Vaccines and Therapeutics 2.0 & 3.0 Merge

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canpakes
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Re: Vaccines and therapeutics (Derail begins on page 55/56)

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Houston Healthcare stats for the day -


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canpakes
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Re: Vaccines and therapeutics (Derail begins on page 55/56)

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OHSU for today -

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Gadianton
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Re: Vaccines and therapeutics (Derail begins on page 55/56)

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Interesting stats, Canpakes. I guess our recently departed poster, never to return, did not work in a hospital in Texas. He claimed that the stats for all three categories were 50 / 50 vaccinated vs. unvaccinated at the hospital he works at.

He must work somewhere other than Texas.

That's odd because according to Ajax, the immune system of a white southerner is unmatched.
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Re: Vaccines and therapeutics (Derail begins on page 55/56)

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Probably the real reason DeSantis and others are pushing so hard against preventive measures such as mask and vaccine mandates: Cost per patient to vaccinate against covid-19:
Medicare COVID-19 Vaccine Shot Payment
On March 15, 2021, CMS updated the Medicare payment rates for administering COVID-19 vaccines. On August 12, 2021, the FDA updated the emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines to authorize the use of additional doses of the vaccine. For COVID-19 vaccines administered on or after March 15, 2021, and for additional doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered on or after August 12, 2021, the Medicare payment rates for administering the vaccines are:

Approximately $40 for single-dose vaccines
For vaccines requiring multiple doses, approximately $40 for each dose in the series, including any additional doses
These rates reflect updated information about the costs involved in administering the COVID-19 vaccine for different types of providers and suppliers and the additional resources you need to safely and appropriately administer the vaccine.

We generally implement changes to Medicare payment rates for specific services through notice and comment rulemaking. In this case, however, we implemented the payment rate changes for these specific services to respond quickly to new information during the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE).

For COVID-19 vaccines administered before March 15, 2021, the Medicare payment rates are:

$28.39 for single-dose vaccines
For vaccines requiring a series of 2 or more doses:
$16.94 for the initial dose(s) in the series
$28.39 for the final dose in the series
For all COVID-19 vaccine payment rates listed above, we also geographically adjust the rates based on where you administer the vaccine.
Cost for monoclonal antibody treatment:
Eli Lilly has struck a deal with the federal government to provide 300,000 doses of a drug that's designed to keep people infected with COVID-19 out of the hospital. The cost per dose: $1,250.
Given the well documented fact that among the heaviest donors to Republican governors like DeSantis are companies that have invested heavily in companies involved in producing monoclonal antibody therapies, can there really be any doubt about the real reason that DeSantis wants to ban mask and vaccine mandates and set up treatment centers for monoclonal treatment centers for early treatment of already infected people, instead of sites for mass vaccinations to prevent as many as possible from getting sick in the first place?

Obviously the potential for profiting from treating vast numbers of sick patients is thousands, perhaps even millions, of times greater than that from preventing as many as possible from getting sick in the first place.

Good old fashioned, unbridled capitalism at work! :evil: :twisted:

It may well be true that these same donors have also invested in vaccine producing companies, but the fact still remains that treating vast numbers of covid patients after they get sick is potentially far more lucrative than preventing them from getting sick in the first place.
Last edited by Gunnar on Fri Aug 27, 2021 5:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Vaccines and therapeutics (Derail begins on page 55/56)

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This is interesting -
In a large, randomized clinical trial conducted with thousands of patients over the past six months, researchers at McMaster University tested eight different Covid-19 treatments against a control group to figure out what works.

One drug stood out: fluvoxamine, an antidepressant that the Food and Drug Administration has already found to be safe and that’s cheap to produce as a generic drug.

These new results follow some promising findings in small-scale trials last year. In those smaller studies, researchers found that fluvoxamine was strikingly good at reducing hospitalization for Covid-19 patients — but small-scale trials can sometimes turn up spurious good results, so those findings were obviously tempered by a lot of caveats.

This study, called the TOGETHER study, is a lot bigger — more than 3,000 patients across the whole study, with 800 in the fluvoxamine group — and supports the promising results from those previous studies. The authors released it this week as a preprint, meaning that it is still under peer review.

Patients given fluvoxamine within a few days after testing positive for Covid-19 were 31 percent less likely to end up hospitalized and similarly less likely to end up on a ventilator. (Death from Covid-19 is rare enough that the study has wide error bars when it comes to how much fluvoxamine reduces death, meaning it’s much harder to draw conclusions.) It’s a much larger effect than any that has been found for an outpatient Covid-19 treatment so far.

“This is a huge finding,” study co-author Ed Mills, a professor of health sciences at McMaster University, told me. “The game changers are things we already had in the cupboards.”

What makes this result potentially such a big deal is that fluvoxamine is inexpensive and has already been FDA approved for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), so any doctor can prescribe it for Covid-19 using their clinical judgment (what’s called “off-label” prescribing). It’s a pill, which means it doesn’t need to be administered in a hospital or by a medical professional.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2261 ... y-mcmaster
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Re: Vaccines and therapeutics (Derail begins on page 55/56)

Post by Gunnar »

canpakes wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 5:46 am
.
This is interesting -
In a large, randomized clinical trial conducted with thousands of patients over the past six months, researchers at McMaster University tested eight different Covid-19 treatments against a control group to figure out what works.

One drug stood out: fluvoxamine, an antidepressant that the Food and Drug Administration has already found to be safe and that’s cheap to produce as a generic drug.

These new results follow some promising findings in small-scale trials last year. In those smaller studies, researchers found that fluvoxamine was strikingly good at reducing hospitalization for Covid-19 patients — but small-scale trials can sometimes turn up spurious good results, so those findings were obviously tempered by a lot of caveats.

This study, called the TOGETHER study, is a lot bigger — more than 3,000 patients across the whole study, with 800 in the fluvoxamine group — and supports the promising results from those previous studies. The authors released it this week as a preprint, meaning that it is still under peer review.

Patients given fluvoxamine within a few days after testing positive for Covid-19 were 31 percent less likely to end up hospitalized and similarly less likely to end up on a ventilator. (Death from Covid-19 is rare enough that the study has wide error bars when it comes to how much fluvoxamine reduces death, meaning it’s much harder to draw conclusions.) It’s a much larger effect than any that has been found for an outpatient Covid-19 treatment so far.

“This is a huge finding,” study co-author Ed Mills, a professor of health sciences at McMaster University, told me. “The game changers are things we already had in the cupboards.”

What makes this result potentially such a big deal is that fluvoxamine is inexpensive and has already been FDA approved for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), so any doctor can prescribe it for Covid-19 using their clinical judgment (what’s called “off-label” prescribing). It’s a pill, which means it doesn’t need to be administered in a hospital or by a medical professional.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2261 ... y-mcmaster
Yes! I reported on this back in March of this year. The study you posted is a follow up to the smaller, initial study I reported on back then:
It is gratifying and exciting that this new, larger study seems to strongly corroborate the preliminary, smaller study. By all indications, fluvoxamine is both much cheaper and more effective at mitigating covid-19 than monoclonal antibody treatment, and can be administered on an outpatient basis, with much less probability of the need for hospitalization.

I fear, though, that for this very reason there may be a massive pushback by big pharma (and the politicians who eagerly accept their donations) against adoption of this therapy, fueled by a massive disinformation campaign against it, because it is potentially far more profitable to sell the more expensive monoclonal antibody therapy. As pointed out in the article to which you linked:
One question lots of doctors and patients have about a Covid-19 treatment, of course, is: “Is it FDA-approved?” Fluvoxamine is FDA-approved — but for OCD, not for Covid-19. In fact, Lenze told me, ”I don’t think the FDA ever will approve it for Covid. The reason the FDA will never approve it for Covid is exactly the reason it’s so useful for Covid, namely it’s cheap and it’s widely available. No one can make any money off it, so no one is going to spend the money to appeal to the FDA to approve it.”
It would be sad indeed if a remedy that works and is potentially life saving fails to gain wide acceptance in the medical world only because it is so cheap that "no one can make any money off it."
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Re: Vaccines and therapeutics (Derail begins on page 55/56)

Post by Chap »

Of course you are a LOT better off not getting infected at all. So:

1. Get vaccinated to protect yourself

2. Wear a mask to protect others

If you are one of the small number of vaccinated people who get infected, good luck with the treatment, whatever it may be.
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Re: Vaccines and therapeutics (Derail begins on page 55/56)

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Speaking of masks …

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-anti-m ... 22778.html
A Texas clown who helped organize protests against pandemic restrictions is fighting for his life after being hospitalized for nearly a month with COVID-19, the San Angelo Standard-Times reported.




In July, the clown reportedly helped organize “The Freedom Rally,” an event that billed itself as a protest against the “government being in control of our lives.” He also founded “The San Angelo Freedom Defenders,” which hosted a rally last year to “end COVID tyranny.”



When the clown first felt symptoms on July 26, his wife told the Standard-Times, he refused to get tested or seek medical care. The clown instead began treating himself with a cocktail of Vitamin C, zinc, aspirin and ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug that has been falsely promoted as an effective treatment for COVID-19 by conservative media. The clown was taken to the hospital on July 30.
-_-
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Re: Vaccines and therapeutics (Derail begins on page 55/56)

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Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 1:20 pm
Speaking of masks …

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-anti-m ... 22778.html
I don't feel sorry for him. I don't even want to pity him.

I do, however, pity his family for having a dad who's too stupid to take the precautions necessary to protect himself and his loved ones.

The primary problem with the freedumb folks is that what they are asking for doesn't only affect them (yet another piece of evidence of their belligerent selfishness). It affects everyone around them, especially if they off themselves due to obstinance, ignorance and negligence.
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canpakes
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Re: Vaccines and therapeutics (Derail begins on page 55/56)

Post by canpakes »

Some Schmo wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 2:19 pm
The primary problem with the freedumb folks is that what they are asking for doesn't only affect them (yet another piece of evidence of their belligerent selfishness). It affects everyone around them, especially if they off themselves due to obstinance, ignorance and negligence.
Yep. Four little children left behind, when there was a chance that the vaccine could have kept their dad with them, instead of possibly turning to slush in the ground.

All because of his fear over The Evil Gubmint® ‘controlling’ him.

Not so sure that his own decisions worked out so well for his family.
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