An effective oral covid treatment would be an important step:
Pfizer Inc. today shared that the first participant has been dosed in a pivotal Phase 2/3 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of PF-07321332 – an investigational orally administered protease inhibitor antiviral therapy designed specifically to combat COVID-19 – in non-hospitalized, symptomatic adult participants who have a confirmed diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection and are not at increased risk of progressing to severe illness, which may lead to hospitalization or death.
I just went to the doctor and asked. They have inly had 2 moderna breakthrough cases but many more pfizer. A friend though said that on a teen trip to ny one teen that had never has covid but vaccinated (not sure which) got covid, but all the teens that had covid previously regardless of vaccine status did not
Baricitinib (already marketed oral Jak inhibitor) shows strong effect on reduction of mortality at 28 day mark in hospitalized covid patients, and has good safety profile
Implications of all the available evidence In this phase 3 trial, baricitinib administered in addition to standard of care (which predominantly included dexamethasone) did not reduce the incidence of a composite endpoint of disease progression, but showed a strong effect on reduction of mortality by 28 days, an effect which was maintained up to 60 days. In the ACTT-2 study, baricitinib further reduced time to recovery above the background use of remdesivir. Taken together, these findings suggest that baricitinib has synergistic effects with other standard-of-care treatment modalities, including remdesivir and dexamethasone. Based on all available evidence, baricitinib is a potentially effective oral treatment option to decrease mortality in hospitalised patients with COVID-19.
I wanted to chime in to suggest that people who are interested look into what immunologists have to say about the idea that antibody titer levels correlate with immunity.
What I hear is that they don’t. Even doctors (if they are not also scientists and/or are in a specialty other than infectious disease) often assume that more antibodies is equal to more immunity. And the media is certainly teaching the public this. But the human immune system is not that simple.
Antibody titers can’t measure the presence of the memory T cells activated by the vaccine, which stand by, ready to attack the virus. Nor do they measure plasma cells which develop from activated B cells. Plasma cells are dormant antibody factories, ready to go to work pumping out their product when the virus is sighted.
Imagine if those factories were constantly pumping out antibodies to every pathogen you’ve ever encountered…You would have sky high antibody titers to everything, but your blood would turn to sludge! There would be too much solid and not enough liquid.
Antibody titers also can’t measure the response of the innate immune system. You’ve got macrophages,dendritic cells, natural killer cells, interferons, and more. Plus, it’s not even the virus itself that makes severe Covid severe—it’s our own immune dysfunction and failure to regulate the response. So, does your antibody titer tell you whether your immune system will be capable of balance when it encounters the virus?
His pandemic science writing has been my favorite. When I bring up points I’ve read to DH (infectious disease doc and immunologist), Ed Yong is one of the only reporters who doesn’t elicit a lot of corrections😄
One of my longtime friends works in a pediatric trauma ICU. She told me that they have FEMA-supplied nurses coming to work her unit tonight because of COVID. Note that I said she works in a trauma unit, not an infectious disease one.
I cannot seem to find the answer to this. I had the test done to see if I have antibodies 6 months after vaccine. I know antibodies dont tell the whole story, but the results are
Why the Delta variant’s R0 of 6-9 means that stopping it (bringing Re to below 1) with just vaccination is unlikely:
or, for those who prefer it in <280 character chunks:
The other conclusion is that getting unvaccinated people vaccinated helps reduce Re more than vaccinated people getting boosters. Of course, it may be that the remaining unvaccinated people have a lot of hard-line refusers, so getting them vaccinated is unlikely.
Of course, the policy implication is that we then have a choice between:
Trying to bring Re below 1 with vaccination plus additional measures like mask and social distancing requirements, restrictions on indoor gatherings and travel, etc., which people are tired of and which have negative implications on education and other things, or
Giving up on trying to control COVID-19 and let the vaccinated people hope that the vaccines’ reduction in getting COVID-19 and reduction of bad outcomes if one gets COVID-19 works for them, and hoping that the overloading of hospitals with mostly-unvaccinated COVID-19 patients is only temporary until COVID-19 has run through the unvaccinated population.
In the early stages of Covid, it was often reported that those in the hospital and dying from Covid were the elderly and/or typically had comorbidities. (Not to say that the healthy were not at risk too.)
Now that the Delta variant has become so widespread, is this still the case? I read recently that it is primarily the unvaccinated that are hospitalized but is it still primarily those in that group that are elderly and/or have comorbidities?
Hospitals are seeing more and more younger people now due to Delta and the fact that a high proportion of elderly are vaccinated. In terms of raw numbers, I don’t know if the hospitalized unvaccinated individuals are still “primarily” the elderly or people compromised by underlying conditions. Will be interested to see if anyone has statistics about this. I did see a news report where it was stated that VACCINATED people who end up in the hospitals tend to be from the elderly/medically vulnerable group just as before.
I watched a news broadcast that indicated the deaths from Covid in SC of those that had been vaccinated were very small in number and almost exclusively from those that were immunocompromised from organ transplants, etc.
Ed Yong writes about the limited understanding and research that exists about “long COVID”.
Basically, it is pretty obvious that “long COVID” exists and can significantly affect quality of life, but there is very little medical research on the subject. Even the definition of “long COVID” and its association with other medical issues is not well defined.
Given the dearth of good information, people making risk assessments (for either their own behavior or in advocating for policy) are likely to make guesses or assumptions in this area. Such guesses or assumptions could be wildly incorrect, in either the optimistic or pessimistic direction.
