Reminder: the province has gone to once-per-month COVID reporting. Testing This paper examined multiple commercial RATs. For the ones available in BC (at least, which were available in BC), the Panbio (dark blue box, but NOT the Artron) was not very sensitive; BTNX Cassette was one of the best but BTNX was one of the… Continue reading 2024-05-10 BC
2024-05-10 General
COVID-19 Long COVID This press release from USA (2024-05-08) says that they are starting two programs with two trials each: Me, I would like to see more drug trials and fewer physio&hope trials. >:-( This paper from UK (2024-04-30) found that the percentage of kids who got Long COVID went up after Omicron. Pre-Omicron, 12%-16%… Continue reading 2024-05-10 General
2024-05-04 BC
Reminder: the province is dropping to monthly reports, so I won’t do a weekly BC report unless there’s some major BC-specific news in either COVID-19 or H5N1. Maybe wastewater is going up, or maybe that’s just noise. Hospitalizations continue to go down, dropping below 100 for the first time since last summer but not as… Continue reading 2024-05-04 BC
2024-05-04 General
I’m going to split blog postings into COVID-19 sections and H5N1 sections for now. I might someday split them into separate postings. Psychology Many years ago, I heard this George Carlin joke: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” It… Continue reading 2024-05-04 General
2024-04-26 BC
The good news: there were only 105 people in hospital on 13 April, which isn’t as low as the summer 2023 low or the low between Alpha and Delta, but it is lower that the low point between Delta and Omicron. Other indicators look flat or down slightly. The bad news: this article reports that… Continue reading 2024-04-26 BC
2024-04-26 General
This article reports that BC’s Ministry of Health will switch to monthly COVID reports after the May 2 update. I will obviously cut back on BC posts in the summer; I haven’t decided how much I will cut back on the General posts. H5N1 H5N1 is starting to hit the news, and I will post… Continue reading 2024-04-26 General
2024-04-19 BC
Levels are falling down pretty quickly! Yay for weather nice enough to open windows! Vaccines I have a friend who lives in BC but outside the core metro areas — not rural, but not The Big City. Because of some unusual medical conditions, Friend has really bad reactions to the mRNA vaccines. Friend thus tried… Continue reading 2024-04-19 BC
2024-04-19 General
Pathology Why do kids and old people have such different reactions to COVID-19? This paper from UK (2024-04-15) says that kid and adult epithelial cells (which line mucous membranes) are different. In particular, cells in elderly people had more of the receptors which SARS-CoV-2 uses to get into the cells, and kids’ cells generated more… Continue reading 2024-04-19 General
2024-04-12 BC
Well, after some nice drops in COVID-19 levels recently, it looks like we’ve gone back up — which is probably noise. But it looks stagnant at best. 🙁 Mitigation Measures This BC Ministry of Health press release says that masks are no longer required in health care settings. A lot of places weren’t masking or… Continue reading 2024-04-12 BC
2024-04-12 General
Long COVID This paper from USA (2024-04-06) found that Glutamate and N-acetyl-aspartate levels were significantly higher in people with Long COVID and ME/CFS than in controls. They found no significant differences between people with Long COVID and people with ME/CFS in any of the neurochemicals they looked at. They also found correlations between the amount… Continue reading 2024-04-12 General