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Comment by barbazoo | Hacker News Reader

> There were six hospitalizations and no deaths among the 607 patients who received Paxlovid within five days of symptom onset, compared to 41 hospitalizations and 10 deaths in the placebo cohort.

I know it shouldn't be shocking but it just hit me that being in the control group here is very close to getting a death sentence. I couldn't find it in the article OP shared or the press release, but did the control group get any other treatment?

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Sometimes the experimental drug has unexpected side-effects or is less effective than the placebo. Both sides of the trial are a gamble. It is a trial because literally nobody knows for sure what the outcome will be -- only an informed guess that the new treatment is a good idea.

When trials are extremely effective, they are sometimes halted and rolled out early. That sounds like exactly what Pfizer is attempting to do here. The company thinks that they have a clear-enough signal to be worth going to the press and preparing FDA for the EUA.

Pfizer will have made an embarrassing error if the final trial-results turn out to differ with their claims, but if they don't, then Pfizer has given a several-week head start to rolling the drug out to all patients.

Usually with these kinds of experiments, you would get all the other normal treatments, because it would be unethical otherwise.

While I haven't read this particular study, the standard way to do a trial like this is to compare against the current standard of care, not no treatment.

10 deaths in 600 is not quite a death sentence, in my opinion. And yes, placebo group always gets current standard treatment, it would be rather wrong to do otherwise.

Not a chance I'd like to take

For sure, but in this case, not taking the chance guarantees you the "placebo", or standard care, meaning you'd be in the same boat as if you'd entered the study and received the placebo dose.

The alternative is not being in the trial at all.

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