Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA
Unimpressed. Look at the data from the US participants. Nearly null findings. It would serve as an excellent control group relative to a useful intervention. In real-world practice, I believe it will have negative effectiveness. Someone gets a script, doesn't get the pharmacodynamic benefit, avoids any isolation protocols and gets sick; they thought they were more protected than they were in reality, hence negative effectiveness. Where it could provide a benefit is if it's used in combination with escalating other precautions and does provide the pharmacodynamic benefit for the particular individual, but even there, I think the incremental benefit will be marginal to null. Things that would be more useful would be free N95s and air purifiers, or airbnb credits. Better yet, actually manage the pandemic, low hanging fruit being reducing hurdles to boosters and promoting them twice annually. Could be wrong. Not something I personally would pursue given the existing data. You will hear a lot of positive anecdotes though. People forget that even taking no action whatsoever, transmission in the home (while common) does not always happen. It was actually relatively low in the control groups in the trial.