Plaxovid: great invention or huge sham?

Plaxovid is the protease inhibitor medication that has EUA for treatment of EARLY covid.  You are supposed to start this medication as soon as you test positive for covid.  It is supposed to quickly resolve your symptoms and prevent severe illness.  How does the drug work?  Viruses have long coded RNA chains.  Those chains have to be broken into smaller pieces to be infectious.  Proteases are enzymes that cut up those long viral chains into infectious pieces.  So, protease inhibitors prevent the “cutting up” of the virus so it remains in a large chain form, not small broken chains that are infective.

Plaxovid is $800-900 per patient.  Pricy little bugger isn’t it.  Brand name of course.  NO generic.  😎

I love Igor’s channel.  He has some great info.  Today’s post comes from some great data he gathered. 

Paxlovid, "Snake Oil" of the 21st Century?

SO first.  Clinical trials.  When looking at death, 0.8% died in the treatment group with Plaxovid and 6% died in the placebo group.  The FIRST study said Plaxovid showed an 89% reduction in hospitalization compared to placebo.  The SECOND study showed a drop down to 70% reduction in hospitalization compared to placebo.  Mind you, this was in the clinical trial phase.  Oh: important tidbit here:  success was measured when patients had FOUR consecutive days of no covid symptoms after taking Plaxovid.

So the drug gets EUA approval.

And now the “real world” data starts rolling in.  Not from Pfizer data of course.  That is under lock and key.  This is human beings who TOOK Plaxovid discussing their experiences.

What are they experiencing?  Well, these are all double and triple vaccinated people who tested positive for covid.  Called their provider.  Took the 5 day Plaxovid regimen.  Felt better within a day or so of starting Plaxovid. (Fits the narrative of the trial data of “no covid symptoms for 4 days”).   And then guess what???…….Day 7-10, they GOT SICK AGAIN!  Symptoms started all over, some were sicker the second time than the first time, covid tested again and the test was positive with “darker stronger” positive test lines on the tests, and some reported infecting someone else in their household as late as day 12-15 after the initial positive test and starting Plaxovid.  Several of these people kept daily testing while on Plaxovid and tested negative for a few days, then went positive again.  Others are still covid positive 12 days later and symptoms never stopped.  Most questioned “did this just suppress the virus for 5-6 days and then it came back with a vengeance?”  Likely.  It didn’t clear the virus.  It just suppressed it.  A few noted when they called their provider, they quickly dismissed that it must be some other virus until the covid test came back positive after Plaxovid.  Others noted that the SECOND round of the covid symptoms were worse than the FIRST round prior to Plaxovid.

So is this $800-900 medication really doing what it was intended to do?  The measuring stick was you won’t die.  But 99% of people do not die from covid anyways.  Tamiflu is used to  rid of influenza faster and reduce severity of symptoms (it is not marketed as a “but did you die” medication) and I have never heard of a resurgence in flu A or B days after finishing the regimen of Tamiflu.  I *think* the goal to get EUA was to show you didn’t DIE.  But given that mortality from covid is so low, that was not the right measuring stick.  To say you have 4 days of no symptoms is a misnomer, because if symptoms come raging back 5-6 days later, what good did it do to have 4 days of no symptoms?!?!?!  One could argue it led to false sense of security that their illness was gone when in reality it was just suppressed and they could have (and some did!) go on to spread it to someone else.  This makes my brain think in other directions too……such as, is this similar to other protease inhibitor meds used in HIV where we give the oral meds to SUPPRESS HIV VIRAL lodes and as long as you take the med the viral count remains low, but you stop the meds and viral lodes come surging back?  Is this what Plaxovid is doing?  Suppressing viral lodes but not killing it and then the virus comes back with a vengeance?

Interesting points to ponder.  And I doubt Pfizer will reimburse you for the failed treatment either.  I wonder what would happen if you took Plaxovid for the SECOND round of covid 12 days after “first” covid?  Would the same symptoms come raging back for a 3rd time?  Curious minds want to know.