2022-01-13 General

Variants

Everybody knows by now that Omicron appears to be more mild, but how much of that is because lots of people have partial immunity? This preprint looked at South African Omicron infections and found that when you controlled for vaccination status, Omicron is about 25% as severe.

Vaccines

This article says that inactivated virus vaccines — like Sinopharm or Covaxin, used WIDELY in the rest of the world — are shit against Omicron. 🙁

Pathology

This article says that Polish researchers have identified a gene which influences how severe a case of COVID-19 will end up being. They say that age, weight, and gender are more important, but that this gene is fourth on the importance ranking.

Long COVID

This preprint has found a signature of five blood chemicals which is predictive of Long COVID. Not only will that help as a diagnostic, but also might give ideas for where to look for a treatment.

Pediatric Mental Health

This tweet gives a bunch of evidence that children’s mental health — by many measures — has NOT gotten worse during the pandemic, and maybe even got better.