2026-08-21 General

COVID-19

Vaccines

💉 This paper from USA (2026-07-31) reports that brain surgery patients who got a COVID-19 vaccination (92% of which were mRNA) within 100 days before surgery had a median post-surgery survival time that was about twice as long as the median for people who did not get a COVID-19 vaccination survived. Influenza vaccines didn’t give any added protection.

Please tell your relatives who think that the COVID-19 vaccine is the work of the devil that actually it’s proven good against cancer, not just against COVID-19.

(I’d like to remind you of this paper from USA (2025-10-22) which reported that mice who got an “empty” mRNA vaccine — one with an innocuous payload — had improved cancer outcomes. There are even more papers about mRNA vaccines and cancer here.)

BC Wastewater

Wastewater looks like it is falling this week, but that might be noise.

💩💧 From Jeff’s wastewater spreadsheet, with data through 2026-08-09:

RSV

Vaccines (and things like vaccines)

💉👶 This paper from France (2026-08-10) reports that babies given Nirsevimab shortly after birth had about a 30% lower rate of RSV-lower-respiratory-tract infection-hospitalization in their first year of life than ones who did not. However, this protection waned after that: treated babies and untreated babies had no difference in hospitalization rates.

💉🤰 This paper from UK (2026-07-01) reports that babies born to mothers who got an RSV vaccination (brand name RSVpreF) had lower risk of getting hospitalized for RSV than those who did not get some sort of RSV immunization:

  • 76% lower risk for infants up to 3 months old;
  • 39% lower risk for infants up to 6 months old.

Similarly, this paper from Australia (2026-08-17) reports that maternal vaccination with RSVpreF dropped the risk of their baby being hospitalized by 78% to 81% in the first six months.

Measles

Transmission

According to the Government of Canada Measles and Rubella Monitoring Report (updated 2026-08-17), in the week ending 8 August 2026, the following jurisdictions had the following number of new measles cases:

  • Canada: 2;
  • Manitoba: 2.