2022-03-23 General

Testing

This article says that COVID-19 in wastewater is going up in many places across Canada.

Mitigation Measures

This article reports on an Italian study which found that better ventilation reduced COVID-19 cases dramatically in schools. Replacing classroom air

  • 2.4 times an hour gave a 40 percent reduction in infections;
  • 4 times an hour gave a 66.8 percent reduction in infections;
  • 6 times an hour gave a 82.5 percent reduction in infections.

Vaccines

This article reports that Moderna has finished its Phase 3 studies in wee little kids (and is going to ask the US FDA for approval). The vax appears to be safe, but its effectiveness for 6 mo-6 years is not great: two 25 µg doses are 43.7% against symptomatic Omicron infection for 6 months to 23 months of age, 37.5% for 2 years to 6 years. Moderna is looking into a third dose. That’s better than Pfizer (which uses 3µg doses), but still not great.

The good news is that they did not see any really bad side effects.


This preprint from Hong Kong says that mRNA vaccines and even Coronavac are still very effective against severe illness or death, with vaccine effectiveness of:

  • Two doses of Pfizer: 88.2%
  • Two doses of Cornoavac: 74.1%
  • Three doses of Pfizer or Coronavac: 98.1%
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Which brand matters waaaaaaay less than whether you get ANY vaccine.


This preprint said that Pfizer and previous infection had these effectivenesses against symptomatic infection:

DosageBA.1BA.2Any Ω
Prior infection45.1%43.0%50.8%-52.2%
2 doses Pfizer~0%~0%~0%
2 doses Moderna~0%
3 doses Pfizer56.5%52.9%54.0%
3 doses Moderna61.3%
2 doses Pfizer + infection44.3%47.9%55.5%
2 doses Moderna + infection52.0%
3 doses Pfizer + infection77.2%69.8%76.3%
3 doses Moderna + infection79.4%

Effectiveness against hospitalization and death was much much higher, however: any combo of vax and/or infection gave over 70% effectiveness against BA.1 or BA.2.

DosageBA.1BA.2Any Ω
Prior infection100%71.6%71.6%-91.0%
2 doses Pfizer88.8%84.8%73.5%
2 doses Moderna66.3%
3 doses Pfizer100%100%93.5%
3 doses Moderna82.7%
2 doses Pfizer + infection100%100%94.3%
2 doses Moderna + infection100%
3 doses Pfizer + infectionN/AN/A100%
3 doses Moderna + infection100%

Note: I could not figure out how the effectiveness against “any omicron” could be better than both the effectiveness against BA.1 and against BA.2. Maybe there were some cases which they figured were Omicron just because of when they happened, but they never did a whole genome sequence of them?

Long COVID

This paper found that the risk of getting diabetes (almost all Type 2, non-insulin dependent) in approximately a year post-COVID was 40% higher than in controls. The risk went increased with the severity of the COVID-19, with a 10x higher risk of antihyperglycemic use (which I think is a way of saying “Type 2 diabetes”) for people who had been in the ICU with COVID-19.

Pathology

Why does the average adult get so much sicker than the average kid when exposed to COVID-19? This (long) article gives several explanations:

  • Lots more interferons in the epithelial cells.
  • Lots more naive (not yet trained) T cells.
  • Maybe fewer ACE2 receptors? (Omicron uses a non-ACE2 pathway more, and there is some evidence that kids get sick more from Omicron.)
  • Maybe fewer fat cells?
  • More primed immune system because they encountered lots of viruses (especially “common cold” coronaviruses) more recently, so their innate immune system is more revved up and ready?

Recommended Reading

This article is about “platform trials”, which is a new process/technique for doing randomized clinical trials which can get results much faster/cheaper than traditional methods. (RECOVERY is one such study.) IMHO, the RECOVERY study was almost as important a civilization advance as Pfizer’s vaccine.


This article is about all the many things the US got wrong with their data. Yes, it’s about the US, but you can read it to be smug about what Canada got right and simultaneously depressed about the things that Canada/BC also got wrong.


The province gave some 2021 Medal of Good Citizenship Recipients awards recently to people who had been good people during the pandemic. If you want your faith in humanity restored, read some of those. I was particularly moved by the Gambier Grocery Group.