2022-04-05/06 General

Vaccines

Still don’t think you need a booster? Check out this graph from this awesome slide deck (referencing this paper) for people vaxxed with Pfizer:

(I really doubt that it actually goes negative. I bet what that really shows is that the control group has some protection via infections, potentially recent infections.)

Don’t get the idea that oh, vaccines are worthless — they still do a reasonable job against severe disease. The idea you should get take away is that you should get a third dose, as this table (from the same slide deck) shows:

With three doses, even immunocompromised people are protected (again, same slide deck, referencing this report):

The same slide deck, referencing this report, also has information on vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization for infants depending on when Mom was vaccinated:

  • first 20 weeks of pregnancy: 32%
  • between 21 weeks and 14 days before delivery: 80%

This gives a bit of a quandary: COVID-19 is really dangerous for pregnant woman, and I don’t think it matters where in the pregnancy Mom is. But it’s better for the baby to wait until 20 weeks. Does that mean pregnant people should hide for 20 weeks and then get a shot?

Pathology

This paper from Sweden says that the risk of various cardiovascular ailments is higher after COVID-19, for a long time:

  • deep vein thrombosis: 70 days
  • pulmonary embolism: 110 days
  • bleeding: 60 days

Note that the absolute incidence of those was low, but the relative incidence was very high.

Treatments

This paper from the US found that having a pulse oximeter at home made no difference at all in COVID-19 survival rates.

Recommended Reading

This article suggests that computer modelling can improve vaccine dosage design in the future.


This article talks about why it took the World Health Organization so long to admit that COVID-19 was transmitted via aerosols.


This article talks about the (surprisingly many!) mRNA vaccines that are under development around the world, with four Asian ones in Phase 3 trials.


This article examines the question: “Why aren’t BA.2 cases surging in the USA like they did in Europe?”