Treatment
Fantastic news! Pfizer has a pill which, if you take it in the first three days after symptoms appear, cuts hospitalization by NINETY F PERCENT!!! If taken within the first five days, it’s ~85% effective.
The pill, called Paxlovid, is a protease inhibitor, which ought to be easy to make and have low side effects. It is so F effective that they stopped the trial early.
(Merck’s drug, molnupiravir, works by mutating the hell out of the virus’s genome which is okay only as long as there are SO MANY mutations that the SARS-CoV-2 virus just can’t cope. I worry that it could give rise to a hardier strain of SARS-CoV-2. Molnupiravir is also only 50% effective.)
I gotta say, Pfizer is TOTALLY WINNING at this pandemic: first a vaccine with 90% efficacy, then a pill with 90% efficacy. WINNING.
Transmission
This article reports that pets got sick with COVID-19 in the UK.
Recommended Reading
This article talks about the trade-offs in vaccinating kids. Spoiler: do it.