I have been avoiding saying much about the chaos in the US government health sector, but it’s been difficult.
COVID-19
Long COVID
AGAIN 🧪This paper from Australia (2025-01-13) reports that people with Long COVID and ME/CFS both have bigger left hippocampal subfields than healthy controls. Furthermore, the size of the left hippocampal subfield correlated with how bad the Long COVID or ME/CFS was.
❗🧪 This paper from UK (2025-02-12) reports that measurements of energy processing metabolites were distinctly different between healthy controls, ME/CFS patients, and Long COVID patients. They found that different levels of lactate in different parts of the amygdala in the different groups. They also found that lactate levels in the amygdala inversely correlated with verbal fluency in ME/CFS patients, and choline levels correlated with executive function in Long COVID patients. Apparently ME/CFS and Long COVID are not the same!
COVID-Related Excess Deaths and Sickness
AGAIN 🤒 This paper from Hong Kong (2025-02-07) reports that people who are hospitalized for COVID-19 have higher risks of lots of things compared to healthy controls, including:
- pneumothorax – 12.80 times higher risk
- coma, stupor and brain damage – 9.85x
- respiratory failure/insufficiency/arrest – 7.44x
- aspiration pneumonitis (AsPn) – 7.33x
- nephritis/nephrosis/renal sclerosis – 6.51x
- brain cancers – 5.44x
- depressive disorders – 5.33x
- renal failure (ARF) – 5.29x
- bone infection/inflammation – 5.10x
- neurocognitive disorders – 4.36x
- hemorrhagic strokes – 4.24x
- sepsis – 4.09x
- bacterial infections – 4.04x
- Parkinson’s disease – 3.88x
- stomach cancers – 3.79x
- hospitalization due to hip fracture -3.71x
- hospitalization due to spine and back fracture – 3.64x
- low blood pressure – 3.51x
- hospitalization due to leg (except hip) fracture – 3.37x
- urinary tract infection (UTI) – 3.26x
- ischemic stroke – 3.03x
- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – 3.01x
- hospitalization due to other specified and unspecified gastrointestinal disorders – 2.90x
- hospital admission for respiratory disease other than tuberculosis – 2.89x
- heart failure (HF) – 2.80x
- chronic kidney disease (CKD) – 2.71x
- colorectal cancers – 2.66x
- transient cerebral ischemia (TIA) – 2.65x
- musculoskeletal pain – 2.59x
- hospitalization due to arm fracture – 2.53x
- fainting – 2.46x.
- low back pain – 2.44x
- acute myocardial infarction (AMI) – 2.37x
- cardiac dysrhythmias – 2.16x
- hemorrhage of digestive tract – 1.98x
- headache – 1.97x
- aplastic anemia – 1.89x
- esophageal disorders – 1.63x
- nutritional anemia – 1.57x
Pathology
☠️ This paper from UK (2025-01-30) reports that (surprise surprise) the immunocompromised had worse COVID-19 outcomes. They found that 4% of the study population but made up a little over 20% of the hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, even though the immunocompromised were much more likely to be well-vaccinated. 🙁
❗🧪 This paper (2025-01-29) reports that a particular bat version of the gene ISG15 reduces an infected cell’s production of more SARS-CoV-2 by 90% compared to the human version. This could help us figure out drugs and other treatments!
Treatment
💊 This paper from USA (2025-02-05) reports that pregnant women are 67% less likely to get prescribed antivirals (mostly Paxlovid) than non-pregnant women.
I’m kind of torn about that result. On the one hand, Paxlovid is a serious drug. On the other, there are a lot of studies that show that COVID-19 during pregnancy is bad for the baby. 😬
This paper from USA (2025-02-10) reports that after people got diagnosed with Long COVID, they started going to outpatient care more and acute care (i.e. hospitals) less. They didn’t look directly at the costs of healthcare for people with Long COVID before and after diagnosis, but they strongly suggested that diagnosing Long COVID saves money. 💰
Vaccines
This paper using data from a mid-size German city (2025-02-07) reports that paying people to get vaccinated didn’t help and that people postponed getting boosters if they didn’t get paid but one of their household members did.
This press release (2025-02-14) reports that Europe has granted approval to Arcturus’ self-amplified mRNA (saRNA) vaccine. (Japan approved it on 2023-11-27.) This makes it more likely that saRNAs will show up in North America in the next few years. (Self-amplifying mRNA vaccines should be cheaper, have fewer side effects, and be more durable.)
Mitigation Measures
This paper (2025-01-21) used mathematical modelling to estimate the effects of school closures on COVID-19 levels. In 97% of the countries, there was a positive effect. In a few countries, however it increased the number of deaths. I believe that’s because school closures delayed infections into the Delta wave, and Delta was more deadly. That just seems like bad luck to me, that delaying infections is in general a good idea.
Healthcare System
This paper (2025-01-27) reports on the results of a survey about the pandemic submitted by nurses in 35 countries. It’s not good. “20% of nurses suffered the loss of a family member, 35% lost a friend, and 34% a coworker due to COVID-19. Nearly half (48%) reported experiencing public aggression due to their identity as a nurse.” 😬
Recommended Reading
This Pew Research report (2025-02-12) on a survey of Americans about their opinions on a lot of pandemic-related questions is long, US-focused, but still very interesting.
H5N1
Transmission
😬😬😬 🤒🐄 This article (2025-02-13) reports that the US CDC looked at the blood of 150 cow veterinarians in 46 states and found that 3 of them (2%) had H5N1 antibodies in their blood. None of them had known they had been infected. Only one of them had contact with a known infected herd. One of them only worked in two states that have had no known infected herds. To spell it out: there were H5N1 infections that nobody knew about.
The vets reported using gloves and clothing covers, but not masks or goggles.
🤒🐔 This article (2025-02-14) reports that a woman in Wyoming got H5N1 from her backyard flock. This article (2025-02-13) reports that a poultry worker got H5N1.
☠️🐈 This article (2025-02-14) says that indoor house cats died in Oregon from eating raw Wild Coast Pet Food’s Boneless Free Range Chicken Formula (lots #22660 and #22664, with best-by dates of December). This press release from the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) (2025-02-14) reports that WSDA tested some Wild Coast food on sale in Washington and found H5N1. (NB: The Wild Coast website says that they only distribute their products in Oregon and Washington.)
This technical briefing (2025-02-07) about the Nevada clade D1.1 (“bird-type”, as opposed to the “cow-type” of H5N1) reveals two new pieces of information:
- inspectors first found H5N1 in tanks which had milk mixed in from twelve different dairies;
- inspectors then did samples from each of the dairies;
- the farms didn’t notice any symptoms of flu in the cows until after they found the virus in the bulk milk samples;
- in a second dairy herd located close to the confirmed D1.1-infected one, they found a partial sequence consistent with D1.1;
- both the farm with confirm D1.1 and the one with the partial match reported large bird die-offs nearby;
- they saw a genetic mutation – a change of PB2 D701N, commonly associated with mammalian adaptation and which they have never seen in birds — in four separate dairy cows they looked at.
☠️🐈This press release from California (2025-02-06) reports that a stray/feral housecat was taken in by some humans and discovered to have H5N1. It clearly didn’t catch it by drinking raw milk, so presumably it caught it from a wild bird. 🐦⬛
This long article (2025-02-10) about H5N1 in housecats mentions that H5N1 can cause neurological symptoms in cats which look just like rabies 😬, and that dogs appear to be less susceptible than cats.
💰 In my General post from two weeks ago (2025-01-31), I talked about why Canada’s eggs weren’t as vulnerable to price hikes as American ones, and implicitly put the price hikes down to supply problems. Well, starting on page 119 of this report from a farmer-led activist group (2024-09) is an argument that price gouging, not supply and demand was the problem in 2022 in the USA. wholesale egg prices went up by 3500% while supply (from bird flu culling) went down by just 3%. Meanwhile companies that sold eggs (note: not the farmers! in the USA, poultry farmers don’t own chickens or the eggs, it’s weird) had record profits.
🐄 This article (2025-02-10) says that there have been 962 herds to date with H5N1, including 739 in California and 7 in Nevada.
Variants
This article (2025-02-10) reports that a dairy worker in Nevada has been found to have an infection with D1.1 🐦⬛. Reminder, D1.1 is what killed the fatality in Louisiana and what sent the Fraser Health teen to the hospital for 2.5 months. (The worker was at the same farm which found a D1.1 variant of H5N1 which I mentioned in last week’s General post.) Fortunately, the dairy worker does not appear to be very sick.
Mpox
Aid
😠 This article (2025-02-14) reports that mpox containment is being impaired due to Trump shutting down USAID.
Sudan Virus
Transmission
😮💨 This article (2025-02-13) reports that the Sudan Virus outbreak in Uganda appears to be stabilizing. Additionally, vaccine trials have started. (NB: you can’t have a vaccine trial if the disease is not circulating.)