In the US, about 350 people die of Covid-19 each day. That figure is much lower than at the peak, but it’s still a disturbingly high death toll given that new Covid infections have fallen sharply in recent months.
Last December, the FDA authorized the use of Paxlovid, which was shown to be 90% effective in treating Covid. Since that time, I’ve read numerous articles suggesting that many Covid sufferers are not being given this highly effective treatment.
I know of a 97-year old man who was hospitalized immediately after contracting Covid, and then put on oxygen. He was not given Paxlovid until 6 days later, when he asked for it. In another case, a Covid sufferer I know asked her doctor about Paxlovid, and the doctor responded that she’d never heard of the drug.
These cases seem to confirm what I’ve been reading in the media. I’m puzzled as to what’s going on here. We have this paternalistic health care system where people are not supposed to make their own decisions; rather they are supposed to rely on “experts” for advice and prescriptions. So why are the experts failing us?
PS. For what it’s worth, Paxlovid is the most effective drug I’ve ever taken. I almost always take at least 7 to 10 days to recover from an illness with a fever, sometimes a month. (I have a weak immune system.) After taking Paxlovid, I recovered in about 12 hours. Yes, there’s no proof of cause and effect in my case. But recall that the Paxlovid clinical study also showed a high rate of effectiveness.
In my case, I got the prescription after about a 15 second consultation with a person I’d never met over a telemedicine zoom meeting. Couldn’t a pharmacist do that? Apparently not:
Even if you qualify, someone will still have to prescribe the drug, which means the pharmacy you get tested at will need to have a clinic, like CVS’ MinuteClinic, where a professional can screen, diagnose and prescribe. Only 10% of CVS drugstores and even fewer Walgreens have clinicians on site.
I understand that pharmacists might make a few more errors in their 15 seconds of questioning than the telemedicine operator I spoke with. But 350 people are dying every day. Is the FDA looking at this on a cost/benefit basis?
PPS. We could also save many lives if more people got Covid vaccine boosters. I also know of specific cases where the medical establishment dropped the ball on this issue.
READER COMMENTS
Ray
Jun 9 2022 at 9:11pm
Agree on treatment accessibility suggestion, but the #’s could also be a “with” vs. “of” thing inflating COVID deaths. We’ve had no excess mortality in the US since March (yes, understand this data might shift over time):
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
JFA
Jun 10 2022 at 8:04am
I get the distinction between “of” and “with”, but there were a whole bunch of people who kept harping on that distinction for the 24 months (less a few lucky weeks) the US experienced excess deaths. Given that most of the deaths are in older folks, they do have to die “of” something, and it is most likely that they died “of” Covid.
Thankfully the US hasn’t had excess deaths since the end of March, but that was right at the inflection point of the most recent (albeit thankfully small) wave. I expect the end of April to show some bump into the excess death territory.
Scott Sumner
Jun 10 2022 at 11:40am
If you look at that graph, we had negative excess deaths consistently from 2018 to 2020, so it’s obviously not a precise estimate of Covid deaths. Alternatively, during March and April of 2022, excess deaths in the US were worse than in 2018 or 2019.
Jose Pablo
Jun 10 2022 at 6:49pm
If covid has mostly killed people of old age, then, at some point Covid effect on excess deaths should be negative (basically the deaths that should be happening in “n” years’ time have just happened before).
Two years from the worst wave seems a little early for that effect, though.
robc
Jun 10 2022 at 10:42pm
It depends. If it killed mostly people of old age, you are correct. If it killed mostly people of old age who were within a year or two of dying anyway, maybe now is the right time.
Speed
Jun 10 2022 at 6:24am
The FDA or whoever is responsible for approving and promoting new drugs and treatments should spend a day or two in the aviation industry — another highly-regulated industry. Aviation is far ahead of health care as far as reporting and documenting problems as well as communicating and requiring changes and solutions.
Airplane (and rail and truck and automobile and ship) accidents make headlines and government agencies respond quickly and publicly. Medical accidents? The old saw about doctors burying their mistakes applies to government agencies as well.
Garrett
Jun 10 2022 at 8:58am
My wife (early 30s) caught covid a few weeks ago. She noticed a scratchy throat on a Sunday night after we’d been out for dinner Friday night, and by that Tuesday she was bedridden with a fever nearing 103. For the next two days she couldn’t work or anything. I’d read about how paxlovid is a wonder-drug so I read up on the prescribing guidelines and saw that one of the risk factors is asthma.
She scheduled a telehealth visit and spoke with a provider that Thursday afternoon via videocall. The doctor basically told her that paxlovid is for people over 65 and she didn’t need it because she’d get over it in the next couple days, but that if she’s worried about her asthma she’d prescribe her a different inhaler. My wife was too exhausted to stand up for herself so I had to step in and insist for it.
I had the prescribing guidelines up on my phone but the doctor wouldn’t budge. I eventually said this is ridiculous, there’s no shortage of paxlovid, and sentencing my wife to another week of sickness was malpractice. My wife kicked me out of the room for that lol, so I walked the dog to cool off.
When I came back though my wife said she got the prescription. After I left the room the doctor said “I don’t think you need it but if your husband insists I’ll prescribe it.” She took the pills a few hours later and just like Scott she immediately felt better!
bb
Jun 10 2022 at 10:38am
It’s exhausting. Glad it worked out.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jun 10 2022 at 10:09am
Where is the reporting on this issue?
And not just the MSM. Seems like it would even make good fodder for a Faux News campaign against “experts”
Thomas Strenge
Jun 10 2022 at 3:49pm
Good thing I’m not a cynic. A cynic might believe that the federal government would want to kill off old people to make entitlements more sustainable.
Jose Pablo
Jun 10 2022 at 6:45pm
They are not that smart (and definitely they don’t have the right incentives for designing such a plan).
But even if they would have come up with the plan the implementation would, very likely, have led to an increase in the live expectancy of the elderly.
They consisstently get precisely the opposite of what they intend. See Putin invasion of Ukraine or check out the effects of other entitlement programs.
https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29269
Thomas Strenge
Jun 11 2022 at 12:01pm
Excellent point that government usually achieves the opposite of what it intends!
Walter Boggs
Jun 11 2022 at 3:18pm
Entitlements are sustainable. We send the bills to generations yet unborn.
Andrew M
Jun 10 2022 at 8:48pm
I noticed over the past couple of months in the NYT’s graphs that reductions in hospitalizations and, especially, ICU hospitalizations (forget cases, which are underreported) were not matched by corresponding reductions in deaths.
My guess is that this has to do with reporting at the level of individual states. Some time ago I read that the “of”/”with” distinction wasn’t marked in some states’ statistics.
Scott Sumner
Jun 11 2022 at 2:38pm
In some areas Covid deaths are listed as due to other causes, so the overall death rate from Covid is likely higher than the official figures show.
Greg Jaxon
Jun 11 2022 at 4:02pm
Let us all know if the Covid rebounds over the next 2-3 weeks. That’s been one of the bigger criticisms that has been limiting its use.
Also, I wonder whether your doctor suggests things you could do to reverse your immune system weakness. After catching both of the Q1 2020 plagues (flu & presumed Covid), we got serious about immune robustness and (despite–or maybe because of–being unvaxxed) we have been healthier and more resilient these last two years than ever before.
Todd Kreider
Jun 11 2022 at 8:44pm
Scott: “In the US, about 350 people die of Covid-19 each day.”
Worldometers shows 244 deaths the past 7 days and 211 the 7 days before that for 225 Covid related deaths per day so the lowest number of deaths since the pandemic started.
Scott Sumner
Jun 13 2022 at 12:28am
Some states report deaths with a long lag, so Worldmeter has recently lagged behind on actual Covid death tolls.
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