Vaccines
Canada is probably going to approve the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in the next few days. That will make four vaccines, five if you count the Serum Institute of India’s vaccine as different from AstraZeneca.
There is an article in the Economist which says that the differences in reported vaccine efficacy is really mostly a difference in the studies. If you look at what happens to a population, they look pretty much the same. Take any vaccine you’re offered, it’ll be good.
Here’s another study which says that while the mRNA vaccines are less effective against B.1.1.7, they are still effective enough.
Treatments
Some studies on Interleukin-6 blockage — with drugs named tocilizumab and sarilumab — came out today, and their results are… ambiguous. One can definitely say that they are not slam dunks. 🙁
VOCs
There is some evidence that kids are drivers of transmission for some variants. Uh-oh.
There’s yet another study saying that current vaccines (Moderna and Novavax, in this case) should work fine against B.1.1.7.
Susceptibility
A report finds that 88% of deaths were in countries where more than half of the population is classified as overweight. While other studies have shown that being overweight patients have worse COVID outcomes, correlation does not equal causality. It might be that wealthy countries are overweight ones, and wealthy countries have more hubris/optimism which makes them think it’s not such a big deal. (Note that Vietnam and many African countries seem to be doing better than the developed world.)