[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
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