As I mentioned before, “everybody” seems to be acting like the pandemic is over. It’s not. Really it is not. I suspect people hear numbers like “60 per day in Canada” and think, “oh, well, 60 isn’t many people in a population of 39M”, but I think people just don’t understand just how rare death… Continue reading 2022-02-23 General
Category: Treatments
2022-02-12/13/14 General
Vaccines This preprint says that if you are unvaccinated and get Omicron, that protects you against Omicron, but your protection against anything else is pretty crappy. If you get Omicron after getting vaccinated, you get really really good protection against all known variants. Treatments Two articles have come out in the past week which say… Continue reading 2022-02-12/13/14 General
2022-02-11 General
Transmission Buried in this blog post was something I hadn’t ever known: the volume of air a person inhales/exhales per minute is around ten times larger during exercise than at rest. No wonder DrH closed the gyms. Treatments This article reports that the US FDA has approved a new monoclonal antibody — bebtelovimab — for… Continue reading 2022-02-11 General
2022-02-03 General
Variants This is really strange. This article says that in New York City and also in some places in California, they have been seeing strange variants in their wastewater surveillance for the past year — variants they haven’t seen in any people. It wasn’t clear, but I think there are three main lineages (classed as… Continue reading 2022-02-03 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
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
2022-01-15/16/17 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
2022-01-12 General
Transmission Yesterday in the BC blog post, I gave a bunch of evidence for Omicron being a very “pointy” wave, fast up and fast down. Wastewater evidence from the eastern USA is also pointing to fast-up/fast-down. From this tweet, the wastewater SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in Boston: And from this tweet, the surveillance in New Haven, CT:… Continue reading 2022-01-12 General
2022-01-05 General
Vaccines Studies of the effectiveness of boosters against Omicron in humans (as opposed to test tubes) are starting to come out, and they are not as encouraging as one would like. This preprint from the UK says in people who got AZ, a Pfizer booster is 89.1% effective against symptomatic infection and for those who… Continue reading 2022-01-05 General
2021-12-30 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that people can now apply for the federal Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit of up to $300/week, retroactive to 19 Dec. Variants This report from Ontario Public Health says that, after adjusting for vaccination status, the risk of severe illness from Omicron is 54% that from Delta. This preprint (from August)… Continue reading 2021-12-30 General