It has been aggressively hot for the past few days, such that I have not wanted to have a hot laptop on my lap. Updates are going to be a bit behind for a few more days.
Origins
This Twitter thread (from 17 May) is interesting. It from someone who describes the changes from bat coronaviruses to the Wuhan strain. Basically, they say, “If *I* was going to engineer a virus, I certainly wouldn’t do it like that. These modifications are just stupid, it would be much better to do these modifications.”
This interview with a Westerner who worked in the Wuhan virology lab says that she’s pretty sure COVID-19 did not come from a lab leak.
Vaccines
This study, from the UK, also shows that mixing vax is better than matching vax in a test tube. (Here’s a mass media article on the study.) It found that people who got Pfizer first, then AZ, gave about the half the antibody levels as Pfizer+Pfizer, and about 5x as AZ+AZ. AZ first, then Pfizer, gave about the same as Pfizer+Pfizer. Mixing gave significantly better T cell responses than matching, with AZ first then Pfizer working better than Pfizer then AZ.
This article reports on a study that says that the mRNA vaxes might protect us for years.
There’s a paper going around which claims that the harms from vaccination are on a par with the harms from not getting vaccinated. This Twitter thread absolutely demolishes that paper.
Mitigation Measures
This article says that, because of Delta’s increased contagiousness, some European governments are asking people to ditch cloth masks and wear medical-grade masks instead.
Unintended consequences
Influenza really disappeared during the pandemic:
Europe
I don’t post much about COVID-19 in the rest of the world. In part, it’s scope creep, but it’s also depressing.
Well, today I was surprised to see just how well Europe is doing. All the bad news from UK, South America, Indonesia, etc. etc. etc. shoved Continental Europe right out of my consciousness. Look how well they are doing!
