2024-12-20 General

Recommended Reading

⭐❗❗This article (2024-12-17) talks about how cats might be an effective “mixing vessel” and transmission vector for the next pandemic. TL;DR: Cats have avian and mammal receptors and get very very close to humans on a regular basis.

COVID-19

Long COVID

⭐ This preprint from USA (2024-12-11) reports that people who went on to get Long COVID had significantly different gut flora than people who did not, as the following diagram of gut microbe levels show (Long COVID levels in the left column, non-Long COVID levels on the right column, names on the right):

The roman numerals show how statistically significant the level was, with low roman numerals meaning higher significance.

They also found four different symptom clusters, and could associate some of the clusters with specific gut microbes. The symptom clusters were:

  • Gastrointestinal & sensory: Abdominal pain, diarrhea, anosmia/dysgeusia.
  • Musculoskeletal & neuropsychiatric: Myalgia, arthralgia, impaired mobility, paresthesia, headache, lightheadedness, brain fog, sleep problems, palpitation, and mood issues.
  • Cardiopulmonary: Dyspnea, chest pain, exertional malaise, and cough.
  • Fatigue-only: Fatigue.

They found one group of microbes associated with the GI & sensory cluster, and another group associated with the fatigue cluster, but they couldn’t find groups that were strongly linked with the other two clusters.

AGAIN This report of a survey from Ireland (2024-12-10) reports that Long COVID was more common among:

  • women,
  • people in their 40s,
  • ⭐ people who were more physically active before (!!!),
  • healthcare workers, and
  • people with multiple chronic illnesses.

⭐ This preprint (2024-12-12) reports that people who have a genetic predisposition to thromboembolism (a form of blood clotting) are more likely to get Long COVID. I hope this helps lead is to more understanding of Long COVID pathways.

AGAIN This paper from USA (2024-12-13) reports that respondents to a survey said:

  • 8.4% ever had Long COVID, up from 6.9% in 2022;
  • 3.6% currently have Long COVID, up slightly from 3.4% in 2022;
  • 2.3% said that Long COVID was currently limiting activity at least “a little bit”.

I would like to point out that even 2.3% is a really, really large number. That’s 7.7M people just in the USA.

AGAIN This report by the US CDC (2024-12-19) says that a large survey of adult non-institutionalized Americans found that 6.4% of have Long COVID; 1.2% of that population reported “significant activity limitations”.

AGAIN This paper from USA (2024-12-18) reports that an updated classification algorithm found that there was likely Long COVID in 20% of participants with known COVID-19 and 4% of participants who hadn’t had COVID-19 that they knew of.

Pathology

⭐ This paper from Slovakia (2024-12-20) reports that people who have mitochondrial haplotype cluster H + U5b are more likely to have severe cases of COVID-19. (I think that “H + U5b” means “people who have the U5b haplotype and the H haplotype, but I am not certain of that.)

(FYI, U5 is a haplotype which about 11% of Europeans and 10% of Americans have. Modern Basques and Cantabrians (from northern Spain) almost exclusively have haplotype U5b. Haplotype H is extremely common in Europeans (41%!), but also shows up in the Middle East and North Africa.)

This paper from Hong Kong and UK (2024-12-07) found that cancer patients with COVID-19 were much more likely to have major cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) than those without COVID-19. This was true in both UK pre-Omicron and in Hong Kong during Omicron, though the risks were lower in Hong Kong/Omicron than UK/pre-Omicron. The risks for COVID cancer patients compared to non-COVID cancer patients were:

UK (pre-Omicron)HK (Omicron)
CVD1.8x1.4x
CVD-related death4.3x1.7x
all-cause mortality4.7x1.6x

⭐ However, they also said that people who were fully vaccinated had no association between COVID-19 and CVDs.

AGAIN This paper using USA data (2024-11-28) reports that COVID-19 gave higher risks for heart issues to hospitalized people under 20 years old than influenza or RSV did. Compared to people with COVID-19:

  • People with influenza had a 61% lower risk of myocarditis;
  • people with RSV had an 85% lower risk of myocarditis;
  • people with RSV had a 49% lower risk of bradyarrhythmias/heart block;
  • people with influenza had no statistically significantly different risk of bradyarrhythmias/heart block;
  • Tachyarrhythmias, sudden cardiac arrest, and in-hospital mortality had no statistically significant differences for either influenza or RSV.

⭐ This article from USA (2024-12-05) reports that Air Force trainees who had physical fitness tests in 2021 were much more likely to fail if they tested positive for COVID-19 (presumably at any time before the tests, though I can’t tell for sure from what is visible to me in front of a paywall). COVID-19 positive trainees failed their end-of-training test 3.65 times more often than COVID-19 negative trainees.

⭐ This paper with data from the Netherlands (2024-12-17) found that the immune system reacted more strongly to rando pathogens after lockdowns, but less strongly after a COVID-19 vaccination.

This makes sense if you think of the immune system as something which gets tired when used. During lockdowns, the immune system wasn’t taxed very heavily, so it could come after pathogens stronger and harder. The COVID-19 vax stressed the immune system, so it wasn’t able to come after other pathogens as hard. Maybe? That’s the way I’m thinking of it.

Vaccines

This paper from Australia (2024-12-12) reports that a vaccine made with just the receptor binding domain (the tip part which docks to the human ACE2 receptor and thus gets the cell to open up and let it in) arranged in a kind of a bumpy ball is significantly more effective (in mice) than a ball-with-full-spikes. The idea is that you get the immune system to focus on the receptor (“tip”) part instead of making antibodies which glom onto the less-mechanically-significant “leg” of the spike.

Treatments

This article (2024-12-17) reports that an article which said that a March 2020 which said that hydroxychloroquine was an effective treatment for COVID-19 was bullshit was (finally) retracted.

⭐ This paper (2024-12-17) reports that COVID-19 appears to have developed very minimal resistance against Paxlovid. They found only four mutations which might be related to Paxlovid (from only six people) in the cohort from a pre-Omicron study, and zero mutations in a cohort from an Omicron second study. (The total number of people in both cohorts was 912.)

Recommended Reading

This blog post (2024-12-18) tells the story of a writers’ retreat cruise where zero COVID precautions were taken, there was almost zero medical support available on the ship (no Paxlovid, no tests), more than half the people got sick, and at least two people got Long COVID.

This (long, old) article (2020-07-23) talks about COVID-19 and borders. It is US-focused, but talks a fair bit about Canada, and some of the things it talks about apply to any country with a border.

This longread (2024-12-18) talks about how COVID affected progress on climate change.

H5N1

Transmission

⭐❗❗This article (2024-12-20) reports that they can’t figure out how H5N1 is getting spread among California herds, which is part of why California’s governor has declared a state of emergency for bird flu (2024-12-18). The article talks about all the mitigation measures they have been trying, but nothing seems to work and a herd in southern California — far from the multitude of Central Valley herds — somehow caught H5N1 also.

This article (2024-12-20) reports that there are now 659 infected herds in California (with 875 herds across 16 states nationally).

Poultry keeps getting sick all over, too, but I haven’t been reporting on that as much because it feels like old news to me. Wild birds have been getting hammered by H5N1 for years. Poultry farms have been getting H5N1 outbreaks for years. (Outbreaks in poultry also aren’t as scary to me as outbreaks in mammals are, me being a mammal.)

The first article (the one about mystery cattle spread) does mention that so many flocks in California have been infected that eggs are getting scarce in California.

This article (2024-12-18) reports that the US has identified its first case of severe H5N1 — a person in Louisiana over 65 with underlying health issues. Genotyping of the patient’s strain showed it was the bird-type strain (genotype D1.1), not the cattle-type strain (B3.13.); the patient had a backyard flock, so it seems pretty easy to believe that they were infected by their birds. (D1.1 is the same strain which took down the BC teen.)

⭐🎉🥳 The same article mentions that the BC teen is still in hospital, but out of critical care, yay!

AGAIN People keep getting sick. In addition to the severe case in Louisiana (see previous snippet), this article (2024-12-12) reports the first probable case in Delaware. This article (2024-12-17) reports that they found the Delaware case with routine surveillance, but that CDC couldn’t confirm that it was H5N1.

This article (2024-12-20) confirms that a poultry worker in Wisconsin got infected with H5N1. This article (2024-12-19) says her case is mild.

This press release (2024-12-17) reports that the feds are continuing their rollout of mandatory bulk milk testing to seven more states, including Washington.

AGAIN This press release (2024-12-14) reports that California found infected raw milk from a second company (from Valley Milk Simply Bottled), and recalled it.

⭐ This press release (2024-12-20) confirms the two cats who died after drinking milk from Raw Farms LLC were H5N1-positive. They did not say which clade it was, but with the raw milk link, it was probably the cattle strain.

⭐ The release also says that that three cats from the same household in southern California (who did not have known exposure to raw milk) got sick and two of the cats died. They probably had H5N1; the living one tested positive for influenza A and I don’t think they can test the dead cats. They are waiting for confirmation of what type of influenza A the third cat had/has. (Apparently influenza A is rare in cats.)

Good news: the cat’s humans aren’t sick (and have been given antiviral meds).

Testing

This press release (2024-12-17) reports that Labcorp has an H5N1 test available in all but one US states. I don’t know if/when it will be available in Canada, but our needs are lower than the USA.

Recommended Reading

This long article (2024-12-20) talks about how the USA fucked up mismanaged the dairy H5N1 response so badly. (I don’t want to ever hear anybody ever again slagging on China’s or African countries’ responses to outbreaks!)

Mystery DR Congo Illness

⭐⭐ This article (2024-12-19) reports that most of the samples from the mystery illness in DR Congo show malaria, heightened in severity by the rampant malnutrition in that part of the country. However, one man died with symptoms of a hemorrhagic fever, which malaria does not cause. So it is pretty certain that not as many people are infected with Mystery Illness, but there might be some Mystery Illness sprinkled in among the malaria. 🙁

Mpox

Transmission

This article (2024-12-19) says that 3,095 mpox cases were reported last week with most (2,632) in the DR Congo.

Vaccines

This GAVI press release (2024-12-20) says that 11,200 doses of mpox vax are on their way to Nigeria from the US via GAVI, as the first part of 305,000 doses that GAVI is delivering on behalf of the US.

Meanwhile this article (2024-12-19) says that 50,000 doses are expected to arrive this week from Japan, as part of 3 million which are coming from Japan.

So vaccination is ramping up. I’m glad to see that.