2026-03-06 General

Multiple Pathogens

Vaccines

💉👃 I know I am repeating myself, but there is something extraordinary going on that I want to repeat/summarize. I have talked about “universal vaccines” which work by revving up the immune system in isolation, but I want to point out that there are THREE nasal “universal vaccines” that have had animal studies, and one has started a Phase 2 trial. The Stanford study has gotten the most press, probably because, yunno, Stanford, but there are two other, slightly different ones:

  • ENA Respiratory/University of Maryland: This press release (2026-02-02) says that U Maryland and ENA Respiratory currently doing a Phase 2 trial in the US, after doing a Phase 1 trial in Australia (2025-10-27). Their treatment, INNA-051, boosts the immune system with toll-like receptor agonists.
  • Columbia University: This article (2025-08-23) about this paper (2025-08-15) says that they found that people missing the ISG15 gene had a constant low-level inflammation and never got sick. ISG15 suppressed some proteins, so the researchers gave mice mRNA to produce those proteins, and voilà, the mice didn’t get sick.
  • Stanford University: This press release (2026-02-19) and this article (2026-03-06) about this paper (2026-02-19) reports that their nasal spray mimics the T cell signals that directly stimulate innate immune cells in the lungs with some toll-like receptors in mice.

Interestingly — well, to me at least — the Stanford group was inspired by the BCG (tuberculosis) vaccine after a study (2023-11-30) found that after finding that it could rev the immune system for three months.

I have been wondering about the BCG vaccine for literally years: if you look at my Non-Corona Virus Vaccines against COVID-19 page, you’ll see that I listed seventeen studies from 2020 to 2023 of the effectiveness of the BCG vaccination against COVID-19, with vaccine effectiveness varying between 0% and 100%. (BCG is also highly variable against tuberculosis; Wikipedia details theories as to why.) The 0% isn’t that useful, but the number of studies which found vaccine effectiveness in the 70-100% range told me there was something interesting going on there, and I guess now we know what.

I’ll say again: I don’t think it’s a good idea to be on an immune booster permanently because it causes inflammation, and chronic inflammation is bad. However, short term inflammation from a “universal vaccine” is probably no more dangerous than short term inflammation from a respiratory infection. (Maybe even less dangerous.) Also, I’m not sure, but it is likely that a nasal spray only revs up the immune system of the respiratory tract. Maybe there won’t be systemic effects?

I have this dream that when flu season rolls around, everybody in the country boosts their immune system for two weeks or a month, and that cuts the amount of flu down to almost nothing.

I also am hopeful that boosting the immune system will prevent people from getting sick but still allowing people’s adaptive immune system from learning about the pathogen. In such a case, you would want to expose yourself to different pathogens while you are “universally immune”.

It’s also possible that this research could help all infections, not just respiratory infections. If the “universal vaccines” are given as a shot instead of a nasal spray, maybe they could fight against wound infections. 🦀 Maybe revving up the immune system could rev up cancer immunotherapies?

COVID-19

Long COVID

This paper from Sweden (2026-03-03) reports that people who had had various respiratory conditions before the pandemic hit were much more likely to get Long COVID. Here are the risks for men and women who had these conditions in 2019 or 12 months prior to their Long COVID diagnosis compared to matched controls without Long COVID:

conditionmenwomen
acute respiratory tract infection2.47x2.22x
asthma1.76x1.95x
bronchitis2.15x2.71x
asthma (previous 12 months)4.18x3.76x

This paper from USA (2026-03-20) reports that the weighted prevalence of Long COVID declined from 19.7% in 2022 to 13.7% in 2024.

COVID-Related Excess Death and Sickness

This paper from UK (2026-02-25) reports that, when they tested children at age 30 months (2.5 years) and age 78 months (6.5 year), the ones who they tested 1-3 years after the lockdowns had higher variability in the executive function scores. Children who were not yet in school when the pandemic started had steeper improvements over the four years than children who had already started primary school at the start of the pandemic.

Vaccines

💉 This paper from Japan (2025-08-05) reports that Novavax’ vaccine offered durable protection for at least a year. 🎉 The study was done between 5 April 2022 and 18 October 2023; as near as I can tell, the Novavax vaccine was based on COVID Classic during that time period.

💉 This press release from the European Medicines Agency (2026-02-27) says that the EMA has approved Moderna’s combo influenza/COVID-19 vaccine. It still needs to get rubber-stamped approved by the European Commission.

Obviously this doesn’t affect what vaccines the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) will approve or that BC will stock, but it’s a good sign that the USA FDA was stunningly incompetent and/or partisan when they said they wouldn’t even look at that vax PHAC is likely to approve it.

The combo vax actually is a four-in-one vax, not just a two-in-one. In addition to one COVID-19 strain, the vax will also have elements against Influenza A/H1N1, Influenza A/H2N3, and Influenza B/Victoria. The press release says a more polite form of “of course they will change the strains every year, we aren’t stupid”.

Note that I’m not as excited about the combo vax as you might expect me to be. COVID-19 waves do not happen in lockstep with influenza waves. I can imagine that if you give the shot during influenza season (which pretty reliably peaks somewhere between November and February), it might not be very useful for COVID-19.

Transmission

This doctoral dissertation from Germany (2026-02-26) reports that health care workers (HCWs) taking breaks with colleagues without adhering to guidelines were about five times more likely to catch COVID-19 than HCWs who did not. For patients, sharing a room with someone who was COVID-positive raised the risk of catching COVID-19 by 488%.

Measles

Transmission

According to the Government of Canada Measles and Rubella Monitoring Report (updated 2026-03-02), in the week ending 21 February 2025, the following jurisdictions had the following number of measles cases:

  • Canada: 85;
  • Manitoba: 70 (!);
  • Alberta: 12;
  • Ontario: 3;