Transparency This article says that a news organization has been trying to get information about hospital outbreaks, but has been stonewalled in various ways. Mitigation Measures This article says that there is a new Order telling health care providers in private practice, but it doesn’t give a due date. Statistics +667 cases, +13 deaths, +10,042… Continue reading 2021-10-15 BC
Author: Ducky
2021-10-15 General
A friend kept ragging on me about using the trade names for various vaccines. I held firm because it was more correct and accurate. He complained that nobody knew the names, but I pointed out that people got used to Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. I now give up. Nobody and I mean nobody but… Continue reading 2021-10-15 General
2021-10-14 General
Vaccines Someone is live-tweeting the La Jolla Immunology Conference, and during a panel about an important paper from May that I’ve already talked about, they said something which I missed: that inter-individual variations in antibody responses are larger than the variations between responses to different variants. I’ve talked about the two-proline (2P) and six-proline (6P)… Continue reading 2021-10-14 General
2021-10-14 BC
Mitigation Measures Dr. H announced new restrictions for Northern Health, which is kind of in the shitter: Indoor personal gatherings are limited to your household plus 5 visitors or one other household, and all must be fully vaxxed. Outdoor personal gatherings are limited to 50 fully vaxxed people. A COVID-19 safety plan is required for:… Continue reading 2021-10-14 BC
2021-10-13 General
Diagnosis / Equity This Twitter thread suggests that the reason darker-skinned people have higher fatality rates from COVID-19 is because, well, they have darker skin: pulse oximeters, which are used to judge how serious a case is, don’t work on dark-skinned people. Economic effects This video from January 2021 makes the economic case — not… Continue reading 2021-10-13 General
2021-10-13 BC
Transmission This article says that 92 people were infected in a Site C outbreak. Assholes This article says that a guy glued a door shut at a vaccine clinic on Vancouver Island. Statistics +605 cases, +4 deaths, +8,474 first doses, +5,443 second doses. Currently 374 in hospital / 153 in ICU, 5,172 active cases, 187,564… Continue reading 2021-10-13 BC
2021-10-12 BC
Conflict This article says that the guy who ran the SARS inquiry says we should have an inquiry to how well BC has handled COVID-19. Press Briefing I only caught a part of the press briefing; this article has a nice summary. Things are bad in Northern Health. They’ve now airlifted 55 people out of… Continue reading 2021-10-12 BC
2010-10-09/10/11/12 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that the US will allow fully-vaccinated Canadians to enter, starting sometime in November. “Fully-vaccinated” has not been clearly defined yet. Vaccines Novavax has published data from their Phase 3 trials in the USA and Mexico in this preprint. I wanted to be snarky and say that maybe this means that… Continue reading 2010-10-09/10/11/12 General
2021-10-08 BC
Vaccines This press release says that TransLink is mandating vaccines for its employees. They have until 29 Nov to get vaxxed. Statistics Today: +743 cases, +5 deaths, +9,573 first doses, +6,571 second doses. Currently 360 in hospital / 137 in ICU, 5,969 active cases, 184,121 recovered. first doses second doses of adults 89.1% 83.0% of… Continue reading 2021-10-08 BC
2021-10-08 General
Risk Factors This preprint says that having a bad mutation on the (X-linked) TLR7 gene is very very bad for your COVID-19 prospects. The authors think this accounts for about 1.8% of severe COVID-19 in male patients under 60. But here’s some good news on genes: this preprint says that a change in one nucleotide… Continue reading 2021-10-08 General