Controlled Response

[davidgillon]

My sister's summary of her Covid infection this afternoon was basically, "I feel awful, but not as bad as I expected".

She was somewhat narked when she rang me. She poked her GP this morning as nothing seemed to be happening WRT the various semi-experimental treatments she'd been told she might be eligible for in the event she caught Covid (the letter did say to contact your GP if you hadn't heard in 48 hours from a positive PCR). He referred her to the regional hospital handling Covid stuff and they rang her back: of the four possible treatments (three antivirals and one antibody), she's not actually eligible for the antivirals as they're restricting those to cancer patients and the immuno-suppressed, but they did give her the contact details for the antibody study. Who got back to her later and told her she's been randomly assigned to the control group, so no drugs, but would she mind filling out a 28 day Covid diary?

So she wasn't best pleased with batting nought for four, but she rang the hospital back and the nurse she spoke to said "You need to go back to your GP for steroids and antibiotics, I can hear you need them just listening to you). She didn't actually sound that bad to me, which is possibly a measure of how 'normal' her chest infections have become.

So that's in progress. She'd already picked up a pulse-oximeter as a result of this morning's call and that says her oxidation stats are fine, OTOH it couldn't get a reading off her husband at all!.

Comments

[rmc28]

"husband is secretly a vampire and only gets outed by a plague" is a great plot hook

[davidgillon]

It is, isn't it! Though in this case it's just 'husband has abnormally thick fingernails'.

[lilysea]

I think putting immunocompromised people in a control study instead of giving them actual antibodies that could help prevent hospitalisation/long COVID/death is really fucking unethical :(

[davidgillon]

I'm not sure what the arrangement is on the anti-virals programmes, the only one I'm definitely sure has a control group is the antibody one.

I read through the warnings for the antivirals before we found out my sister wasn't eligible, and while they were structured like normal drug warnings they were definitely "We know a lot less than normal about side effects cos we haven't given this to many people yet". The warnings for Xevudy (one of the antivirals) were about the scariest I've seen, they normally start with mild and lead up to serious, but that one led straight in with an unquantified chance of full-on anaphylactic shock - though at least that's one of the two that have to be given as a drip in hospital, so they'd have everything needed to hand. The only other reaction listed was a 1 in 10 chance of less serious allergic reaction.


There's an ethical logic to using control groups with largely untried medicines, especially when you know these kinds of reactions are out there. It's how we had the data to say the side-effects from the vaccines are not as dangerous as Covid. But there's also an ethical logic to abandoning them if the evidence definitely trends one way early enough.

[green_knight]

I'm wishing her all the best. (Have just signed up for the Imperial College/NHS Covid study, which includes a long-term study. Must live another thirty years FOR SCIENCE!

[davidgillon]

Thanks. I had a letter from the ONS the other day saying "We know when we signed you up we said we'd only keep your data for a year, but this has gone on a lot longer than we anticipated, so we'd like to keep it for another five years from now, and will assume you consent unless we hear otherwise". Works for me.

And planning on living another 30 years FOR SCIENCE!!! sounds pretty good to me. (Even if 50 would be better)

[hilarita]

Hope the antibiotics and steroids do the trick!

[davidgillon]

Yes, this!

Her being CEV means we do already know she reacts well to steroids. I presume the antibiotics are to stop anything else setting up home in the Covid gunk.