Sacks @ 00:37:34Wrong
health
Widespread availability and use of the new oral protease-inhibitor antiviral pills for COVID-19 (from Pfizer and Merck) will effectively end the COVID-19 pandemic during 2022 (e.g., by preventing large future waves of severe disease).
These new pills have, I think, a very good shot of doing it next year because they're protease inhibitors... I am hopeful that this will be the thing hopefully that ends the pandemic next year. Are these new antiviral pills?View on YouTube
Explanation
The prediction was that widespread availability and use of the new oral protease-inhibitor antivirals for COVID-19 (Pfizer’s and Merck’s pills) would effectively end the COVID-19 pandemic during 2022 by preventing large future waves of severe disease.
Key facts:
- Pfizer’s nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (Paxlovid) received U.S. FDA Emergency Use Authorization on December 22, 2021, and Merck’s molnupiravir on December 23, 2021. Both began wider rollout in 2022, with Paxlovid becoming the dominant oral treatment.
- Despite availability of these antivirals, large waves of infection and substantial severe disease continued after 2022, driven by Omicron subvariants and later variants:
- Major Omicron waves occurred in late 2021–2022, followed by additional waves through 2023, with significant hospitalizations and deaths globally and in the U.S., even after Paxlovid was widely used.
- COVID-19 remained a leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2022 and stayed a significant cause of mortality in 2023, indicating that severe disease was reduced but not prevented to the point of “ending” the pandemic.
- No major public-health body (WHO, U.S. CDC) declared the pandemic effectively ended in 2022 due to the pills. Instead:
- The WHO declared in May 2023 that COVID-19 was no longer a Public Health Emergency of International Concern—but emphasized that it remained an ongoing global health issue, not that it had been “ended” by antivirals.
- The evolving situation has been attributed to a combination of vaccination, prior infections, changing variants, and some use of antivirals—not to pills alone, and certainly not in a way that prevented large subsequent waves.
- In practice, oral antivirals have been underused relative to their potential (prescribing and access issues, timing of treatment, awareness), limiting their population-level impact. Large waves of infection and notable hospitalization surges have still occurred well after 2022.
Given that:
- 2022 did not see the effective end of the pandemic.
- Large waves and substantial severe disease continued after 2022.
- The oral antivirals helped but did not prevent those waves nor singularly end the pandemic.
The prediction that these pills would effectively end the COVID-19 pandemic during 2022 by preventing large future waves of severe disease is wrong.