JEFF CHILDERS ”

Drug companies lie, which is why we have regulators. Regulators get captured, which is why we have doctors. When doctors fail, the whole sordid scheme collapses

…………

Or maybe something else is afoot.

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The CIDRAP’s directly-worded headline, as bad as it looks, still understated the technically-worded study’s damning data and critical conclusions. First of all, Table 3 in the study reported that, of 654 trial participants, 83 people reported adverse events from using the drug (versus 31 in the placebo group), and 16 people dropped out because of their side-effects (compared to only 5 in the placebo group).

So not only did Paxlovid fail to “shorten symptoms,” but it also caused side effects in 13% of people taking the drug — over 1 in 10. And remember “Paxlovid rebound!” Another new study published in March found a full 25% of Paxlovid munchers enjoyed a second, often more serious, covid infection. That just shows it’s working!.

In other words, for vaccinated people Paxlovid was all risk and no benefit. Unsafe and ineffective.

The study concluded Paxlovid doesn’t really work for anybody:

The time to sustained alleviation of all signs and symptoms of Covid-19 did not differ significantly between participants who received nirmatrelvir–ritonavir and those who received placebo.
Gosh. Over the last two+ years, the federal government spent $12.6 billion taxpayer dollars buying Paxlovid pills from Pfizer. You won’t believe this, but the NEJM study finished two years ago, but the results are only popping out now:

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Unfortunately, that information about Paxlovid’s ineffectiveness might have been useful, back before we spent tens of billions of dollars buying pills that don’t work. It’s just modern-day snake oil, except you don’t have any choice about buying. You bought Paxlovid whether you liked it or not.

As Barney Frank says, “government is just stuff we do together.”

What can we conclude about this? It sure looks like the study — ironically financed by Pfizer — was stashed in a secret missile silo somewhere until after most people stopped taking the useless pills and until after Joe Biden stopped shoving pallets of cash down Pfizer’s insatiable gullet.

I think the most reasonable response would be for the weight of the blame to be laid upon the drooling, mentally deficient doctors who promoted Paxlovid to their patients because the CDC told them to. Drug companies lie, which is why we have regulators. Regulators get captured, which is why we have doctors. When doctors fail, the whole sordid scheme collapses.

As a postscript, I checked liberal Twitter replacement BlueSky to see how the medical fetishists were taking the news. Not well. Most — including scientists and doctors — are currently in denial, paranoiacally convinced this study is a vicious lie somehow slipped through by dreaded anti-vaxxers, or it was misinformation because they think Paxlovid still “works” — off-label — to prevent long covid. A smaller group is demanding that someone develop “better covid drugs, now!”

What can I tell you, it’s a medical fetish. It’s not supposed to be rational. But it was totally predictable, and a lot of us did predict this would happen.