I’m sick and came to the doctor to get tested for covid, strep, and flu, since those are going around my work. I asked the doctor if I could get paxlovid if the covid test was positive, and he goes “Oh I don’t think you’d need it”
Motherfucker almost everyone who catches covid should be fucking taking it wtf is wrong with you. Oh I’m young and otherwise healthy? Yeah and I’d like to fucking stay that way thank you very much, and I’ll take any reduction in the chance of becoming permanently disabled.
Also of the medical professionals I saw today, they were only wearing surgical masks, not N95s and I can’t comprehend it. Why in the hell would you go into the room of a likely covid case not wearing an N95 are you insane?
I’m so fucking sick of being the only person in this entire town that’s actually worried about catching this disease, even the fucking doctors don’t care anymore. I work in a research facility attached to a hospital and when I go to the food court and shit at best like 1/25 people are wearing masks. In a hospital.
Thank you Mr Joe Brandon for ending the pandemic, you’ve truly cemented your place among history’s greatest killers.
Nobody can write the Black Book of Capitalism if there are no survivors.
It's fucking insane to me how people are acting with covid. It's like everybody stopped paying attention because it was too stressful. But I'm hearing people cough at work and I'm one of three people wearing a mask.
As far as paxlovid, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some extra reporting work required to prescribe paxlovid and the doctors don't want to bother with it. That's what I've noticed with our kinds of prescription or medical issues. Procedures are medications that can really help end up behind paperwork and medical professionals with fried brains.
was recently compelled by the state to appear for jury duty. I looked around the windowless, closed-door courtroom and out of around sixty people it was me and one other person wearing a mask, and the other person took it off after five minutes and never put it back on. I had to be in there for six hours
IIRC shouting "JURY NULLIFICATION" will get you booted out of selection pretty quick.
The one doctor I can get urgent care with has covid culture war brain rot "just use XYZ supplements to boost your immune system" okay I will but that doesn't mean I will skip paxlovid to play Russian roulette with long covid or me/cfs.
It was a struggle to get him to prescribe paxlovid to my 68 y/o mother because her case was "too mild."
Some doctors are just ignorant and bought into the"it's just a cold, bro" bs, or think covid is only dangerous if you're over 65, because thats the messaging we are getting from the media and health officials.
The only reason you wouldn't want to take paxlovid is if you are on a medication it can negatively interact with.
Considering there is no cure for long covid, why would anyone not try to decrease their chances of getting it?
Shouting "get proletarianized" as I kickflip off some shithead GP's head because he told me to "just get some sun" when asking about my fucked up skin.
If you didn't end up getting a prescription, you can do an online consult, I went to hidrb.com when I had COVID a few weeks ago and got a script sent to a pharmacy, it was relatively hassle free except for costing $15. Good luck friend!!
Came to mention this, it's how I got my script last winter. No doctors and drive thru pickup to minimize contact like any sane society should do at minimum
If you are COVID-positive, acknowledge to your doctor that he doesn't think you need it but tell him that you want Paxlovid anyway. If your doctor still refuses, Dr. B (https://hidrb.com/covid/paxlovid) prescribes you Paxlovid for $15
My doc was also not thrilled about prescribing it but agreed to if I... came into the office, where btw no one will be masking. I tried getting it through CVS online consult but they never called, at that point my symptoms were waning so I gave up. Long COVID for all!
I'm trying to decide if, when I eventually get it again, I should straight up tell the teleDoc that I will go from doctor to doctor until I get a scrip so they might as well give me one now, or if I should lie about my bmi instead.
Got depression (and who doesn’t lol)? You’re high risk. Use a prescriber bot. When I had covid I used Dr. B. It will check for medical interactions.
Gatekeeping paxlovid is completely nonsensical there’s gotta be mountains of surplus doses.
Gatekeeping paxlovid is completely nonsensical there’s gotta be mountains of surplus doses.
I feel like Pfizer, would also hate the gatekeeping. I'm sure they want as much flying off the shelves for their profits.
Motherfucker almost everyone who catches covid should be fucking taking it
I've got a friend who is a pulminologist and he strongly disagrees. As he explained it, paxlovid has its own side-effects, there isn't a limitless supply of it, and if you're young and healthy and vaccinated already you're not going to see a meaningful reduction in symptoms. So the value-add of taking it relative to the self-inflicted suffering generally isn't considered worth it unless you're in an at-risk category.
I’m so fucking sick of being the only person in this entire town that’s actually worried about catching this disease, even the fucking doctors don’t care anymore.
I'm hard pressed to name anyone who hasn't caught it at least once by now, save for my 76 year old mother who was practically a shut-in before the disease started. I got it the first time from a foster kid I was caring for who got it from daycare (which are all basically petri dishes particularly given how understaffed they've become). I got it the second time from my friends' kids, during D&D, because public school is basically just daycare with more standardized tests now. We all came through it without long-term issues, because we were all vax'd, got bed rest during the peak of it, and we took care of one another.
At some point, you've got to trust the guy who writes the pharmaceutical prescriptions or whats the fucking point of doctors at all? This isn't a panacea for the pandemic. Because it doesn't interact well with other medications, it is absolutely NOT for everyone. And its generally not wise to over-prescribe something this new out on the market anyway, for a whole host of reasons.
I work in a research facility attached to a hospital and when I go to the food court and shit at best like 1/25 people are wearing masks. In a hospital.
That does seem dumb as hell.
If it makes you feel any better, other countries have people with more sense. I visited Japan in February, and practically everyone there was masked all the time everywhere.
Frustrating as hell that more people don't. But that's a much different issue than whether your doctor should issue you anti-virals.
there isn't a limitless supply of it
Fauci lied about the effectiveness of masks to preserve supply and turned half the US into anti-maskers, even though there's now a shitton of masks (with N-95s still being expensive instead of free like they should be). Pfizer could certainly maintain an artificial scarcity to jack up the Paxlovid price even more, but if more people are buying Paxlovid, they'll make more Paxlovid. It's pretty horrible that Pfizer has exclusivity to manufacture Paxlovid, and that exclusivity doesn't expire until 2041.
and if you're young and healthy and vaccinated already you're not going to see a meaningful reduction in symptoms.
This is inaccurate. Getting COVID depletes your T-cells for 2 years if you don't take Paxlovid, young & healthy or not. So the first COVID infection will likely be less severe, but depleted T cells means that the 2nd infection, 3rd infection etc. will be more severe.
Also, "healthy" is misleading, because it implies that being physiologically healthy is sufficient to be able to raw-dog COVID and turn out okay anyway. Anecdotally, my young and physiologically healthy, vaccinated friend got COVID in summer 2022. Neurologically speaking, though, he's on the autism spectrum, has major depression, OCD, and Tourette syndrome, which makes him high risk for more severe symptoms. I pushed for him to get Paxlovid, but a family member in the medical field convinced him that Paxlovid was unnecessary, citing reasoning similar to what you suggested above. He got long COVID, has trouble thinking and focusing, and now, 14 months later, it hasn't gotten any better. He has to deal with long COVID from that single COVID infection for life, all because someone convinced him that a young, physiologically healthy, vaccinated person like him didn't need Paxlovid.
Fauci lied about the effectiveness of masks to preserve supply and turned half the US into anti-maskers, even though there's now a shitton of masks (with N-95s still being expensive instead of free like they should be).
I think it is worse than that, in some ways. It is why I don’t really blame people for being anti-mask, or even mask ambivalent, even though a lot of them are just petit bourgeois and selfishly looking for their personal failings to be somehow vindicating. Fauci said that he was lying, and that it was to preserve masks for healthcare workers. But it is really unclear to me that he wasn’t just very completely wrong and saying that he lied in order to maintain a level of credibility. So, either way he is untrustworthy. People were right to be skeptical of his advice, but liberals ignored this and insisted on him being infallible. Questioning Fauci became its own political statement, and liberals identified it as reactionary.
But, the reality is that Fauci was highly inept and political and identifying his advice with “science” removed the capacity for the CDC to ever influence public behavior short of physical violence. If 50% of the country now looks at the CDC in an oppositional way, it is a collapse of credibility that renders the institution itself meaningless. It is the absolute worst outcome from a public health perspective, but another 50% of people still act as though he is good. They aren’t even bothered to see the damage it did and instead blame mostly working class people for being reactionary (when in reality, reactionaries were simply using selfish petit bourgeois impulses and mask-skepticism in an opportunistic way)
When Biden “rewarded” people who were vaccinated by ending mask mandates for them, but only working on an honor system, Fauci was parroting that shit even though there was no evidence it was a good idea, and socially it had the actual effect of ending the only pandemic measure they were willing to insist upon. It happened and then immediately we stepped into the delta wave. Liberals still became hostile when I pointed out it was Biden and Fauci making an objectively political decision that killed hundreds of thousands. That was when I realized that the Pandemic was “over” and that it had essentially become an unsolvable problem under our political-economy. Its why I basically just count my blessings that I survived and that there is little I could do.
Our social system failed, it is continuing to fail us all. Working people are mostly just responding to the material reality of that, and sometimes it is ugly. I think it just ticks off another box as to why the need to build a communist movement is an existential crisis in itself. I have given up on the pandemic in some ways, but I have become obsessed with organizing instead, because that is something that could resolve these contradictions, eventually. Anyway, sorry for the rant. I hate Fauci. I don’t get mad when people don’t wear masks. Most of the working class has been forced to contract it already by our social system, so it has caused most working class people to give up. Whether they understand it or not, they behave as if they have no control, probably because they unconsciously know they are subjects now. It is a manifestation of the callousness of capitalism and the dictatorship of bourgeois “democracy”.
I'm hard pressed to name anyone who hasn't caught it at least once by now
It's me I've never caught it. Part luck, part being very careful.
At some point, you've got to trust the guy who writes the pharmaceutical prescriptions or whats the fucking point of doctors at all?
Doctors in the US kinda suck. They are low on time due to patient:nurse/doctor ratios (due to capitalism) and end up (1) harboring a lot of ridiculously bad ideas, even when it comes to healthcare, and (2) relying heavily on computer systems and rote-memorized protocols to fill in gaps. The only time I feel okay relying solely on a doctor's opinion is if I have no other choice - no second opinion, no weeks of time to study a topic and self-diagnose about as well if not better than they can (figured out my own chronic issue this way after a battery of stab-in-the-dark tests and offers of black label meds didn't lead anywhere).
I don't expect them to, on average, have the time or environment for good critical thinking. It's structural.
Plenty of “young healthy people” are in the ground thanks to covid my very close friend among them
From personal experience when I had covid I felt like absolute dog shit started paxlovid day 2 and by day 3 felt 70% better.
I trust the for profit American health care system 0%, and I trust doctors as much as I trust pit vipers. If something is out there that is going to help better my odds I’m taking it, and fuck anyone who tries to convince me otherwise your vampire pulmonologist friend included.
The drug interaction concern is a good one but that research is publicly available for you to do.
The drug interaction concern is a good one but that research is publicly available for you to do.
Christ, I hate when people play these games. "Don't trust doctors, do your own research".
Research authored by whom?
My sister's father in law is an elderly GP that voted for Trump and was out eating at restaurants the week Florida came out of lockdown. Florida's surgeon general is an anti-vaxxer. The very people at the CDC who are supposed to be looking out for us recently had a conference where like 200 people caught Covid.
I, personally, am going to listen to the Doctors and Researchers who aren't flat out ignoring an ongoing mass disabling event.
Which, by the way, Florida is where I am. The Florida department of health is an arm of the DeSantis political machine. Doctors here are functionally pro-covid. Excuse me if I’m not lining up to listen to their opinions on this when they aren’t even masking.
I have friends in the UK and it was "funny" having to listen to them complain about lockdowns and whatnot, that were keeping them healthy, in the middle of the summer of 2020 when people around us were going to fucking Disney World and a few thousand a week kicked the bucket.
As far as I'm concerned, any research that shows that paxlovid significantly reduces the chance of Long Covid. Of which there is now plenty.
The outstanding body of research says that Paxlovid carries numerous significantly deleterious side effects, as well as a multitude of complications with other prescriptions.
For the same reason you shouldn't start taking antibiotics without consulting a physician, there are numerous reasons why you wouldn't want to start treatment on paxlovid without a doctor's approval.
Yeah, no shit. Like you said, like antibiotics and every drug. Which is why I'm doing my best to avoid getting covid in the first place. And wish everybody else was helping with that. But since they're fucking not, if it comes down to risk of brain damage, heart damage, every other organ damage, I'm gonna take the paxlovid.
What deleterious side effects does paxlovid have that covid doesn’t have similar or worse effects? No one is saying that people should just be taking paxlovid all the time randomly, but there is basically no question that it’s better than just letting the virus go
I'm not disagreeing, but I am having trouble finding information about this. What are some of these side effects? I've only seen something about the first suspected case of bradycardia as a result of Paxlovid.
I also think it isn't unreasonable for people to want to take Paxlovid when we have seen the effects of long COVID on the population or loved ones and research indicating it significantly reduces the chances of having these complications. I have a friend with LC now who is unable to keep up with their previous life due to chronic fatigue as a result of covid infection.
We're at a point where we know at least some of the long term risk factors of a COVID infection and are continuing to find more while the research on Paxlovid is still in progress with some initial findings coming out. I'm not arguing there aren't problems with over prescribing a treatment, but the American medical system has made it clear that all the responsibilities associated with COVID are indiviualized now, so why should treatment choice be any different? We have to accept all the risks of covid infection without consent or accept serious repercussions in finding employment but can't accept risks of a medication to treat it? I realize this sounds like advocacy for ivermectin or that we should be taking antibiotics like candy, but there is some nuance to this and the left and right do often times identify similar problems, just drastically different solutions/causes
research authored by researchers who actually investigate the subject at hand? you know doctors aren't connected by a hivemind right?
research authored by researchers who actually investigate the subject at hand?
Yes. In fact, researchers who formulated the drug to begin with. If you don't trust the folks who developed paxlovid to tell you when and how to use paxlovid effectively, why the hell are you ingesting this drug to begin with?
but that's what they are doing when they go to the source to get their information. you're conflating the doctors prescribing it with the people who developed (or at least study) it. these aren't equally trustworthy groups
Sorry I mean on this point specifically I believe NHS has a published table of drug interactions with paxlovid
Edit: NIH https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/antivirals-including-antibody-products/ritonavir-boosted-nirmatrelvir--paxlovid-/paxlovid-drug-drug-interactions/
Why would you wear a mask outside unless there's pollution or covid spreads through the wind, which i don't think is happening otherwise there would be more panic on here at least
Oh, I meant outside the office in their personal life. But if you're in a crowd or something you should definitely be masked.
Not sure why you're defending some piece of shit just because you seem to be in the same profession?
Explaining the reasoning for a particular decision is a good thing.
We all came through it without long-term issues, because we were all vax'd, got bed rest during the peak of it, and we took care of one another.
Til post viral illness doesn't exist
As he explained it, paxlovid has its own side-effects, there isn't a limitless supply of it, and if you're young and healthy and vaccinated already you're not going to see a meaningful reduction in symptoms
Pretty much all of medicine is a balance between risk and reward. This can actually be an issue sometimes with things like screenings or whatever where we pick up things that aren't actually an issue (even if they're scary) and are unlikely to pose a threat by the end of a person's natural life and then put them through an onslaught of medical intervention that hurts their QOL way more than the actual problem was likely to ever do for them.
That's not to say that screening and treating minor issues is bad or anything, just that we need caution to avoid causing unnecessary harm.
Pretty much all of medicine is a balance between risk and reward.
I absolutely agree.
That's not to say that screening and treating minor issues is bad or anything, just that we need caution to avoid causing unnecessary harm.
It just becomes exhausting to hear people insist "my doctor wasn't wearing a mask at the appointment, so I know better than him on what drugs to take".
Like, do you trust the medication you're taking enough to take it but not enough to listen to the manufacturers on when and how to use it?
Of all the dumb arguments I've heard from others, the "we're young" one might be my most hated. My friends and I are all in our 30s now. If you think repeated infections of the same virus over and over again isn't going to have lasting negative health effects in general, let alone as we age, it's a shame you even made it this far
. This is true for anything, but the brainworms are turned up to 11 for Covid.All of the cautionary tales about smoking cigarettes or binge drinking or eating too much sugar or other risky behavior leading to complications down the road don't map to Covid because…reasons, I guess? All of the things we're supposed to do/avoid to protect the developing minds and bodies of children just don't really matter for this one illness? Life expectancy in the US has already dropped. When an entire generation of "young and relatively healthy" 20- and 30-year-olds all suspiciously exhibit the same chronic issues with their cardiovascular, pulmonary, and endocrine systems in the next decade, will any of these people attribute it to getting Covid 2+ times a year every year?
When an entire generation of "young and relatively healthy" 20- and 30-year-olds all suspiciously exhibit the same chronic issues with their cardiovascular, pulmonary, and endocrine systems in the next decade, will any of these people attribute it to getting Covid 2+ times a year every year?
Seriously. And frankly, that's optimistic. We're less than 4 years into this shit and every wave exhibits an epidemic of opportunistic infections; Strep, flu, shingles, RSV, pneumonia, fungal infections. People who think they're gonna get covid once or twice a year and still be healthy and/or alive in ten years aren't living in reality.
"Hey, you know what I always wanted, but wasn't sure I'd be able to afford until retirement? Early onset dementia."
Strep, flu, shingles, RSV, pneumonia, fungal infections.
Pure coincidence. That's a result of our collective immunity debt sweaty
But
. It's frightening how easy it was to manipulate people into this position and how powerful peer pressure can be. I can sometimes see the gears turning when bringing up how the pandemic didn't end, we just decided to play dumb to all its effects, but it doesn't translate into any meaningful response. My housemate works at a hoity-toity private school and despite going back to in-person classes in the fall of 2020, they were actually adhering to some standards like testing, universal masking, and indoor air purifiers for a lot longer than the public schools did. It wasn't until last September when the school "followed the science" and regressed to mask-optional as the only mitigation. After we both caught it at the beginning of this year they basically gave up caring 100%, and it's been absolutely exhausting raising any concerns about it to them or most of my friends, save for one whose partner has MS. I started a new job that went hybrid about two months into me starting (they were so proud of how much they innovated going full remote when I interviewed, too) and I'm surrounded by parents of young, school-age kids. I'm one of maybe three people who mask at the office. I'm thinking how it's just a matter of time before someone brings it home again, and our last box of tests is about to expire. 
Pro-tip: long bouts of depression induced by this shit isn't much better for one's health down the road, either. There are exactly zero upsides to the "Infinite Covid" strategy.
Pro-tip: long bouts of depression induced by this shit isn't much better for one's health down the road, either. There are exactly zero upsides to the "Infinite Covid" strategy.
Don't forget all the friendly gaslighting. That's super helpful too!
lol. Good luck with it all! 
Thank you!
I'm thankful to at least have this place both for its awesome community and this comm for keeping it real about Covid.I feel ya on that. One of the few places that isn't ravaged by
As an immunocompromised person I fucking hope you get it so there's less chance I could get it
I'm sorry you're going through that. I just caught it for the first time, and they gave it to me. I didn't know it was difficult to get for some, I'm grateful I didn't have to go through that. But I know what you mean about being the only one worried. I live in a county of about 30k, and the next county over where Walmart is is about 40k. Whenever I go out, I am literally the only person wearing a mask most days. When I went to urgent care to get diagnosed, no one wore a mask until after my test results came back. Like, wtf? Horse is out the barn, chief.
Nooooooooo we need to save it for old people who aren't going to take it anyway!
With respect, you are not a doctor. You have no concept of how complex the decisions are around prescribing medications. Do you know the number needed to treat vs number needed to harm for Paxlovid?. Do you have any idea what the drug does and in which populations it has been studied?
You're young and healthy. You don't need Paxlovid. End of story. It's only indicated for over 70s / immunosuppressed / significant cardiorespiratory comorbidity to prevent hospitalisation and death. The decision of whether ir not to prescribe a drug is more complex and nuanced that "I have virus, give me virus pill". Do you really think your doctor has never heard of long COVID?
It is not just some magic pill to be thrown around "just in case" to young healthy people anxious about rare complications.
Every time you prescribe it you roll the dice. You might be selecting for a strain that is resistant to Paxlovid. You might have an unwanted side effect or allergy. You might have picked up the last pack from your local pharmacy which means the 80 year old diabetic with a kidney transplant can't get it.
It is not just some magic pill to be thrown around "just in case" to young healthy people anxious about rare complications.
This deeply underestimates how slowly medical science moves. COVID crosses the blood brain barrier and is found in every major organ in cadavers. It's like assuming a particular plastic is harmless because it isn't listed as hazardous. It just means that it hasn't been tested. Research doesn't happen if there's no profit incentive to fund it. At best you get some researcher pulling strings for their pet project.
There is no shortage of Paxlovid or vaccines, they're all rotting on the shelves.
You have no concept of how complex the decisions are around prescribing medications. Do you know the number needed to treat vs number needed to harm for Paxlovid?. Do you have any idea what the drug does and in which populations it has been studied?
With respect it sounds like you don't know either and are vibing off the idea of what doctors are through cultural osmosis. Speaking from my own expertise around the history of healthcare and healthcare training most doctors are terrible people and their training is incredibly hostile to patients. That's just the nature of for-profit healthcare.
You can trust doctors to do the bare minimum not to kill you but these people are incredibly neurotic, especially because they are culturally treated like Gods. There is more than enough academic literature to prove this, they're not ubermensch, they're usually rich kids that are just good at studying.
The far greater likelihood is that CCA has a bad doctor that uncritically swallows whatever the CDC tells them, ergo their doctor uncritically swallows information from a political organization responsible for killing millions through social murder.
Please hang out at a med school, talk to the students that are about to graduate. The good doctor that you're imagining in your head is incredibly rare. American doctors in particular are trained to be extremely hostile and adversarial to their patients relative to other countries.
That's cool I hope you're a good one lmao. Please listen to your patients.
I don't know how much social and political training they give you where you live but when I'm organizing I see mistreatment daily and a I've come to recognize that key medical fields select for the worst possible people. I've had the privilege of knowing a respected psychologist and getting to watch him try to "fix" his autistic children and witnessed the mistreatment of countless trans patients.
Best case scenario you do everything right and your successors consider you a barbarian because you're borne out of a system that insisted black people couldn't feel pain until like 20 years ago. I'm sure you're a nice enough person but yeah I'd bet money that CCA is experiencing medical neglect rather than a carefully considered decision.
I asked the doctor if I could get paxlovid if the covid test was positive, and he goes “Oh I don’t think you’d need it”
Paxlovid is specifically to be used when there is a series of positive tests or symptoms. The doctor is premptively saying, "Nah, doesn't matter if you test positive or not, I'm not going to go outta my way to give you the drug specifically to be used to treat the illness that you've tested positive for."
You’re not a doctor
Unlike Ben Carson or the great barrington declaration smoothbrains or the ones prescribing ivermectin
Lmao fuck outta here
You have no concept of how complex the decisions are around prescribing medications.
“Will I get reprimanded by my hospital’s board of directors if I prescribe desperately needed medication to the poors?”
You're young and healthy. You don't need Paxlovid. End of story.
“Life expectancy for anyone under the age of 40 isn’t going to decrease itself!”
Also: everyone infected with covid has a ten to twenty percent chance of getting long covid, which currently has no cure. Paxlovid reduces that chance. So prescribe it!
Do you really think your doctor has never heard of long COVID?
Many such cases of doctors assuming that long covid is some kind of psychological issue. The real psychological issue is that doctors tend to come from rich families who have nothing but contempt for workers. I know because my spouse is a nurse and I come from a family of doctors.
It is not just some magic pill to be thrown around "just in case" to young healthy people anxious about rare complications. Every time you prescribe it you roll the dice. You might be selecting for a strain that is resistant to Paxlovid. You might have an unwanted side effect or allergy. You might have picked up the last pack from your local pharmacy which means the 80 year old diabetic with a kidney transplant can't get it.
Cool. Explain this to the patient who wants paxlovid and let them make the decision. Problem solved! I know you’ll feel guilty about treating workers like human beings, but don’t worry, I’m sure your bourgeois puppet masters will find some other way to make up for whatever labor is spent on preventing yet more needless death and misery.
Also, thanks for letting us know you’re a doctor. I fucking LOVE dunking on doctors! You all think you’re so fucking smart, but you’d be nothing without your family’s inherited stolen wealth 😉 . How many examples are there of people impersonating doctors for years without being found out? And whenever they ARE discovered, it’s never because they’ve harmed a patient. It’s always because some bourgeois signifier (i.e., the watch isn’t golden enough) is off.
I presume you're American because you insist wealth is a prerequisite to a medical degree. My parents were low-middle income before they retired. We ate 2 minute noodles at least twice a week and Dad grew most of the veggies. I went to a shitty public high school. I worked hard, got good grades and scored well in the entry exam. Nowhere in any of this was the question of money ever an issue. The government pays (well, loans really) the university fee and I was on welfare for the duration of my studies, which is less than minimum wage so I had a part time job as well.
Paxlovid has not been studied in the prevention of long COVID, and another closely related antiviral combination (lopinavir + ritonavir) has actially been shown to increase the odds ratio of long COVID by 92%.
I'm done arguing with non-doctors about this.
I presume you're American because you insist wealth is a prerequisite to a medical degree. My parents were low-middle income before they retired. We ate 2 minute noodles at least twice a week and Dad grew most of the veggies. I went to a shitty public high school. I worked hard, got good grades and scored well in the entry exam. Nowhere in any of this was the question of money ever an issue. The government pays (well, loans really) the university fee and I was on welfare for the duration of my studies, which is less than minimum wage so I had a part time job as well.
Wow, you definitely earned everything you have by the sweat of your own brow! But you’re Australian, aren’t you? Just ignore the mountain of aboriginal skeletons and the ocean of aboriginal blood underneath you. You are very much a man of the people!
Paxlovid has not been studied in the prevention of long COVID, and another closely related antiviral combination (lopinavir + ritonavir) has actially been shown to increase the odds ratio of long COVID by 92%.
“The analysis showed that Paxlovid reduced the risk of long COVID-19 by 26% over a six-month period.”
https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/paxlovid-reduces-risk-of-long-term-health-problems-death-from-covid-19/
Oops! Actually, it has been studied! And actually, it does help! You are objectively incorrect! How many people are dead or living in misery because you chose to protect your bosses rather than the vulnerable? Maybe you should have gone to medical school in Cuba, where they actually train doctors to help people regardless of how much money they have?
Please read the article and come at me with nitpicky details. You have made a terrible mistake by arguing about covid with a communist, even as I strongly suspect you stopped masking years ago and are constantly infecting the people around you with disease. As you go about your day and judge whether to provide expensive medications to save the lives of poor people, remember that it was a communist with no medical training or expertise who defeated you here, fair and square.
I’m done arguing with non-doctors about this.
Must be nice knowing that it’s not just the anti-vaxx weirdos second-guessing you all the time. Anyone with any experience with doctors is constantly googling whatever you tell us because we know you work for the bourgeoisie, not for the 99%.
You know that feeling you get when you're a subject matter expert and some moron tries to argue with you by googling their own opinion and linking a news article in which one of the lead authors has declared conflict of interest by consulting for the manufacturer of the drug they wrote a paper about? Yeah, that's why I'm done arguing with non-doctors on this topic.
You are not a communist, you are just another American white boy in a Che Guevara tshirt who blames his own failure on capitalism and a system set up against them in the same way incels blame their loneliness on women who fail to see them as they see themselves. Both a conveniently external locus of control.
Thankyou for inspiring me to block hexbear BTW
How is this specific study incorrect? If you examined the data, would you draw a different conclusion?
Every time you prescribe it you roll the dice. You might be selecting for a strain that is resistant to Paxlovid.
Lol. Our entire approach to covid is causing covid to mutate rapidly and become more and more contagious and immune evasive, while rapidly making obsolete treatments we've developed over the past two years.
The Ba.2.86 variant they started detecting worldwide, while not as contagious as current circulating variants, is one of the most immune evasive ever seen.
The "let it spread for herd immunity" fuckheads turned the entire world into a big gain of function experiment.
Some people here are saying the fucked up capitalism of US medicine is that it’s not prescribing paxlovid but after reading your comment I think the fucked up part of US medical capitalism is the other commenter who linked a doctor that will prescribe it to you for $15.
Your point about carefully avoiding that we select for a resistant strain I think is especially powerful because even if an individual wants to roll the side-effects dice there is still community harm involved in that decision. You completely won me with that argument.
Which ironically enough parallels the case for continuing to mask up so people need to get their dooming under control and stay anchored in science.
Your point about carefully avoiding that we select for a resistant strain I think is especially powerful because even if an individual wants to roll the side-effects dice there is still community harm involved in that decision. You completely won me with that argument.
Is there a viable biochemical pathway for this to develop? I don't fret about prophylactic use of hand sanitizer for fear of selecting an alcohol resistant strain, because that's not possible, or to put it more accurately, there is no plausible mutation that would lead to alcohol resistance being incorporated into the viral genome.
and stay anchored in science.
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Is there a viable biochemical pathway for this to develop
I’m not a medical expert but a quick google search revealed medical experts fearing that is the case
Also interestingly enough I decided to google if bacterial resistance to hand sanitizer was a thing and yes apparently some bacteria are evolving tolerance of hand sanitizer.
Life will uh find a way
I’m not a medical expert but a quick google search revealed medical experts fearing that is the case
Just like there were medical experts sharing that masks were not effective for the general public at the opening stages of the pandemic.
Also interestingly enough I decided to google if bacterial resistance to hand sanitizer was a thing and yes apparently some bacteria are evolving tolerance of hand sanitizer.
Bacterial 'resistance' to ethanol based hand sanitizer is not a thing so much as bacterial tolerance of alcohol concentrations can increase, and they can point to the specific biochemical pathways of concern (changes to carbohydrate metabolism). Which is not the case and cannot be the case for a lipophilic virus like SARS-CoV-2.
A quick glance at the literature indicates:
- There are observed mutations in the main proteases that confer resistance to paxlovid [1][2]
- These confer significant fitness penalties to the virus outside of paxlovid exposure. [2]
- Due to point 2 and the rarity of these mutations, these are not expected to occur in a meaningful level outside of selection internal to immunosupressed individuals [2][3].
Yeah imma get the drug.
Do you know the number needed to treat vs number needed to harm for Paxlovid?. Do you have any idea what the drug does and in which populations it has been studied?
You're young and healthy. You don't need Paxlovid. End of story.
Seems like you didn't actually need the NNT/NNH there buddy
