The doctors should have said, “There is extremely low risk to stopping these drugs.”
Many interactions are caused by the fact that several medications are metabolized by the same enzymes in the body. Introducing a second drug which depends upon a given enzyme reduces the level of enzyme available for metabolizing the first drug.
Failure to be metabolized and removed from the body can cause the dosage in the blood to increase as if a higher amount of the drug had been taken.
My wife was recently given Paxlovid. Her blood pressure medication was reduced to one half the usual amount. Due to the expected slowing of the metabolizing of the blood pressure medication, it was expected that the level in her blood would increase maintaining the effectiveness of the drug.
I was considered for Paxlovid but wasn’t prescribed because I take a complicated array of drugs and that made management in the presence of Paxlovid too uncertain. If I had had more symptoms of Covid the decision might have been different.
I took Paxlovid and my doc did the same thing (short term cessation of Crestor). Frankly, I didn’t notice that it did any good (it still felt like the flu for 3 days and was then gone), but the Paxlovid has a side effect that makes your mouth taste like you swallowed a large bag of trash. Just gross.
Don’t forget the effects of grapefruit juice in this regard.
Seriously.