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
Category: Vaccines
2022-01-07 General
Vaccines This preprint from the UK found that boosters help against symptomatic infection, but also wane: dose1&2 dose3 VE at 2-4 weeks VE at 5-9 weeks VE at >10 weeks AZ+AZ Pfizer 62-65% 48% 32% AZ+AZ Moderna 62-65% 56% N/A Pfizer+Pfizer Pfizer 65% 49% 31% Pfizer+Pfizer Moderna 70% 57% N/A However, protection against severe disease… Continue reading 2022-01-07 General
2022-01-06 General
Variants This preprint looks at the effectiveness of a COVID-19 infection (as opposed to a vaccination) against future COVID unpleasantness: Variant against infection against hospitalization or death Alpha 90.2% 69.4% Beta 84.8% 88.0% Delta 92.0% 100% Omicron 56.0% 87.8% This preprint says that most people have a quite good T-cell response to Omicron after a… Continue reading 2022-01-06 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
2022-01-01/02/03/04 General
Happy New Year! Measures In the USA, the US CDC decided that five days was enough time to isolate. Per this tweet, five days later, the number of COVID-19 transmissions in hospitals went up: In BC, we just dropped to five-day isolation (as long as you have no symptoms). It would be interesting to see… Continue reading 2022-01-01/02/03/04 General
2021-12-25/26/27/28 General
Variants There has been difficulty figuring out how badly Omicron is going to hit the hospital system first because it is a lagging indicator, second because Omicron affects vaccinated and unvaccinated people so differently, and third because of poor-quality data around the holidays. Still, there are hints that, as this tweet from New York says,… Continue reading 2021-12-25/26/27/28 General
2021-12-21 General
Variants More qualified good news: this preprint out of South Africa says that Omicron is only 70% as likely to send someone to the hospital as Delta. All the same caveats I’ve made previously apply, though. This Twitter thread does an estimate of the Case Hospitalization Rate (CHR) in New South Wales, Australia. This is… Continue reading 2021-12-21 General
2021-12-18 General
I knew this was coming. I knew this was coming. I knew this would be bad. I predicted that the health care system might collapse in multiple jurisdictions in the West. I’m still somewhat shocked at the ferocity and this wave. There are lots of people saying that Omicron is milder than previous variants (see… Continue reading 2021-12-18 General
2021-12-17 General
I remember thinking it was really strange that more people died in the second year of the Spanish Flu pandemic than the first. I’m not surprised any more. Vaccines Someone asked me today, “would Omicron still have arisen if we’d had equitable and effective vaccine distribution globally? At first I hedged, and said we couldn’t… Continue reading 2021-12-17 General
2021-12-16 General
I’m tired and kind of depressed. I (and many other people) saw Omicron coming weeks ago, and now it’s here. It’s just as bad as I feared, and perhaps even worse. 🙁 Omicron is dominating the news, but … it’s not really news. There’s a lot of people saying “OH SHIT! WE ARE FUCKED!”, but… Continue reading 2021-12-16 General