[energy123]

This appears to be a hasty conclusion. Older people with paxlovid did equally well as younger people without paxlovid. That indicates that paxlovid actually works, given that older age leads to covid mortality! The author's only refutation of this is that the same pattern was observed before Paxlovid was around. But that pattern itself is an aberration that is not true of the general population, it's only true in that one geographical area due to, I would assume, a statistical anomaly.

[BugsJustFindMe]

> That indicates that paxlovid actually works

It had no measurable effect in the measured group. You can't say that it works based on that. If it had a measurable effect in that group, you would expect to see improvement in the treatment group between the two scenarios.

If (65-69 no treatment) == (70-74 no treatment) and also (65-69 no treatment) == (70-74 treatment), then (70-74 treatment) == (70-74 no treatment) by the transitive property of equality.

Now the reason for (65-69 no treatment) == (70-74 no treatment) may be its own mystery, but we expect to see at least _something_ happen anyway between (70-74 no treatment) and (70-74 treatment) if the treatment had some benefit for that group, and apparently they didn't see that.

[directevolve]

They were comparing two time points as well as two age groups: before vs after Paxlovid became available, and late 60s (disallowed Paxlovid) vs early 70s (allowed Paxlovid).

There was no significant different before or after Paxlovid became available to the early 70s patients. This updates us against Paxlovid being effective in this patient population, for the specific outcome metrics.