Thread by @SGriffin_Lab

Well, bang goes another...but, at least vulnerable people in the US and other countries benefitted from months of protection, approaching normality...the UK was still trying to find its conviction...cilgivimab worked vs BA.5.
The good news is that FDA are demanding stockpiles

https://twitter.com/FDA_Drug_Info/status/1618690516199280641

are retained to counter further evolution, wise move.
I've obv not seen the data, but I'm assured by a trusted source that current variants really do escape this...other long-lasting m'abs exist tho...just saying!
AZ has another Evusheld like med in the pipeline, and I hope there

are others being developed. Prevention is ALWAYS better than cure. Small molecule drugs require rapid intense therapy to clear virus. You could argue that folks with Evusheld have a similar scenario to most of the population, loads of Abs, never enough n'abs...😔...abs don't

just neutralise virus, of course...isn't that right @StantonRich ?
What I don't understand is why the pipeline for m'abs and small molecules is running so dry. Oral remdesivir seems a sole beacon in the dark, especially as NICE are recommending to ditch the IV form...🤦‍♂️
The short

lifespan for spike (S1) targeted m'abs at the moment clearly isn't going to be helped by Governments taking steps to limit diversity 🙄, so we either need to persuade pharma to go after other targets, get more creative vs S1, or fund our own projects...
We simply cannot stop and

rely upon paxlovid to prevent severe disease (note, severe is a subjective term! #LongCovid) in vulnerable people, esp those with immunodeficiency, good a drug as it is. Treatment desperately needs combination therapy to ensure it's future proof,orally available, ideally. Someone

needs to persuade Pfizer and Gilead to get their act together and generate a decent combo. I'd even consider adding molnupiravir as a ribavirin-like enhancer, but NOT without other drugs that hit replication fast. Favipiravir feels like a worse version of molnupiravir to me...BUT

therapeutics are great, and obviously more will be needed in the longer term as we rely on a vaccine programme that's simultaneously being crowbarred into a seasonal flu shaped hole and withdrawn from kids at the same time...🧐

However, ask any of the #forgotten500k what they need to get their lives back, and it's prophylaxis. Why else did they clamour for Evusheld? Why were they up in arms when @SteveBarclay refused to fund it last spring, and when the review was kicked down the road until THIS spring?

Simply put, because they neither wanted, nor should be expected to risk infection during every day life just because the Government have successfully managed to cramm the pandemic into the understairs cupboard and muffle the noise it's making #ONS ...
All they wanted was parity,

NOT charity.
Yes, the IFR has come down and "most people" don't now succumb to severe disease...but something is causing hundreds of death certificates with certain codes every week during multiple waves, and excess deaths are not all down to nutcase conspiracies from folks that

enjoy peer reviewing their own research🤪
They're also not all #CEV by any means. However, the quality of life afforded to the vulnerable by "most" people amounts nowadays to put up, or shut up. This isn't intentional from most, the Government lead this narrative and then expect

booster campaigns to have good responses when they panic and introduce one...@GeorgeMonbiot has an article in @guardian today...well worth reading.
How can we reconcile "living with COVID" when so many simply can't, and the platitudes and assurances are continually dropping like

flies? Where is the future proofing? Where is the investment in therapeutics to match vaccines? Are we really going to pretend that another pandemic is a century away? Well, despite some voices saying not, we still have one to deal with currently. We have the technical know-how

for clean air and other NPIs, but if governments continue to rely on market led priorities for therapeutics then the next pandemic will have the same dreadful start as this one, the shelves bare again...look at what CAN be done, and let's do more to prevent #CEV being badly done

by, let's reduce and prevent #LongCovid rather than protracted rehab, and let's generate new medicines and approaches that deal with SARS2, 3, and 4...
@drlennardlee @AlexRichter3 @IndependentSage @cv_cev @LongCovidKids @LongCovidSOS @long_covid