“It’s the Pax.”

I don’t know if this is just Biden’s senility showing again, or if the administration really is planning something so stupid. Both?

Biden: It Will Be ‘Weeks to a Month’ Before Hospitals Get Pfizer COVID Pill
During an interview aired on Wednesday’s edition of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” President Joe Biden stated that it will take “weeks to a month” to get the Pfizer coronavirus pill to hospitals, but “it won’t be enough to get to all the hospitals.”

He’s talking about Pfizer’s Paxlovid, the only pill authorized by the FDA for ChinCOVID. But why in hell would they send the pills to hospitals? Per the FDA:

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir tablets and ritonavir tablets, co-packaged for oral use) for the treatment of mild-to-moderate coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in adults and pediatric patients (12 years of age and older weighing at least 40 kilograms or about 88 pounds) with positive results of direct SARS-CoV-2 testing, and who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death. Paxlovid is available by prescription only and should be initiated as soon as possible after diagnosis of COVID-19 and within five days of symptom onset.

Paxlovid is intended for those who do not need to go to the hospital. It’s meant to prevent the need to be hospitalized.

If this stuff is really any good, send it to pharmacies, so at-risk people who test positive can immediately get a prescription from their doctor (over the phone, maybe?) and then pick it up. That’s what pharmacies are for. Using hospitals as the distribution points will only increase the workload at those hospitals; you know, the one’s the media keeps telling us are already overloaded and understaffed.

On another note, am I the only person who finds the drug name “Paxlovid” a little unfortunate? Fans of Firefly and the theatric Serenity may recall the fictional Pax. It’s the drug administered to the inhabitants of the world Miranda. It killed 99.9% of them, and turned the rest into hyper-violent, zombie-like Reavers.

Maybe I’m just too much of an SF geek, but that strikes me as a marketing blunder.