Multiple Pathogens
Pathology
🎉🎉🎉 This article (2026-10-01) about this paper (2026-08-22) reports that scientists have discovered a relationship between PTSD, Long COVID, ME/CFS, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis!
They found changes in gene expressions which looked unrelated in the linear readout of the DNA, but whose three-dimensional structures all connected to related points of the biological machinery. These included circuits having to do with “immune and inflammatory signaling, mitochondrial energy production, metabolic regulation, stress-response mechanisms, and neuroendocrine signaling”.
This “grand unified theory” could lead to better diagnostics in the shorter term and better therapies in the longer term!
🐁 This article (2026-09-30) about this paper (2026-08-29) reports that mice who were designed to get ALS had a much more rapid decline in function after getting infected with either COVID-19 or influenza A.
Say it with me: viruses are bad for you!
(No, I don’t know how you make ALS mice, but that’s not important here.)
🩸🅾️🅰️🅱️🆎 Early in the pandemic, people noticed that people with Type O blood were slightly less likely to have severe cases of COVID-19, and people with Type A blood were more likely to have severe cases. (See, for example, this paper (2020-10-14) and this article (2023-08-16).) They didn’t know why, though. One theory was that Type A blood was “stickier”.
Now there’s a new theory. This paper from USA (2026-09-28) says that — if I understand it correctly — people of blood Type X have antibodies to all the non-X blood types, and when an infected person’s body makes new viruses, blood-type-specific glycans (sugars, basically) get incorporated into the shell of the virus. That means that if someone with type A blood gets infected and then infects someone with type O blood, the O person’s antibodies will attack the virus — because of the A glycans.
Now, A- and B-type people do not have antibodies against O-type blood. (This is why they can accept blood from O.) However, O-type people have antibodies against A and B. AB can accept any blood type. This means that type O blood has antibodies to the highest proportion of everyone-else’s-blood than any other blood type, which is an explanation for why people with type O blood have slightly better prognoses when getting COVID-19!
| Blood type | prevalence in Canada | % of Canadian blood that this row can’t take |
| O | 37% | 63% (i.e. 100%-37%) |
| A | 37% | 26% (14%+5%) |
| B | 14% | 42% (37%+5%) |
| AB | 5% | 0% |
This would suggest that people with AB blood ought to have the highest risk of bad outcomes. The papers I saw on the subject lumped AB in with A (probably because there are so few people with AB blood).
Mitigation Measures
💨 This article (undated, in French) warmed my heart. It’s a sex club in Nantes, France, describing the air purification steps they take and the reasons why it is important. Go sex club!
COVID-19
Vaccines
💉🦠 This paper from Germany (2026-10-08) reports that people with higher levels of certain flagellated bacteria — bacteria whose growth is promoted by a higher-fat/processed food diet — had higher levels of fever as a side-effect of COVID-19 vaccination. So you might want to go easy on the candy bars and sodapop for a week before you get a vaccination!
Bundibugyo
Vaccines
🎉💉 This article (2026-10-09) reports that a Bundibugyo-specific vaccine has reached phase 1B. Progress!
Measles
Transmission
According to the Government of Canada Measles and Rubella Monitoring Report (updated 2026-10-05), in the week ending 26 September 2026, the following jurisdictions had the following number of new measles cases:
- Canada: 1;
- BC: 1.