COVID-19
Vaccines
AGAIN 💉 This paper from USA (2026-11-02) reports that there was no difference found in children aged 18 to 30 months between those whose mothers had gotten a COVID-19 vaccination and those whose mothers had not.
COVID-Related Excess Sickness and Death
🧠 This paper using electronic records data from Denmark, USA, and UK (2026-11-05) reports that getting COVID-19 does not increase your risk of neurodegenerative diseases. This is different from what previous studies found. The difference is probably in how this paper and previous papers handle controls/confounding, but alas, I don’t have time right now to dig deeply into whether this paper’s techniques mean it is more correct or less correct than previous studies. (The similar analysis I did last week was a lot of work!) I will try to do that for the next post; in the meantime you can check out Augie Ray’s analysis.
☠️ This paper from Ontario (2026-10-31) reports that the deaths from COVID-19 during the declared pandemic emergency period were between 4.5% and 8.4% of all deaths. Between the end of the declared pandemic emergency and March 2025, the COVID-19 deaths, were not statistically different. IT’S NOT GONE, Y’ALL!
(And note that they only looked at death, not at all of the other qualities of life that COVID-19 can degrade.)
Long COVID
This paper from USA (2026-11-03) reports that about half of people with Long COVID recovered basically completely after three years, although recovery was wildly non-uniform. They found:
- 60% of patients with smell or taste issues recovered;
- Only 19% of patients with cross-body systems recovered;
- More people whose first infection was Omicron recovered than people who got infected pre-Omicron (remember, we are still in Omicron);
- More people who were aged 18-45 recovered than people who were 46-64.
Influenza
Vaccines
💉 This article (2026-11-06) reports that Canada has approved both Moderna’s mRNA flu vax (mRNA-1010/mFLUSIVA) and Moderna’s combo flu-COVID-19 vax (mCOFLU, mFLUSIVA + Spikevax) for adults over 49. (And it won’t be available this season.)
Variants
The Government of Canada says (2026-11-06) that 100% of the flu A samples they’ve collected are H1N1.
H5N1
Transmission
☠️🐦⬛🐄🧍♂️😷 This article (2026-11-05) reports that three humans got bird flu in Washington State (Yakima County) from getting exposed to sick dairy cattle. The second one died. 😬
Measles
Transmission
🎉 According to the Government of Canada Measles and Rubella Monitoring Report (updated 2026-11-02), in the week ending 24 October 2026, there were zero new measles cases in Canada.