COVID-19 levels in BC are flat or maaaaaaybe dropping a little. Government DoNoHarm BC is an anti-COVID advocacy organization in BC, and probably worth joining (or at least paying attention to) if you want better anti-COVID measures. The BC budget just came out, and this report analyzes how anti-COVID measures fared in the budget. Direct… Continue reading 2024-02-24 BC
Month: February 2024
2024-02-24 General
Pathology This paper from UK (2024-02-21) found, with careful genetic sequencing of samples of every sample, that a small but surprisingly high number of people had COVID-19 infections for long periods: about 1-3% had infections lasting ~30 days, and 1-5 out of 1000 for ~60 days. They even found one patient who was infected for… Continue reading 2024-02-24 General
2024-02-16 BC
COVID-19 levels look like they aren’t getting worse — but they also look like they aren’t getting any better. I’ll spare you the graphs for other respiratory diseases, but overall they are going down slightly. COVID-19 is very steady, and influenza is declining slightly, RSV is declining, and the “other” bucket of respiratory diseases is… Continue reading 2024-02-16 BC
2024-02-16 General
Government This post says there is a rumour that Dr. Teresa Tam is going to step down, with Dr. Bonnie Henry a leading contender to replace her. This article reports that the Auditor General had some very not nice things to say about ArriveCan. She said that it cost at least CAD$59.5M to produce, wasn’t… Continue reading 2024-02-16 General
2024-02-09 BC
Everything looks stable, or perhaps “becalmed” is a better word. Unchanging. Static. Not getting worse fast, not getting better fast. (Keep your mask on!) Other Respiratory Illness There was slight downtick in respiratory illnesses, both in BC and in the US. From the BC CDC Viral Pathogen dashboard: From the US CDC’s FluView Dashboard: Statistics… Continue reading 2024-02-09 BC
2024-02-09 General
Long COVID This paper from UK (2024-02-07) found that the REGAIN intervention — an eight-week rehab program — helped people with Long COVID more than the usual care (one 30 min session). The REGAIN intervention had roughly one hour per week of light physical exercise and one hour per week most (six) weeks of psychotherapy,… Continue reading 2024-02-09 General
2024-02-03 BC
This week, the Situation Report warned that the data might be incomplete and might change. This has obviously been true for a long time, but I don’t remember them warning about it so prominently. I don’ t know if the warning means that this week’s report is especially incomplete or not. Other Respiratory Illness There… Continue reading 2024-02-03 BC
2024-02-03 General
Long COVID Very interesting news! My hand-wavy metaphor of what this paper from USA (2024-02-02) found is that the body gets allergic to COVID shrapnel. They found that pieces of dead SARS-CoV-2 viruses can recombine with double-strand DNA (dsDNA) to form things that look like antimicrobial peptides — proteins in the native immune system which… Continue reading 2024-02-03 General