2026-03-20 General

This week’s post is short. That happens sometimes. There just was not very much material that seemed appropriate/worthwhile this week.

Multiple Pathogens

Transmission

😲 This paper with data from three countries and regions over three years (2026-03-14) reports that an influenza A infection decreases your risk of COVID-19 by 94.24%(!) for five weeks. On the other hand, getting COVID-19 raises your risk of getting influenza A slightly. The authors didn’t find any other influences between COVID-19, influenza A, influenza B, and/or RSV.

COVID-19

Long COVID

There is an issue — and I’m guilty of it too — where “Long COVID” is used in an ambiguous manner. Long COVID is used to mean both 1) the very worst possible manifestation of post-COVID symptoms (the horrible ME/CFS-ish stuff) and 2) “any symptoms that last more than 90 days” (including a cough, loss of smell, pain, headaches, etc.).

I have the feeling that if someone says, “I have Long COVID”, that means they have the ME/CFS-ish stuff. If they don’t have the ME/CFS-ish stuff, they’ll say, “I still haven’t gotten my smell back”, or something about the specific symptom. :-/

One thing the double-use of the word does is makes some scientific papers sound literally unbelievable. If someone who thinks of Long COVID as Type #1 hears about a paper which says that Long COVID (Type #2) hits 30%-40% of people who have gotten COVID-19, then I fear they are just going to ignore the paper: they know that 40% of their friends are not bedridden. (The number who get Long COVID Type #1 is I think more like 0.5%.)

I don’t know what to do about this.

🐁🦠 This paper (2026-03-18) reports that scientists were able to insert mitochondria into mouse cells reliably. They said that they were able to reverse Parkinson’s in mice, which was not intuitive to me. What does look like an obvious target for mitochondria therapy is ME/CFS and Long COVID (definition #1)! This article (2026-03-18) talks about the study in more accessible terms.

Vaccines

💉 This paper from Norway (2026-03-20) reports that babies got some COVID-19 protection if their mothers got a COVID-19 vaccination while pregnant. This protection lasted about five months, with the adjusted risk of hospitalization for COVID-19 compared to no vaccination in utero declining from 52% lower risk for the first two months to 24% lower risk between three and five months.

💉 This paper from Germany (2026-03-16) reports that vaccination cuts the risk by about half against getting persistent respiratory and cognitive symptoms. This protection lasted at least a year.

They did say that vaccination did not protect against persistent fatigue, however.

One of the things they mentioned was “Findings indicate that broader PCS definitions may mask clinically relevant heterogeneity and support the need for differentiated, phenotype-oriented definitions that reflect clinical presentations of PCS, including differential responses to vaccination” — which is very similar to the complaint I made above about how “Long COVID” meant too many things.

💉 This paper from BC (2026-03-18) reports that women who got most of their prenatal care from a midwife were less likely to vaccinate their babies by the times recommended. Compared to women who got most of their prenatal care from doctors, the women who used midwifes:

  • were 19% less likely to get their babies all their recommended vaccinations by 2 years of age;
  • were 150% more likely to refuse any vaccine;
  • were 24% less likely to get their babies the DTaP-HB-IPV-Hib vaccine by six months.

Measles

Transmission

According to the Government of Canada Measles and Rubella Monitoring Report (updated 2026-03-16), in the week ending 7 March 2025, the following jurisdictions had the following number of measles cases:

  • Canada: 93;
  • Manitoba: 46;
  • Alberta: 44;
  • Ontario: 2;
  • BC: 1.