Vaccines
This preprint says that giving solid organ transplant patients a fourth booster increases antibody levels. I have to wonder when it stops: do we give them five? six? twenty? when the rest of the world is clamoring for their first?
This study found that there were three cases of myocarditis per 100K COVID-19 vaccinations, compared to eleven cases of myocarditis per 100K cases of COVID-19 disease.
This study from Qatar says that Sinopharm isn’t as good as AZ, Pfizer, and Moderna, though they worded it a bit more politely.
This preprint says that people who got a vaccination are ~6x more likely to get an infection than people who had a previous COVID-19 infection, and ~7x more likely to get a symptomatic infection.
Addendum: Someone pointed out a potential flaw: people who had already been infected were probably less likely to go get tested on re-infection. “Oh, I already had COVID, so it must be something else.” There’s also a question of survivorship bias: the people who survived a COVID infection will of course be more robust than those who died.
This article reports that antibody levels don’t really drop much in people who got Johnson & Johnson vaccines after six months. However, giving a booster increased antibody levels 9x — at least in the 17 people they looked at.
I’m seeing some chatter on Twitter about how people forging vaccination cards might be fucking with the studies on vaccine effectiveness over time. If there are a significant number of unvaccinated people in the “vaccinated” groups, that will mess things up. This will be less likely in countries with socialized health care (*cough* not the USA *cough*), but we countries with public health care are still vulnerable to bad decisions made because of studies elsewhere.
This preprint says that having a longer (8-12 weeks) interval between dose1 and dose2 is better than a shorter (3-4 weeks) interval.
This article says that the Director of the US National Institute of Health doesn’t think we’ll see vaccines approved for the under 12 year-olds until the end of the year.
Mitigation Measures
This preprint says that based on their modelling, weekly screening would reduce cases in schools by a lot.
UBC faculty apparently aren’t happy about the lack of a vaccine mandate for students.
Side Effects
This article reports that patients who have COVID-19 when they get surgery are 50% more likely to get venous thromboembolism blood clots afterwards.
Long COVID
This preprint says that there are protein markers in bronchial fluid pulled from Long COVID patients that indicate ongoing cellular damage in the lungs. These markers were much higher at 3 months post-infection than at 1 year post-infection, which says that they did finally get at least somewhat better.
OMG how did I miss this study in June? In England, they did a very large electronic health care records search and found that the chance of having functionally limiting symptoms at 12 weeks ranged from 1.2% of COVID cases for 20-year-olds and increased pretty linearly to 4.8% for 63 year-olds. They found that the chance of having any symptoms (not just debilitating ones) for 12 weeks was 7.8% for 20 year-olds and 17% for 58 year-olds, if I understand their wording correctly.
They found a 50% increased risk from being female, 46% from having poor mental health, 62% from having poor physical health. Asthma and being overweight were also risks, but the risk was stronger in the shorter term (like 4 weeks) than for 12 weeks.
Recommended Reading
This article talks about vaccines waning, yes or no.
This article talks about trying to vaccinate in conflict zones.