after returning from home, from travel. the fda authorized the use of the merck pill as a second at-home covid treatment. so that one reduced the risk of hospitalization and death in high-risk patients by 30%. right now, it is recommended for high-risk adults. do you see this as being a game-changer despite having a lower efficacy rate when compared to the pfizer pill? maybe merck get used as a booster? how do you see it? you know, first of all, i don t think any of us would say that we aren t happy that we have another option. remember the availability of these pills is going to be the biggest rate limiter in the next couple of months. and as i understand it, there s probably a larger quantity of the merck pill available. you know, it s a modest benefit, but if you are a high-risk individual and it lowers the risk of hospitalization and severe disease by 30%, you take it. we know now, of course, the monoclonal antibodies, two out of the three that we had
and therapeutics. it s like they don t want us to know. harris: that s such a great point. i m looking at reports now, governors asking this white house can you help us out with the monoclonal antibodies. why do you have to beg the white house to help people with something that we know needs to be in the bloodstream? pfizer, merck pill. every step of the way, it has felt like that as americans. let s see what they can do with leadership. i don t know. covid-19 cases spiking in major democrat-led cities like d.c., chicago, new york despite makes and vaccine mandates. there s question about that. pete, you mentioned something. it has not been made clear all along what type of masks you need. it s function over passion. or it s rules for some people and not for other people. there s the certain times covid doesn t affect you after 11:00 p.m. the rules and protocols haven t
has ordered 500 million test kits to give to any american who wants it, but those are not likely to be widely available until next month. anita? anita: charles, you re a brave to even attempt to pronounce the name of that merck pill. i commend you on that. [laughter] thank you for that great reporting. merry christmas. alicia? alicia: you read my mind, anita. let s bring in dr. janette nesheiwat, a fox news contributor. so good to see you. we all need a little advice right now. not sure exactly what to do with this new information. we have got quite a bit here, actually. but what would you say to folks out there who are hearing about these antiviral pills? how much comfort should they taken this right now? a lot of comfort, alicia. despite the number of cases we see surging throughout the nation, we are still in a better place than we were at the beginning of this pandemic because we are looking at a different way of treating covid. we now have two antiviral
than we are in terms of testing. regarding therapeutics, it is a big, big deal. one of the medicine that is used in the hospital, it s a medicine that works similarly to dexamethasone. it treats the hyperinflammatory reaction in severe sick covid-19 patients. there s been a national shortage of that for months. with regard to the new antivirus, we ll see a real bottleneck, especially for the pfizer one that is by far the superior one, more of the gangbuster, appears to probably have a better sort of big picture safety profile and certainly has dramatically improved or better efficacy than the merck pill. but it s really just that the demand is going to far exceed supply, at least for the foreseeable months. so nobody out there should be relying on that. if you get infected, especially if you haven t been vaccinated. get vaccinated and then get boosted when you can.
immunity is twice as of acts. they should call for reinstatement of all those people who were fired. paul: guess the vaccine mandate in my view, maybe agree with this, has been needlessly polarizing. it is not made that much difference in getting those reluctant people to get the vaccine. now the pre-court said it is illegal for the employer mandate. was that kind of a needless diversion in your view? it s really unfortunate. we are doing a good job convincing more and more americans to get vaccinated as physicians. when people saw heavy reach of public health they harden in their positions part of really been stagnant 83 86% vaccinated now for several weeks with little progress. paul: the therapy front, he mentioned the pfizer pill you got the merck pill, moving forward. it seems there s not been in operation at warp speed for those therapies because now