Vaccines I’m hearing murmurings about “If I am vaccinated, why can’t I do [X]?!?!?!” Because vaccination is not perfect, and it’s not the most important thing, case counts per capita are. If the efficacy of one shot of a vaccine is 80%, it doesn’t mean that if you are exposed, you have an 80% chance… Continue reading 2021-04-22 General
Month: April 2021
2021-04-21 General
Variants The “California” variants (B.1.427/B.1.429) are more transmissible and vaccines are less effective against them, but they are less dangerous than B.1.1.7. Don’t lose sleep over them. Vaccines This paper reports that mRNA vaxxes sure seem safe for pregnant women. There is a vaccine, SpFN, developed at Baylor, which they say will protect against SARS… Continue reading 2021-04-21 General
2021-04-21 BC
Vaccinations There was some confusion in the pharmacies about whether eligibility was based on age or year-of-birth. For example, if you turn 40 in November 2021, are you eligible? It’s year-of-birth, so yes. Apparently there have been 39 cases of the B.1.617 (Indian) variant in BC as of April 4. Not much is known about… Continue reading 2021-04-21 BC
2021-04-20 BC
Hospitalizations Buried in yesterday’s slides (on p.15) was information about hospitalizations: there were 1014 cases from December and 862 cases from March. The slides said that the month was when the case was reported, not when the patient was hospitalized, which means that I can compare against the number of cases reported that month! In… Continue reading 2021-04-20 BC
2021-04-20 General
Vaccines Only 32 vaccinated people were among 74,405 COVID-19 patients admitted to UK hospitals between September and March. (Given that they used a lot of AZ, as an AZ recipient, these articles make me very happy!) Transmission A study in Atlanta found that COVID spread in school was first from high-contact sports, then staff meetings/lunches,… Continue reading 2021-04-20 General
2021-04-19 General
Side effects Bad news for anybody who enjoys erections: COVID can cause erectile dysfunction. Vaccines There are starting to be a few reports of inflammation of the heart in young people after getting an mRNA vaccine. This is very early, so it might be nothing… but it also might be something. Aaaannnd this paper talks… Continue reading 2021-04-19 General
2021-04-19 BC
Measures WorkSafeBC continues to not mess around, shutting five more businesses in Fraser Health. Press Briefing There was a LOT that was covered in the briefing today. See the slides. tl;dr: AZ in the pharmacies is opened up to everybody over 40; Measures stay in place for another 5 weeks, at which point things should… Continue reading 2021-04-19 BC
2021-04-18 General
Vaccines Yet another to add to the list of does-not-mount-good-antibodies: solid organ transplant recipients. Unlike many of the other patient groups (pregnant, lactating, some cancers, kidney dialysis), even a second shot isn’t good enough to get good antibody response. 🙁 Reminder: antibodies are not the whole story. T-cells are also important, and unfortunately are difficult… Continue reading 2021-04-18 General
2021-04-18 BC
Superspreader Events People have been talking about a big party on the beach Friday evening. I saw people talking about it, and sort of rolled my eyes because all the knowledgeable people I follow say that beach-shaming is the last thing we should do: being outside, in the sun, where there is usually a breeze,… Continue reading 2021-04-18 BC
2021-04-17 General
Vaccines Buried in this article about Moderna signing a contract with Rovi, a Spanish company, to make ingredients for their vax is something that mentions that Lonza (Moderna’s primary subcontractor) has two manufacturing lines that it expects to become operational in the next few weeks. Currently, only one line is operational. Tripling the Moderna output… Continue reading 2021-04-17 General