General 2025-03-21

COVID-19 Long COVID πŸͺ§ This article (2025-03-15) says that there was a Long COVID protest at the Vancouver Art Gallery on 15 March. I’m bummed that I didn’t know about it ahead of time. πŸ•β€πŸ¦ΊπŸ€§ This older paper (2025-06-15) reports that dogs could be trained to detect Long COVID with high accuracy! They could distinguish… Continue reading General 2025-03-21

2025-03-15 General

COVID-19 πŸ“† There have been a huge number of “it’s been five years since the start of the pandemic” articles. (For example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.) What have we learned? How… Continue reading 2025-03-15 General

2025-03-07 General

COVID-19 Long COVID πŸ™πŸ›Œ This preprint using data from USA and UK (2025-03-01) reports that people with hypermobility are at increased risk of Long COVID. People with generalized joint hypermobility have a 29% higher risk of Long COVID than controls; people with extreme hypermobility have a 112% higher risk than controls. This higher risk is… Continue reading 2025-03-07 General

2025-02-21 General

Vaccines You might have heard that the USA is having an egg shortage. You might know that 80% of flu vaccines are made with eggs. You might get concerned that egg-based vaccine production would be impacted. Fear not! This article (2025-02-19) reports that chickens who lay vaccine eggs are raised in a “controlled environment”, so… Continue reading 2025-02-21 General

2025-01-07 General

COVID-19 Long COVID AGAIN 😞 This article (2025-02-04) refers to this paper from the USA (paywalled, 2025-02-03), which reports that 1.4% of children surveyed had had Long COVID, and 0.4% currently have Long COVID. 80% of the kids with active Long COVID have an ability limitation that they didn’t have before catching COVID-19. They also… Continue reading 2025-01-07 General

2025-01-31 General

It is still a little harder finding good articles / papers than a few weeks ago. In addition to all the chaff from Trump in the health sites I monitor, there are now a ton of news articles saying, “Today is the five year anniversary of the first COVID case appearing in <jurisdiction>, what have… Continue reading 2025-01-31 General

2025-01-25 General

Health news was harder to find this week. A lot of my sources were overrun with articles about what trouble the new US president is fomenting, leaving little room for articles about COVID, mpox, or H5N1. ☹️ You might have noticed that I sometimes mark snippets with “AGAIN”. Why do I bother showing studies that… Continue reading 2025-01-25 General

2025-01-18 General

COVID-19 Long COVID πŸŽ‰ This paper from Hungary (2025-01-09) reports that people who got remdesivir while they were hospitalized with COVID-19 recovered from Long COVID symptoms faster than those who did not get remdesivir. πŸŽ‰πŸŽŠπŸ₯³ If you missed it last week, this paper reports that nasal chlorpheniramine (a first-generation H1 antagonist antihistamine) works really well… Continue reading 2025-01-18 General

2025-01-03 General

❗❗❗RECALL!!! There was a housecat in Oregon which died after eating Northwest Naturals Feline Turkey Recipe raw & frozen pet food which was infected with bird flu. THIS PET FOOD IS ALSO SOLD IN BRITISH COLUMBIA. DO NOT FEED YOUR CAT THIS FOOD. (Yes, there has been a recall.) COVID-19 This paper from Germany (2024-12-23)… Continue reading 2025-01-03 General

2024-12-27 General

NB: No BC post this week because the are not publishing new data until 3 Jan 2025. This post is kind of short because for some reason there has been less news the past few days. Happy Holidays! Recommended Reading This article from USA (2024-12-26) talks about three issues to watch in global health: H5N1,… Continue reading 2024-12-27 General