COVID-19 and fluA are both going up pretty sharply. Vaccines At least four friends of mine who are not elderly got a flu vaccine and/or a COVID-19 vaccine this week. They all said that they went through the province’s Get Vaccinated web site, so I guess they aren’t making younger people wait for the older… Continue reading 2026-10-16 BC
2026-10-16 General
COVID-19 COVID-Related Excess Death and Sickness 😬🧠This paper from Taiwan (2026-09-14) reports that among people with type 2 diabetes, people who had a documented COVID-19 case had a way higher risk of dementia: Long COVID 😢💉 One of the theories for why people with Long COVID don’t recover is that SARS-CoV-2 virus persists in… Continue reading 2026-10-16 General
2026-10-09 BC
If you didn’t read last week or the week before, let me warn you that flu season is TWO MONTHS early this year. The Oct 3 levels of flu were similar to what we usually see in late November/early December. COVID-19 is definitely going up. I was hoping that this season would be mild, since… Continue reading 2026-10-09 BC
2026-10-09 General
Multiple Pathogens Pathology 🎉🎉🎉 This article (2026-10-01) about this paper (2026-08-22) reports that scientists have discovered a relationship between PTSD, Long COVID, ME/CFS, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis! They found changes in gene expressions which looked unrelated in the linear readout of the DNA, but whose three-dimensional structures all connected to related points of the… Continue reading 2026-10-09 General
2026-10-02 BC
Flu A and COVID-19 levels are both definitely going up. COVID levels have accelerated quite a bit. I guess COVID-19 is not going to peak in early October like it did for the past few years. Pity. Vaccines The province’s fall vaccination campaign has started — sort of? I heard on Oct 1 that they… Continue reading 2026-10-02 BC
2026-10-02 General
COVID-19 COVID-Related Excess Death and Sickness 🧠This preprint from Israel (2026-09-23) reports that COVID-19 infections increase your risk of a stroke in the next two years: NB: It wasn’t clear if the lower risk of stroke among people vaccinated four times was because the vaccine made people more resistant to stroke, or just because… Continue reading 2026-10-02 General
2026-09-26 BC
🎉 The province has switched to their fall/winter reporting schedule, which means that they are reporting data every week now. This means I will be publishing a BC post every week. Flu season has definitely started, much earlier than it has in previous years. I suspect it’s because the southern hemisphere is having a very… Continue reading 2026-09-26 BC
2026-09-26 General
COVID-19 Long COVID This paper from USA (2026-09-21) looked at health care workers and Long COVID. They found that 11.3% of the healthcare personnel reported persistent Long COVID symptoms. Different groups had different risks: I found the clinical/non-clinical split surprising. In the discussion, the authors theorize that the clinical people probably had better masks/better fit… Continue reading 2026-09-26 General
2026-09-19 General
Multiple Pathogens Recommended Reading This post by Biobot (2026-09-01) discusses exactly how they normalize their wastewater readings to account for variations in the wastewater stream. TL;DR: they use a combination of the pepper mild mottle virus concentration (which changes over time, as apparently peppers have outbreaks too) and the quantity of water in a week… Continue reading 2026-09-19 General
2026-09-12 General
I don’t have much news for you this week. COVID-19 levels seem to be increasing around us. COVID-19 COVID-Related Excess Death and Sickness This report from Canada (2026-09-10) reports that people who self-reported having had a COVID-19 infection had a much higher risk of developing a new medical condition compared to people who said they’d… Continue reading 2026-09-12 General