2024-11-29 General

This is kind of a slow news week because most of my primary English-language sources have been eating Turkey and/or complaining about Trump’s picks for important health-related administrative positions.

I now have a recommendation on when to get your flu shot (if you haven’t yet): around 9-10 December. See the BC post for why.

COVID-19

Long COVID

⭐ This paper from USA (2024-11-08) reported that electrical stimulation helped Long COVID patients. Long COVID patients who got 3 to 5 hours per day of high-dose Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation scored significantly better on measures of pain, walking ability, and fatigue than a placebo group.

⭐ This paper from USA (2024-11-22) says that younger people have worse Long COVID-related cognitive issues than older people. It’s not clear to me if this is because, well, the older people die instead of getting Long COVID.

AGAIN This paper from Germany (2024-11-29) reports that spike protein by itself seems to cause Long COVID-like symptoms. They found spike proteins in the skulls, meninges, and brains in the autopsies of humans, frequently without detectable virus RNA. (Remember, the RNA is the instructions; the spike is a results of the instructions.) When they injected the spike protein by itself into the skull bone marrow of mice, the mice developed symptoms which looked a lot like Long COVID.

(I believe I have seen other studies which say that spike is bad for you all by itself.)

Pathology

⭐ This paper from Mexico (2024-11-14) found that men got pneumonia after COVID-19 more than women did. The risk of pneumonia in people who tested positive for COVID-19 was 9.3% overall, but 7.0% for women and 12% for men.

That reminds me of a saying I heard in probably 2021: women get Long COVID, men die.

The risk of pneumonia dropped over time — 21.9% for COVID Classic, dropping to 2% for XBB.1.5. I don’t know how much of that was due to vaccination and/or previous infections.

Vaccines

This paper from USA (2024-11-25) found that little kids (under 2 years old) tolerated vaccines well. Only 0.3% had severe reactions to vaccines, and they were much more likely to have any reaction (including e.g. “being more fussy”) after the first dose (39%) than the second (28.1%). Moderna caused more reactions than Pfizer did (which is not surprising, as Moderna has a larger dose of active ingredients).

⭐ There have been a number of papers on the use of the BCG tuberculosis vaccine to prevent COVID. Some say it helps, some say it doesn’t. (See my page of other virus vaccines effectiveness against COVID-19.)

This paper from Brazil (2024-11-19) found that the BCG vaccine given after someone got COVID reduced the risk of a number of Long COVID symptoms compared to people who did not get the BCG vaccine:

  • 74% lower risk of hearing problems at 6 months;
  • 55% lower risk of sleeping problems at 12 months;
  • 64% lower risk of concentration problems at 12 months;
  • 62% lower risk of memory problems at 12 months;
  • 64% lower risk of vision problems at 12 months;
  • lower risk of loss of small and/or taste;
  • increased hair loss in women and decreased it in men.

H5N1

Transmission

⭐❗❗This preprint (2024-11-17) reports that drinking infected mother’s milk is bad for ferrets. They infected mama ferrets with H5N1, and all of their suckling pups died. Literally 100% of them. All of them. Now: was it from the milk or from mama’s nipple? They didn’t address that directly as far as I could tell, but they did measure levels of H5N1 in the milk rising.

I would stay the F away from raw milk.

⭐❗❗This article from USA (2024-11-24) reports that California officials found H5N1 in some raw (cow) milk that they purchased at a retail store. (Nobody got sick that they know of, and the vendor recalled the milk.)

This press release from the Ministry of Health (2024-11-26) says that they looked everywhere and couldn’t figure out where that teen from Fraser Health caught bird flu from. They are giving up.

They didn’t find any other H5N1 anywhere, not in any of the people or animals the teen had contact with before, not with any people that were exposed to the teen once they got infected. The teen is no longer infected/contagious, but remains in critical condition, on a vent, but has gotten slightly better recently.

This article (2024-11-27) reports that there are now 675 infected dairy herds in 15 states, with California having 461 of them.

Mpox

Transmission

This PHAC press release (2024-11-22) reports that they have seen one case of clade 1 mpox (the scary version) in Manitoba from someone who had travelled to Africa. That’s the first clade 1 in Canada.