Vaccines
This article says that vaccine effectiveness in England was only about 50-60% against infection in the June/July 2021 period.
There’s a stat called the number needed to vaccinate (NNV), which is a measure of how many people you would need to vaccinate to prevent some outcome. The NNV for 80 year olds to prevent asymptomatic COVID-19 infection is going to be a lot smaller than the NNV for 5 year olds to prevent death from COVID-19, as it is reeeeally rare for 5 year olds to die from COVID-19. This study calculated the NNV for pregnant women to prevent any infection at 11. That’s not very many.
This article reports that the US finished authorizing the pediatric Pfizer vaccine. Canada usually approves at around the same timeframe. (Sometimes we lag, sometimes they lag: Canada approved the adult Pfizer a whopping two days before the US did.)
This article from Ontario says that members of the Eastern European diaspora in Canada are not getting vaccinated. I knew that Eastern Europe was having huge problems with vax hostility, but it didn’t occur to me that it might transfer to Canada.
Mitigation Measures
This article says that eight more airports will (re-)open at the end of November to international flights: St. John’s, Hamilton, Regina, Saskatoon, Kelowna, Abbotsford and Victoria.
Treatments
There was recent news showing that fluvoxamine (an SSRI) helped prevent hospitalization in a large percentage of early COVID-19 patients. This article casts doubt. (Not disproof, just skepticism.)
Recommended Reading
This article talks about pediatric vaccine dosing: how they figure it out, what if your kid is large/small or right near their birthday?
This article is on research about menstruational changes after vaccination.