Secondary Effects
A study in the UK says that diabetes diagnosis, management, and mortality have been impacted pretty badly during the pandemic. 🙁
Vaccinations
Today, Canada passed the 40% mark in what percentage of its population has gotten at least one dose, and it doesn’t look like the vaccination rate is slowing down at all! Canada is going to pass the US in a a week at this rate.
Many provinces have already passed a number of US states:
Vaccines
A real-world study from the Mayo Clinic says that the J&J vaccine has 76.7% efficacy.
A pregnant woman in Brazil had a fatal stroke after getting AZ. Investigators are investigating.
Variants
B.1.617.2 (one of the “India variants”) does not seem to be particularly immune-evasive, but it does seem to out-compete B.1.1.7, which suggests it is even more transmissible. 🙁
Mitigation Measures
A preprint from the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at interventions to encourage mask wearing. Giving people masks AND having village police remind people to use them worked really well and the effect lasted at least ten weeks after the intervention stopped. Things that did not work included: text reminders, public signage commitments, monetary or non-monetary incentives, and altruistic messaging / verbal commitments.
Transmission
Outdoor transmission is really really rare.
Yesterday, I pointed to a study which said that 2% of the COVID patients carried 90% of the virions. Today I saw a tweet that said that it’s not that 2% of the people are supercarriers, it’s that all COVID patients go through a supercarrying phase. I think it’s premature to say that all patients are carriers for 2% of their time, as that would be about 7 hours out of a two-week infection. I think they don’t know.