Vaccines
This preprint from Israel says that the vaccine effectiveness of a third dose of Pfizer vs. two doses of Pfizer at least five months ago was:
- 93% against hospitalization,
- 92% against severe disease (which I think is equivalent to “ICU” here),
- 81% against death.
This article says that Novavax has finished its rolling review submission to Health Canada. Now, I think that a rolling review just keeps taking data as long as it comes in, and Health Canada approves or not when they think they have seen enough. So “we’ve finished our submission” might be a code for “f it, we don’t have more data to give to Health Canada, we give up”.
It’s not really news that rich countries have had more vaccine than poor countries, but these graphs from this article show how stark it is:
This article describes the case of a woman who had COVID-19 for a YEAR! She was immunocompromised due to cancer, and had a low-to mid-grae COVID-19 infection for a long time before it cleared.
Today there was also a preprint of a man with a genetic primary immunodeficiency who had COVID-19 for 218 days without getting better. Eventually, they tried vaxxing him. His viral loads started going down two weeks after his first dose, and he finally cleared about 40 days after his second dose.
Long COVID
This study used advanced MRI techniques to look at the brain metabolism of Long COVID patients who self-reported neurological issues vs. controls, and found that the Long COVID patients’ scans looked just like the controls’ scans. That suggests that the Long COVID neurological issues are not permanent and probably from fatigue.
Note that I have seen studies of autopsies which have seen brain damage — e.g. oxygen starvation. However, sort of by definition, the brains which got autopsied would have had more severe disease than the people in the studies.
Transmission
Something which has really frustrated me is that, despite having world-class vaccination rates, we are having quite a high deaths-per-capita rate. Something this article mentions almost in passing is that the province didn’t make sure that new residents were fully vaccinated. That seems like an oversight!
I realize that the resident might not want to be vaccinated, that’s their right, but then they should have to take a COVID-19 test and/or be isolated away from other residents.
Recommended Reading
This article is about the development of a pan-bat-coronavirus vaccine.