How did monkeys get the virus? They’re always under lockdown.
Doesn’t sound quite as good as hydroxychloroquine.
Besides, I don’t think the NIH has proven themselves to be trustworthy.
$100 for Hydroxy
$13K for Hospitalization
$60K if you get to the ventilator
How much for Rem?
Oh it’s a bargain at $5K per dose, saves on the wear & tear of the ventilators. /s
CCP virus is a new one. The Epoch Times has no chill, and I love it.
It had an anecdotal impact on monkeys.
Monkeys aren’t humans.
I’m curious if this drug would work against the flu.
remdesivir could very well be a red herring:
the NEJM article that Gilead had published was totally shredded by professional researchers; one researcher’s conclusion was that the data were “unintelligible” ...
also, it’s good to note that serious medical professionals refer to NEJM as the “Ladies Home Journal of Medicine”
basically, the NEJM article was nothing but a means to fluff Gilead’s sinking stock ....
here’s some of the shredding:
from a medical website:
New data on the investigational antiviral drug remdesivir (Gilead) suggest clinical improvement in 36 of 53 patients (68%) hospitalized for severe COVID-19, according to a new study published online April 10 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
But experts are warning that these data come from compassionate use in a wide variety of patients, with no randomization and no control group.
“It is impossible to know the outcome for this relatively small group of patients had they not received remdesivir,” commented Stephen Griffin, PhD, associate professor at the University of Leeds School of Medicine, United Kingdom, who was not involved with the study.
“As the authors point out, a randomized clinical trial is necessary to determine the true effectiveness of this drug,” Griffin added in comments he provided to the Science Media Centre in London. Such trials are underway. The data from this paper are almost uninterpretable. Prof Stephen Evans, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
“The data from this paper are almost uninterpretable,” said Stephen Evans, MSc, FRCP, professor of pharmacoepidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who provided comments to the Science Media Centre.
Evans notes that the authors describe multiple caveats that limit interpretation of the results, including the small sample size, the relatively short follow-up, missing data, no follow-up on eight patients, and lack of a randomized control group.
Meanwhile, Josh Farkas, MD, who writes the PulmCrit blog, details his criticisms in a piece entitled, “Eleven reasons the NEJM paper on remdesivir reveals nothing.” Beyond the issues the authors list, he points out several more, including cherry picking of patients. “Remdesivir was aggressively sought-after by thousands of patients with COVID-19,” he writes. “Of these patients, 61 ended up receiving the drug. Why did these patients receive medication, out of scores of patients applying to receive it?”
Also, there are no follow-up data for 8 of the 61 patients who received an initial dose of the drug, leaving 53 for the published analysis, continues Farkas, who is an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Vermont in Burlington.
“What happened to these patients? Did they die from anaphylaxis? Did they get well, sign out against medical advice, and go party? This is unknown — but I’m worried that these patients actually didn’t fare so well,” Farkas writes.
Farkas, like Evans and Griffin, concludes that the data are largely unusable. “Until [a randomized controlled trial] is performed, further compassionate use of remdesivir probably isn’t justified,” he writes.
and more:
“Eleven reasons the NEJM paper on remdesivir reveals nothing”
https://emcrit.org/pulmcrit/pulmcrit-eleven-reasons-the-nejm-paper-on-remdesivir-reveals-nothing/
https://twitter.com/hashtag/PrimumNonNocere
commentary on NEJM:
https://twitter.com/NEJM/status/1248697013870493698
“I want to cry looking at this paper”
https://twitter.com/sgdambrauskas/status/1248731936681590785
here’s some comments about the NEJM article from doctors commenting about it on medscape:
“I question the double standards and intent - no controls, only 53 pts (63-8 excluded suspiciously) scattered over 3 CONTINENTS (so management variable to say the least) and 68% improvement in oxygen score (when 50+% expected to improve on their own) - this gets published in NEJM - gets promptly hailed by Gilead CEO and media. GLD stock had lost 10% over the month after initial hype, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen next. All this while the academics are criticizing HCQ ad-nauseam because it showed 97% pts improved in a poorly controlled trial of 1061 pts conducted by one person.
We don’t know if it will be HCQ or Remdisivir or something else, but can we quit double standards and think of sick and dying patients first?
Why even talk about 53 pts when USA alone has half a million?
What is happening here? “
and another:
“The problem is that Gilead failed to include enough patients in the trial. Their methodology completely eludes me. This drug may very well be as good or better than Hydrochloroquine, as it went through all trials and approval in the past for Ebola, though it was not that effective for that virus.
I question if it is politics here, or just blinders-on overlooking it by the FDA, CDC, or Dr. Fauci, that they have shown but a fraction of the interest in Remdesivir than it did in HC.”
It appears that remdesivir is the real deal.
The fact that it improved survival in ventilated patients who were deteriorating speaks against the inflammation hypothesis of end stage disease.
Maybe it IS all (or mostly) the virus after all.
Remdesivir was used against the Ebola Virus. RNA-dependent RNA polymerase is inhibited by Remdesivir so that it can’t be used to replicate more COVID-19 viruses in the cell.