Mitigation Measures This preprint looked at high-risk exposures and said that the risk of catching COVID-19 was: 3.02x higher if the infected person was part of your household (versus not), 2.1x higher if the transmission was indoors (versus outdoors), 2.15x higher if the interaction lasted 3 hrs or more (vs. shorter) among unvaccinated and partially-vaccinated… Continue reading 2022-01-26 General
Category: General
2022-01-25 General
Long COVID This preprint says that they found four predictors which are strongly correlated with Long COVID: type 2 diabetes, SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the blood, Epstein-Barr virus in the blood, and specific autoantibodies. (Here’s an article translating the subject into lay-speak. Paywalled, sorry.) This paper also found a Long COVID signature/diagnostic, this time in age,… Continue reading 2022-01-25 General
2022-01-22/23/24 General
Weather This article says that the amount of lightning decreased during the pandemic because of less fossil fuel burning and hence fewer aerosols. Vaccines This article says that in extremely rare circumstances, people report Long COVID symptoms after vaccination. Variants This preprint says that the risk of hospitalization from Omicron is 25% that of Delta,… Continue reading 2022-01-22/23/24 General
Only 17K deaths?
There is outrage going around. People feel like they’ve been lied to because there were “only 17K deaths due to only COVID-19” in England and Wales. Outrageous! This article has a slightly different explanation on the 17K deaths number, and they are more likely to be correct than me. Go read that article and ignore… Continue reading Only 17K deaths?
2022-01-21 General
Vaccines Pfizer had disappointing results with its first trial of COVID-19 vax for the under-5 year-olds. The youngest kids mounted an adequate response, but not the older kids, which to me says that the dose was too low. This article speculates that Pfizer will add a third minidose (3 mg, compared to the 50mg it… Continue reading 2022-01-21 General
2022-01-20 General
Transmission I found this article interesting. They modelled two air flights and got pretty good agreement with reality. On the first flight, early enough in the pandemic that people weren’t wearing masks, one infected passenger on a 12-hour flight in business class got 12 people sick. On the second flight, four infected passengers on a… Continue reading 2022-01-20 General
2022-01-19 General
Vaccines This preprint says that there were zero children in France who had been fully vaccinated and went on to develop MIS-C. Pathology This preprint says that kids recover pretty well from MIS-C. This speculative preprint wonders if maybe the reason kids have milder symptoms and MIS-C after a delay is because their bodies make… Continue reading 2022-01-19 General
2022-01-18 General
Variants This preprint says that a Delta infection (by itself) does provide some protection against Omicron (in mice and test tubes), but an Omicron infection (by itself) does not provide good protection against Delta. However, if you have an Omicron or Delta infection plus a vaccine, then you get good protection against the other variant.… Continue reading 2022-01-18 General
2022-01-15/16/17 General
Treatments HOORAY!!! As this article reports, Health Canada approved Paxlovid (an oral treatment for COVID-19 which cuts hospitalizations by almost 90%) today! Not only that, there are already about 30K doses in-country! Supplies are going to be limited for a while. Until then, Health Canada recommends prioritizing severely immune-compromised patients, people over 80 who don’t… Continue reading 2022-01-15/16/17 General
2022-01-14 General
Variants This report says that Omicron is much much more likely than Delta to cause a sore throat, but much much less likely to cause loss of smell. Transmission This article reports on a study which says that 10% of people are still infectious for at least ten days. Genetics This article reports that scientists… Continue reading 2022-01-14 General