Flu is still going up, but more slowly. RSV is still slowly slowly going down, COVID-19 is holding steady or maybe going down… but there were almost no COVID-19 deaths this week! (Or the Province’s reporting is messed up, that’s always possible.) Charts From the BC CDC Situation Report: Comparison vs. Other Influenza-Like-Illnesses, from the… Continue reading 2025-02-15 BC
Author: Ducky
2025-02-15 General
I have been avoiding saying much about the chaos in the US government health sector, but it’s been difficult. COVID-19 Long COVID AGAIN π§ͺThis paper from Australia (2025-01-13) reports that people with Long COVID and ME/CFS both have bigger left hippocampal subfields than healthy controls. Furthermore, the size of the left hippocampal subfield correlated with… Continue reading 2025-02-15 General
2025-01-07 BC
COVID-19 levels are still lower than it’s been in a long time. Flu levels, on the other hand, are still going up. Charts From the BC CDC Situation Report: Comparison vs. Other Influenza-Like-Illnesses, from the Viral Pathogen Characterization page: Holy cow, was I wrong about influenza being over*! It is WAY higher than it was… Continue reading 2025-01-07 BC
2025-01-07 General
COVID-19 Long COVID AGAIN π This article (2025-02-04) refers to this paper from the USA (paywalled, 2025-02-03), which reports that 1.4% of children surveyed had had Long COVID, and 0.4% currently have Long COVID. 80% of the kids with active Long COVID have an ability limitation that they didn’t have before catching COVID-19. They also… Continue reading 2025-01-07 General
2025-01-31 BC
There is a lot of respiratory illness going around, but right now, it looks like only about 6% of it is COVID-19! The last time there were so few people in hospital with COVID-19 was August 2023, and there haven’t been as few weekly confirmed cases since before testing was severely curtailed during the big… Continue reading 2025-01-31 BC
2025-01-31 General
It is still a little harder finding good articles / papers than a few weeks ago. In addition to all the chaff from Trump in the health sites I monitor, there are now a ton of news articles saying, “Today is the five year anniversary of the first COVID case appearing in <jurisdiction>, what have… Continue reading 2025-01-31 General
2025-01-25 BC
Everything COVID looks low-ish. Not gone, not low on an absolute scale, but definitely low on a relative scale. For example, while the lowest number in hospital with COVID-19 that we’ve seen since Omicron hit was ~65 (in the summer of 2023), right now we’re at about 80. Is this something special to BC, or… Continue reading 2025-01-25 BC
2025-01-25 General
Health news was harder to find this week. A lot of my sources were overrun with articles about what trouble the new US president is fomenting, leaving little room for articles about COVID, mpox, or H5N1. βΉοΈ You might have noticed that I sometimes mark snippets with “AGAIN”. Why do I bother showing studies that… Continue reading 2025-01-25 General
2025-01-18 BC
Yay! Something at the very end of this article (2025-01-17) on what the BC teen with bird flu went through says that she’s out of the hospital and back home. π Health Care System This report (2025-01-16) reports that an estimated 28,077 Canadians died while waiting for surgery or diagnostic tests between April 1, 2023… Continue reading 2025-01-18 BC
2025-01-18 General
COVID-19 Long COVID π This paper from Hungary (2025-01-09) reports that people who got remdesivir while they were hospitalized with COVID-19 recovered from Long COVID symptoms faster than those who did not get remdesivir. πππ₯³ If you missed it last week, this paper reports that nasal chlorpheniramine (a first-generation H1 antagonist antihistamine) works really well… Continue reading 2025-01-18 General