2025-09-13 General

COVID-19

Vaccines

💰 This preprint (2025-09-04) estimates that the return on the investment in developing COVID-19 vaccines was between $59.8–$475 per dollar invested.

COVID-Related Excess Death and Sickness

This paper from USA (2025-09-08) reports that children who had COVID-19 infections were more likely to have new-onset depression afterwards. Compared to children who did not have COVID-19:

  • children who did not visit any ER or hospital had a 40% higher chance of depression;
  • children who visited the ER or hospital had a 60% higher chance of depression.

Long COVID

This paper from USA (2025-09-09) reports on a number of factors which have higher risks of Long COVID:

  • People who had food insecurity were 73% more likely to have Long COVID compared to people who had food security;
  • Compared to people 18-30 years old:
    • people who were 31-50 y/o were 64% more likely to have Long COVID;
    • people who were 51-64 y/o were 52% more likely to have Long COVID;
  • People in the western US were 40% more likely to have Long COVID than people in the Northeast;
  • People who were unemployed were 33% more likely to have Long COVID than employed people;
  • Former smokers were 23% more likely to have Long COVID than never-smokers;
  • Current smokers were 28% more likely to have Long COVID than never-smokers;
  • Obese people were 23% more likely to have Long COVID than people with a non-overweight BMI;
  • People with chronic conditions were 43% more likely to have Long COVID than people without;
  • Men were 42% less likely to have Long COVID than women;
  • Black people were 34% less likely to have Long COVID that White people;
  • Compared to people with three vaccine doses:
    • people with 1 or 2 doses were 25% more likely to have Long COVID;
    • unvaccinated people were 76% more likely to have Long COVID.

Transmission

🐕‍🦺 This paper from USA (2025-09-10) found that almost 70% of dogs in a small study (n=19) who had been in households with people known to have been infected with COVID-19 had antibodies to COVID-19 themselves. Interestingly, 12 of the 14 COVID-positive dogs had no symptoms, and the other two dogs had vomiting and diarrhea.

Pollution

😷 This older paper from UK (2024-03-29) reports that face masks leach microplastics when left in water, with FFP2/FFP3 (similar to N95s) leaching more

Testing

BC Wastewater

💩💧 From Jeff’s wastewater spreadsheet:

Recommended Reading

In this thread (2025-09-03), one of the authors of a paper I cheered about last week (the one that found that a drug cocktail significantly helped Long COVID patients) gives more details and backstory.

This thread (2025-09-06) is a defiant screed about why we know COVID-19 is airborne. Similarly, this thread (2025-09-07) is a screed about how COVID-19 is dangerous, actually. You might not learn anything, but it might make you feel better.

Mpox

Transmission

This article (2025-09-05) says that the World Health Organization has declared an end to the worldwide mpox public health emergency. While mpox is still out there, it’s not a global emergency.

However, mpox is still a declared health emergency in Africa, as this statement (2025-09-04) from Africa CDC says.

Measles

Transmission

According to the Government of Canada Measles and Rubella Monitoring Report (updated 2025-09-08), in the week ending 16 August, the following jurisdictions had the following number of cases:

  • Canada: 50;
  • BC: 23;
  • Alberta: 18;
  • Manitoba: 9.

The all-Canada figure is down from 82 cases last week, but BC went up slightly from 20 to 23.