THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR

SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that have won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.

THERE has, rightfully, been huge recognition for the vaccines and the lives they have saved. Successful anti-viral pills could be just as significant.

For example, only 0.8 per cent of patients given Pfizer’s latest drug within three days of developing symptoms were hospitalised with no deaths, compared with an admission rate of seven per cent for placebo patients, with sadly seven deaths in that group. A stark difference.

Like the vaccines, they are not 100 per cent effective but they can clearly reduce the viral load and, therefore, the level of illness.

They work by mimicking building blocks of the virus and confusing the structure, resulting in a high mutation level so disrupting its ability to reproduce. Remarkable.

These drugs are not cheap. For a country like ours, that’s not a problem, but for developing countries where these treatments are desperately needed, it’s more of an issue.

“Big Pharma” is making an awful lot of money out of this pandemic for sure, but if it prevents countless deaths and keeps us out of lockdowns and other restrictions, that is a price we will have to pay.

What’s so useful about these drugs is that they can be taken at home after symptoms develop and should in theory keep a sizeable proportion out of hospital. That saves time, money and lives. It also frees up hospital capacity to deal with non-Covid issues, which is desperately needed.

All in all, it’s great news. Anything that keeps us out of lockdown this winter should be celebrated. It will help us move away from the pandemic emergency and into an endemic phase. This is “learning to live with the virus”.