Discovering Paxlovid
science.org
science.org
As for COVID-19 morbidity, I am still quite concerned. We still don't know much about Long COVID-19, but a significant percent of people seem to be experiencing it with the Omicron variant. Not to mention other possible morbidities that may come from COVID-19: Diabetes, DVTs, kidney damage, and others
edit: Please keep in mind that the animals which were bred for and tested upon in the studies that led to this medication being discovered had no choice in the matter, and I personally have a hard time justifying this practice ethically. Animal testing may lead to better discoveries, but the same exact argument could be made for forced human testing.
Now that more than a month has passed since initial symptoms, I still feel that my heart and blood circulation is not back to normal and I am a bit afraid to exercise. I only do some walks on a moderately steep trail and some stretching.
I don't know if this counts as a long covid, but definitely it feels a lot different than a regular flu. It looks like most of the damage is first done to your blood circulation system and then that harms some other organs. I hope that circulation system will fully recover, but I don't know how much time it would take. Other people told me that it took them 2-3 months to feel back to normal.
If you're lucky. I have similar symptoms, and I'm 18 months in and still not back to normal (I have improved, but intense exercise seems to cause a regression).
> It looks like most of the damage is first done to your blood circulation system and then that harms some other organs.
It seems to vary between people and infections, but that's certainly one of the ways it can go.
EDIT: Not sure why this is being downvoted?
There's a strong vibe of long covid denial on HN and some people are quick to point to a study that stated long covid is mostly a psychological issue.
I'm 40, I got Covid-19 in Christmas, I got the second shot of Pfizer last July. I did not have a fever, I was just very tired for a few days. Then cough came. One month later I still feel something in my chest, I cough a little when I talk, and I collapse on Friday morning, instead of Friday evening, after a week of work (so I have a little less energy than before).
I'm doing push-ups, pull-ups and one leg squats as before. No problem there.
Not denying that it could be long COVID but those are also the exact symptoms of chronic anxiety, which your COVID infection could have created or aggravated. You should check a doctor because chronic anxiety can be a real long term issue and it's possible to heal completely if treated seriously and rapidly.
A lot of people are developing anxiety symptoms due to the epidemic crisis. I think it's worth checking.
At Dr’s recommendation, see a psychiatrist, dr gives me some anti-anxiety medication to try, and I feel better almost immediately. Spend a few months working on behavioral response to stress, breathing exercises, etc., then go off the medicine. Total game changer.
The mind and human body are funny things.
While I’d guess some “long Covid” is related to serious cases that caused underlying organ damage, my suspicion is in the more general cases where vague symptoms are described it’s probably anxiety.
In my case, I'd been dealing with anxiety my whole life, but it never caused physical symptoms. Then I had covid, felt better for 2 weeks, then suddenly started experiencing low-grade fever, night sweats, fatigue, no appetite inability to sleep for days on end (this was the worst. would feel like I stopped breathing whenever I started drifting off, and it felt like my body would then jump-start itself and violently kick me back awake). None of my doctors knew anything about long covid, and I started to wonder if I was dying of cancer or something. The symptoms were distressing enough to make anxiety a logical response. So, yeah, at some point, anxiety probably created additional symptoms, or made me more distressed by my symptoms, but neither I nor any doctors I've met believe anxiety can cause a fever, at the very least.
That sounds a lot like sleep apnea, and will kill prematurely if left untreated. You should get a sleep study to check that.
For me, I've experienced the difficulty sleeping, early morning wakefulness, heart rate, nausea, stomach issues, and sweats as physical symptoms of anxiety. A big/scary event (getting covid, death of family) can make the physical symptoms more apparent.
Not sure about low grade fever, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Again, doesn't mean it's not something else but I think people tend to dismiss anxiety as someone not taking the claims seriously - when to me anxiety symptoms are serious and miserable, they just require different treatment (unfortunately Hypervigilance makes things worse when anxious about symptoms and thinking they're not anxiety related).
I still have a hard time telling the difference between actual infection/physical illness and anxiety personally even knowing all this about myself - it's hard.
It would seem to me, based on the above, that you are experiencing anxiety about the long COVID issue and thereby exasperating the “symptoms”.
Medication really helps to get over it and stop the circle when symptoms are moderate.
Iirc two of the most effective prevention of death in clinical settings around here before vaccines and this new type of meds has been the introduction of antibiotics soon after admittance (for older patients) since it prevented bacterial pneumonias to occur opportunistically (many older early Covid victims died of this even if Covid was the initial infection). The second one was to put anti-clotting agents early on after admittance to prevent secondary issues due to clots.
> Now that more than a month has passed since initial symptoms, I still feel that my heart and blood circulation is not back to normal and I am a bit afraid to exercise. I only do some walks on a moderately steep trail and some stretching.
If you have vaccine you increase the risk of cardiovascular issues.
Then if you get Covid you have risk of cv issues from Covid as well.
How is a fact being downvoted.
I hope we’re a little more judicious with it than we were with antibiotics.
Antibiotics were similarly seen as a miracle drug; now we're struggling to keep them effective due to overuse.
Of course, as Jeff Goldblum wisely said, life always finds a way. We can only hope it takes a long time for that to happen.
The same is true with regards to viruses, is it not?
I certainly hope they've found a pathway viruses can't evolve around, but that seems pretty unlikely. We've seen antiviral resistance evolve just like antibiotic resistance does. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/antivirals/antiviral-d...
Morality is a human construct and, as such, it's completely arbitrary. We humans decide where we draw the line at which time. At what point of the "from annoyance to existential threat" should we draw lines for animal testing, voluntary human testing and forced human testing? There are no absolute answers for these and I hope we never need to find it out.
Worth noting the post-viral fatigue and other post-viral symptoms are well established phenomena following other viral infections including influenza.
How do we know if this is true? Omicron was only identified two months ago, the bulk the cases have been in the last 30 days. Not enough time has passed to qualify for long covid, so there is very little to even measure at this point. If you were sick two weeks ago and still feel bad, that's not unusual with a respiratory virus or flu.
Secondly, I’m a little curious whether if we’d ideally administer Paxlovid in double- or triple-therapy, like we do for HIV and Hepatitis C, if we had the option. Will resistance arise to it in the next 12 - 24 months? Would love to be assuaged of my fear here.
If there's one thing we've learned in this pandemic, it's definitely that people will follow that sort of instruction perfectly.
I know people who didn't disclose COVID symptoms to avoid missing work and gatherings, and people already stop taking antibiotics early in the course because they're already feeling a lot better.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/discovering-paxlov...
If there is some merit to this claim, surely it will be tested in court.
Specifically, I'm aware that Argonne National Laboratory[1] was involved in the discovery and development of this molecule, and I think we can safely assume there are other public institutions and universities involved as well.
This is just one more reason why people get alienated from the importance of public institutions they fund, and the importance of universities and academia.
[1] https://www.aps.anl.gov/APS-News/2021-11-06/aps-and-imca-cat...
see his previously too:
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/making-paxlovid
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pfizer-s-paxlovid-...
For all the flack that Big Pharma gets, when we really needed them, they came through with vaccines and anti-virals.
Meanwhile, governments and government agencies largely covered themselves in shame and incompetence and poor communication.
I am happy that Big Pharma makes big profits that keep very smart people employed. Society is much better off with all those smart people working on drugs or Han if they were working on optimizing click through rates for ads.
There are some interesting startups in the space, but mostly they seem to be focused on ML-driven lead generation. I’m optimistic, but not aware of a grand slam demonstration of success on this front. Honestly some of Derek’s discussion makes me hesitant; are the data one would need to assess things like oral availability and manufacturability available enough to make the current ML approaches viable for creating the finish line? How critical is the role of all this tacit knowledge?
Are there smaller more lab focused drug discovery outfits that would benefit from some policy change that gives unfair advantage to the BigCos with the scale advantage?
Someone lied to you.
https://www.fda.gov/food/information-consumers-using-dietary...
"By law (DSHEA), the manufacturer is responsible for ensuring that its dietary supplement products are safe before they are marketed. Unlike drug products that must be proven safe and effective for their intended use before marketing, there are no provisions in the law for FDA to "approve" dietary supplements for safety or effectiveness before they reach the consumer."
This also somewhat applies to mRNA technology. It was initially being worked on for cancer treatments and (as far as I am aware) not seriously considered for vaccines.
> Ivermectin and its related drugs act by interfering with the nerve and muscle functions of helminths and insects. The drug binds to glutamate-gated chloride channels common to invertebrate nerve and muscle cells.
Cited from:
"Taken together, our data on the interaction between ivermectin and viral proteins indicated that ivermectin majorly acts by interfering with the viral entry through inhibiting the function of spike protein and protease. "
An in silico data analysis conducted by Choudhury et al. demonstrated that ivermectin efficiently utilizes viral spike protein, main protease, replicase, and human TMPRSS2 receptors as the most possible targets for executing its "antiviral efficiency" by disrupting binding.[1]
Ivermectin works to remove parasitic worms and kill malaria though and Paxlovid has no evidence indicating it does so.