Vaccines
AstraZeneca is in the process of developing a booster, AZD2816 (their original one was AZD1222), to do better against new strains. (As you might recall, AZD1222 is shit against Beta.) This paper says that it does well against all the strains in mice and test tubes.
This article says there is a different AZ problem with low platelet counts, which can lead to no problems, excessive bleeding, or clotting. I am not convinced this is a different problem, since the prior “AZ clotting problem” came from a lack of platelets.
A study by the US CDC of mRNA vaccines in health care workers found that when a patient did get infected, the patients spent six fewer total days being sick, with two fewer days sick in bed. Their viral load was 40% lower (which probably means they are less likely to transmit the virus), and they were 66% less likely to test positive for more than a week. Yay vaccines!
This paper says that vaccinating all the adults helps the kids. Based on data from Israel, for every 20% of adults who were vaccinated, the number of cases in the kids (under 16) dropped by about half.
This article also says that vaccinating adults reduces cases in kids.
This article says that now the US CDC thinks that there are more reports of heart inflammation in young men after the second shot of an mRNA vax than there ought to be.
Variants
The Delta strain is doubling every 5-6 days in the UK, mostly in the unvaxxinated or one-dose cohort — which generally means the younger cohort. Fear the Delta. 🙁
Rest of the World
I try to limit this blog to things that pertain most directly to BC, otherwise there would be Too Much. But OMG right now the rest of the world is really in the shitter. India is in bad shape, but also Africa, Latin America, Afghanistan…
Supply
Anita Anand (the government procurement minister) keeps insisting that Moderna is going to come through with 7.1M doses for real this time. Justin McElroy has a humourous take on it.
Recommended Reading
This article talks about the US/Canadian border shutdown.
This article talks about long COVID in kids.
This is a looooong review paper about monoclonal antibodies, if you are interested in taking a deep dive on monoclonal antibodies (including their use against non-COVID diseases, e.g. rabies). It’s interesting, but quite long, so don’t read it unless you are really curious.
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