2025-10-24 General

COVID-19

Vaccines

🎉 This isn’t about a vaccine exactly, but something that acts like a vaccine — i.e. it prevents you from getting sick. This paper from USA (2025-10-21) describes a small Phase 1 study in healthy adults of a plasmid DNA which, when injected, made the study participants’ cells make tixagevimab and cilgavimab — the two monoclonal antibodies in Evusheld. Thus instead of having to come in for infusions of Evusheld, the people just make the antibodies themselves.

They saw “therapeutic levels” of antibodies for 72 weeks (~16 months) but they didn’t actually check hard for whether the subjects got COVID-19 or not.

Note that this would help even people who are immunocompromised, as it does not depend upon the immune system at all, just garden variety cells.

As part of the procedure, after the injection, the medical personnel administered an electroporation procedure (an electric field applied to cells to briefly increase the permeability of the cell membrane). This was to enhance muscle uptake and expression efficiency.

However, it looks like four people dropped out of the study because they were uncomfortable with the electroporation. I couldn’t tell from the study if the electroporation hurt, or if they were just squicked by the doctors electrifying them.

It did say that all of the adverse effects were related to the injection site and not systemic, i.e. “yow that hurt!” but not “man, I felt like crap for a day and spent it all in bed”.

🎉🎉🎉‼️‼️😲 This article (2025-10-19) about this paper (2025-10-22) reports that mRNA vaccines in general and also the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines specifically boosted survival rates for two types of cancer getting treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors. By a lot.

The article says that the lead author discovered that mice which got an mRNA vaccine which was “non-specific” (which I understand means “didn’t actually target a virus”) in conjunction with regular cancer treatment, the mice had roughly double the survival rate of mice which only got regular immune checkpoint inhibitor cancer treatment.

Let me repeat that: mice that got an mRNA vax had double the survival rate of mice which only got regular treatment.

They said, “gosh, that’s odd”, as one does, and did an electronic records search of people comparing people with two types of cancer who got a COVID-19 mRNA vaccination within 100 days (yes, before or after) the start of the cancer therapy with people who did not.

People who got an mRNA vaccine had a hugely lower risk of dying as people who did not:

  • people who had non-small cell lung cancer had a 49% lower risk of dying;
  • people who had metastatic melanoma had a 66% lower risk of dying.

Let me repeat that: people who got an mRNA vaccine had double or triple the survival rate of people who got only an immune checkpoint inhibitor.

Patients who got a non-mRNA pneumonia or flu vaccines didn’t live any longer than the patients who didn’t get a vaccine.

They still need to do a randomized control study, in part because the people who got mRNA vaccines got their cancer treatment at a later time than the people who didn’t, but still: half to two-thirds lower risk?!?!?! That’s a BFD.

COVID-Related Excess Death and Sickness

🛌 This preprint from Australia (2025-10-17) reports that the more COVID-19 infections people had, the worse (on average), their sleep quality was.

🍆 This paper from China (2025-10-21) reports that men’s sperm quality declined after a COVID-19 infection and took three to five months to recover.

Testing

😥 This paper from Mexico (2025-10-13) reports that they were able to distinguish via compounds in sweat between people infected with COVID-19 and people not infected.

Measles

Transmission

According to the Government of Canada Measles and Rubella Monitoring Report (updated 2025-10-06), in the week ending 27 September, the following jurisdictions had the following number of cases:

  • Canada: 30
  • Alberta: 11;
  • BC: 11;
  • Manitoba: 3;
  • Ontario: 4;
  • Saskatchewan: 1.

Ebola

Transmission

🎉🎉🎉 Remember how the Democratic Republic of Congo was having an Ebola outbreak? This press release (2025-10-19) reports that the last patient has gone home. They have to wait 42 days with no new cases until they can officially declare that the outbreak is over, but it looks pretty over.