Variants
This article says that Delta, while more contagious, does not lead to more severe consequences.
It points out that if Delta were more severe, then deaths per case would have increased recently, while it has not.
On the other hand, this preprint says that Delta does cause more severe illness in Canada.
Ah, science: so many theories to choose from!
Mitigation Measures
This article talks about an Ontario couple that had to cancel their honeymoon to Barbados because Barbados decided that mixed vaccinations weren’t good enough.
My immediate thought was, “Waitaminute… Canadians aren’t supposed to be travelling internationally for non-essential purposes yet!” (See government advice.) That was completely ignored in the article.
This article reports that Trudeau plans to reopen the border to vaccinated Americans by mid-August.
Disease/Long COVID
This article talks about a possible link between MISC (that nasty COVID-related thing that kids get) and toxic shock syndrome. It’s possible that this is related to Long COVID.
This article says that HIV+ are 30% more likely to die of COVID than HIV- people.
Excess Deaths
This site tracks excess deaths in Canada, and is a continuation of the excess-death analyses.
Recommended Reading
This article discusses the tactic of looking for common gene variants in people with more severe COVID-19.
This article discusses recent (pretty stunning) advances in protein-folding software.
This thread is a nice explainer on why Delta is more transmissible.
The article about MISC/toxic shock syndrome that I mentioned above really is worth reading.