NB: No BC post this week because the are not publishing new data until 3 Jan 2025. This post is kind of short because for some reason there has been less news the past few days.
Happy Holidays!
Recommended Reading
This article from USA (2024-12-26) talks about three issues to watch in global health: H5N1, mpox vacccine production/distribution, and Trump pulling the US out of the World Health Organization.
This article (2024-12-24) is a nice how-to guide for improving your indoor air quality.
COVID-19
Long COVID
AGAIN This paper using data from New Zealand (2024-12-24) reports that 37% of university students (of quite disparate ages) who had had COVID-19 infections had measurable cognitive symptoms and changes in blood dynamics in the frontal brain.
AGAIN This paper from France (2024-12-18) reports that people with Long COVID had measurable (with funky high-tech PET scans) drops in brain activity in specific regions, especially prefrontal and medial/inferior temporal areas.
AGAIN This paper from USA (2024-12-18) found that people with Long COVID had varying responses to COVID-19 vaccination. After vaccination:
- 17.2% got better;
- 22.7% got worse;
- 60.2% reported no change in their symptoms.
Treatments
⭐ This paper (2024-09-24) reports that a nasal spray called PCANS (Pathogen Capture and Neutralizing Spray) protected mice from influenza extremely well. The paper also describes PCANS a bit. PCANS is available for purchase in Canada, USA, and Australia, but they are out of stock at the moment. (Note: the authors of the paper have a financial interest in the product, so buyer be at least a little beware.)
Reddit has some concerns about the product, specifically about a preservative used in it; research articles I’ve found seem to say it does bad things in test tubes but doesn’t seem to cause those problems in actual human beings, probably because snot dilutes it. That preservative is very commonly-used in nasal sprays, so the research around it is absolutely not cut&dried.
⭐❗❗This paper (2024-12-11) reports that the authors have found a small molecule which messes up the end cap on SARS-CoV-2. I don’t understand this well, but in my limited Christmas reading, it sounds like the end cap both keeps the RNA from unravelling and signals the rhibosomes where to start transcribing (converting the RNA recipe into proteins). It also looks to me like the cap is slightly different on viruses and in humans, so attacking the viral cap ought to be something drugs could do without harming humans. (Different viruses have different caps, however — some even steal caps from human mRNA! — so alas, we are not going to be able to find one small molecule which will work against all viruses.)
Mitigation Measures
AGAIN This preprint from USA (2024-12-25) reports that healthcare worker (HCW) masking in hospitals works to reduce the spread of COVID-19. HCW masking reduced the number of patients getting COVID-19 in the hospital by 12-18%. Perhaps more importantly in an era where hospitals are short-staffed, it drops the number of HCWs getting sick by 55%.
Pathology
⭐❗❗This article about an unpublished study of US and Brazilian babies (2024-12-27) reports that babies born to women who got COVID-19 infections while pregnant appear to have about a 7x higher risk for autism.
I really really really don’t want this to be true. Note that this is a lay article about a small study which is currently undergoing peer review. There is still time for it to be proven wrong!
⭐ This paper from Germany (2024-12-11) reports good evidence that the spike protein all by itself in the brain can cause neurological problems.
Testing
If you have a PlusLife Nucleic Acid Amplification Test (which I do, and which seems to work really well), this blog post talks about how to recognize false positives due to bubbles in a chamber.
Recommended Reading
This article (2024-12-20) talks about how COVID-19 isn’t behaving seasonally: “The only thing that makes this [COVID] virus seasonal is that it occurs in all seasons”. I’m shocked, shocked, to discover that COVID-19 is not seasonal. (Not.)
This article (2024-12-23) reports on a rise of bad/rude/aggressive/violent behaviour in theatre audiences, and looks at what evidence there is that this might be due to lingering neurological effects of COVID-19 infection.
This is kind of wild. This article (2024-12-23) says that during COVID, some actors got together to do a live Hamlet recording inside Grand Theft Auto Online!
H5N1
Transmission
This article from USA (2024-12-26) reports that genome sequencing from last week’s severe H5N1 case in Louisiana showed mutations that would make it easier to transmit to another human. (One of the mutations was also seen in the severely ill BC teenager with bird flu!) They said that the birds in the Louisiana patient’s backyard flock did not show the same mutations, which means that either the patient caught bird flu from somewhere other than their backyard bird-flu-infected flock or the virus mutated while it was in the Louisiana patient’s body. (I’d put my money on the latter.)
This press release (2024-12-20) reports that a dairy worker is the first human in Iowa to get confirmed H5N1. It’s mild in this worker.
This article (2024-12-23) reports that Iowa saw their first human H5N1 case, a poultry worker with mild symptoms.
This article (2024-12-23) gives more details on housecats infected in Los Angeles County, California. In one household, there were eight cats where some unknown number of cats drank infected raw milk; five died. Four of those five have been confirmed to have had H5N1. Two other cats got sick but are recovering.
In a different LA household with five indoor-only cats, some got sick after eating some of two different brands of pet food that contained raw beef and/or poultry. Two were sick enough that they were euthanized. A third cat got sick and was confirmed to have H5-type influenza. (Okay, it’s possible that the cat got H5N17 or something like that, but c’mon, let’s be real, it had bird flu.)
This article (2024-12-26) reports that an indoor cat in Oregon died after eating pet food contaminated with H5N1. (The pet food, Northwest Naturals’ Feline Turkey Recipe raw frozen pet food, has been recalled.)
It’s not just the little kitties. This article from Washington State (2024-12-24) reports that twenty big cats (mostly cougars, but some non-native species as well) died from bird flu.
Recommended Reading
The RAND corporation is a kind of stodgy think tank in the US. They just issued a report (2024-12-23) calling on the US government to declare a public health emergency for H5N1 and get its a* in gear on mandatory cow testing, wastewater surveillance, vaccines, etc!
This article by CNN (2024-12-24) and this blog post (2024-12-26) both talk about how badly the US screwed up on H5N1. I’m seeing a bit of a consensus here.
Honestly, though? Trump is going to become President soon. I really doubt he’ll take H5N1 seriously.
Mystery Illness
Testing
This article (2024-12-23) says that they have identified malaria, influenza, COVID-19, and rhinovirus so far. They are still waiting for test results for the man who died with hemorrhagic fever symptoms.