccines inspired by the pandemic represented a breakthrough, i.e. the use of mRNA to generate antibodies against a novel virus, the new therapeutic involves a breakthrough as well. Instead of attacking viral proteins, molnupiravir scrambles the invader's genes to stop it from replicating. In other words, it hacks the virus.
Good luck getting FDA approval (10 years of multi-generation experimentation on rats to prove that it doesn't affect host's genes/protein synthesis)

Finally

Meg Tirrell
@megtirrell
Price of #covid19 drugs/vaccines:

Pfizer vaccine: $19.50/dose x 2 = $39 for primary series

Regeneron antibody drug: $2100/dose

Merck/Ridgeback's molnupiravir (if EUA'd): ~$700/course (US paying $1.2B for 1.7m courses) or $70/pill

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2021-10-02 05:48|| || Front Page|| [11125 views ] Top

#1 Those prices are the prices of the bribes for their cooperation with the Ivermectin part of the disinformation operation. To pay Merck off for not performing trials with Ivermectin themselves.

These people you're shilling for... if the truth were widely perceived, there'd be trials of those people in little glass cubes and gallows and flights to the middle of the Antarctic to scatter the ashes. Or maybe Venus.

And it's not just Ivermectin or Plaquenil.

Take a look at this:

Antihistamines and azithromycin as a treatment for COVID-19 on primary health care – A retrospective observational study in elderly patients.

Which I find notable because I've been prescribed a very similar combination of antihistamines and azithromycin for pneumonia about five years ago. It's amazing what can happen if you don't have a psychotic gnome telling everyone to not try the standard pneumonia treatments because the molecular scanner says so.

But wait, there's more...

Retracted COVID Paper Lives on in New Citations:

Researchers around the world have continued breathing new life into a retracted study, which suggested that common antihypertensive medications were harmful in patients with COVID-19.

Published online on May 1, 2020 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study relied on Surgisphere data to claim an association between renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) inhibitor therapy and worse outcomes in hospitalized COVID-19 patients with cardiovascular disease.

The journal retracted the paper due to concerns about fraudulent data on June 4, 2020 in a widely publicized move, but the study has continued to rack up citations -- totaling at least 652 as of May 31, 2021, reported Todd Lee, MD, MPH, of McGill University in Montreal, and colleagues.

It's strange that the fake study was revealed in June but its recommendations were still being followed in December, when people I know being hospitalized had their ACE inhibitors (that they had been on for a decade or so) discontinued in spite of their known utility in helping kidney function.

(Never mind all the business of whether or not it inhibited spike proteins... do you understand why kidney function is important to pneumonia patients?)

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2021-10-02 09:48|| 2021-10-02 09:48|| Front Page Top

#2 Yah, something that hacks genes...sign me right up.

Posted by Mercutio 2021-10-02 09:57|| 2021-10-02 09:57|| Front Page Top

#3 Oh, and one more thing.... when the government wrote their fucking check to Peter Daszak, they lost all right to complain about how much ANY treatment of the virus costs, whether it's 700.00 or 70,000.00. Have they tried proscribing Google or Microsoft yet?

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2021-10-02 10:04|| 2021-10-02 10:04|| Front Page Top

#4 #2 Remember the author is an idiot. The thing is, probably, inhibitor of coronavirus replicase-transcriptase.
Judging by the text "induces errors in coronavirus genes", inhibitor of exoribonuclease which does proofreading. And we don't have such enzymes.

Nevertheless, what I added re FDA applies - because enzyme inhibitor may not be narrow-specialization enough to be safe.
(If they produced it BEFORE there were working vaccines/mAb ...)

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2021-10-02 10:21|| 2021-10-02 10:21|| Front Page Top

07:03 NN2N1
06:58 NN2N1
06:58 Besoeker
05:28 Whiskey Mike
05:23 Whiskey Mike
05:21 Whiskey Mike
05:18 Whiskey Mike
05:15 Whiskey Mike
05:13 Whiskey Mike
05:08 Whiskey Mike
05:05 Whiskey Mike
05:03 Whiskey Mike
03:23 Besoeker
02:05 Grom the Affective
02:04 Grom the Affective
01:26 49 Pan
00:22 EMS Artifact
00:16 Skidmark