I went in for a quick blood draw for the clinical trial and found they switched things up. Before, the real drug was the new formulation of Evusheld, and the placebo was the old-school Evusheld (the one useless against omicron), so they could show the increase in effectiveness.
Evidently the government got involved and changed up the rules. It's now a cage match between the new drug and salt water, at least for me.
It doesn't matter anyway, because I know that just the act of taking even a placebo is beneficial, so just knowing you got salt water skews the results somewhat.
I suppose this is the change in pace you get when you are battling a mutating virus.
... that's wild. I guess salt water would give a clearer "are the side effects worth the positive effects?" picture to contrast against than something that has potential side effects but no expected efficacy? Or maybe they just didn't want to shoulder the cost of the original Evushield?
(an IV infusion of a liter of salt water per week is clinically effective in some number of POTS patients, incidentally, presumably due to hypovolemia)
Posted by: KC | September 24, 2023 at 10:31 AM
KC - there are an absurd number of variations on this trial in clincaltrials.gov.
Posted by: theQueen | September 25, 2023 at 02:03 PM
KC - Well, not absurd. All needed, I'm sure. It seems like every variation of placebo and control has a trial. Hope they go with the best one.
Posted by: theQueen | September 25, 2023 at 08:15 PM