Vaccines I have wondered how much vax is getting wasted. DrH has assured us a few times (several months ago) that it’s “very little”, but the reporters have not asked for numbers and it’s not in the data. Well, yesterday, Dix said something like “We only have around forty thousand doses of Pfizer right now”.… Continue reading 2021-06-23 BC
Month: June 2021
2021-06-23 General
Long COVID This paper makes a strong case that re-activated Epstein-Barr virus is involved in most Long COVID cases. This paper says that women are 2.7x more likely to get Long COVID as men. 44% of women and 24% of men in this study (in Norway) had symptoms. Vaccines This Twitter thread, which is a… Continue reading 2021-06-23 General
2021-06-22 General
Mitigation Measures This paper looks at the strategy of eliminating vs. mitigating and concludes that eliminating is better. It says that the countries which went for elimination (Australia, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea) have done much better than the ones which went for mitigation. Um, notice anything about those countries? None of them… Continue reading 2021-06-22 General
2021-06-22 BC
Vaccine Clinics There are some drop-in clinics in VCH for first doses (second doses if you are over 70). Transmission The Surrey School district did not send any exposure notices home with kids yesterday, for the first time this school year. Yay! A study shows that BC teachers have exactly the same seropositivity rate as… Continue reading 2021-06-22 BC
2021-06-21 General
Transmission This paper details a clever US study where they looked at COVID-19 cases in households which had recently had a birthday vs. households which had not recently had a birthday. They found 31% more COVID-19 case in households with birthdays than without, and the effect was much stronger in households with a child birthday… Continue reading 2021-06-21 General
2021-06-21 BC
Variants Huh. I hadn’t paid attention to the Variants of Concern report in a while, and it turns out that the percentage of cases which are Delta is actually falling in BC. Not just the raw case count, but the proportion. I didn’t think that was supposed to happen! Gamma is rising, but Gamma isn’t… Continue reading 2021-06-21 BC
2021-06-20 General
Variants I have been scaremongering about Delta, saying it is more transmissible, causes more severe cases, and is transmitted more in schools. I apparently need to back off a little bit. Delta is more transmissible, that’s uncontestable. This very interesting tweet thread says that the data does not support there being more transmission in schools.… Continue reading 2021-06-20 General
2021-06-19/20 BC
Vaccination Clinics There are pop-up vax clinics in the Interior for first doses. A vax-a-thon in Surrey over the weekend gave 7000 shots! This is an interesting article about vaccine hesitancy in Richmond. While the vax rate is now on par with the rest of the province, it was significantly lower for a while. The… Continue reading 2021-06-19/20 BC
2021-06-19 General
Treatments This preprint might be important. It describes a novel treatment for COVID-19 (and possibly for all viruses). The active ingredient (SLR) activates a molecule called RIG-I, which in turn gooses the production of interleukin-1, which is a cytokine, part of the immune system associated with inflammation. Basically, SLR revs up the innate immune system… Continue reading 2021-06-19 General
2021-06-18 BC
Vaccination Clinics I got my second shot today (wooohoo!) at the Convention Centre, escorted by my beloved spouse. This is what I observed: There were about three greeters at the door to the outside of Canada Place. One asked me if anyone in my bubble had been sick, but I think that was the only… Continue reading 2021-06-18 BC