Mitigation Measures This preprint looked at high-risk exposures and said that the risk of catching COVID-19 was: 3.02x higher if the infected person was part of your household (versus not), 2.1x higher if the transmission was indoors (versus outdoors), 2.15x higher if the interaction lasted 3 hrs or more (vs. shorter) among unvaccinated and partially-vaccinated… Continue reading 2022-01-26 General
Author: Ducky
2022-01-25 BC
Press Conference Here’s what I thought was new and interesting from today’s press conference: The case growth rate is dropping, but there are still lots of people sick. The vax card program is being extended to 30 June 2022 for people over 12. If we are in “a better place” before then, they might drop… Continue reading 2022-01-25 BC
2022-01-25 General
Long COVID This preprint says that they found four predictors which are strongly correlated with Long COVID: type 2 diabetes, SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the blood, Epstein-Barr virus in the blood, and specific autoantibodies. (Here’s an article translating the subject into lay-speak. Paywalled, sorry.) This paper also found a Long COVID signature/diagnostic, this time in age,… Continue reading 2022-01-25 General
2022-01-22/23/24 BC
Philosophy This article talks about a (perceived) disconnect between Dr. Henry saying that we need to manage COVID-19 like we do other viruses, but not getting rid of all the mitigation measures. The author says that lots of people have been radicalized, traumatized such that they are COVID-obsessed. I believe that there is nuance missing.… Continue reading 2022-01-22/23/24 BC
2022-01-22/23/24 General
Weather This article says that the amount of lightning decreased during the pandemic because of less fossil fuel burning and hence fewer aerosols. Vaccines This article says that in extremely rare circumstances, people report Long COVID symptoms after vaccination. Variants This preprint says that the risk of hospitalization from Omicron is 25% that of Delta,… Continue reading 2022-01-22/23/24 General
Only 17K deaths?
There is outrage going around. People feel like they’ve been lied to because there were “only 17K deaths due to only COVID-19” in England and Wales. Outrageous! This article has a slightly different explanation on the 17K deaths number, and they are more likely to be correct than me. Go read that article and ignore… Continue reading Only 17K deaths?
2022-01-21 BC
NOTE: I had been grabbing the number of tests from the wrong place on the BC CDC dashboard, which meant that my positivity numbers were wrong. I’ll go back and fix blog posts retroactively, but among the charts below is a rolling 7-day average of positivity from the BC CDC dashboard. Transmission I’ve gotten some… Continue reading 2022-01-21 BC
2022-01-21 General
Vaccines Pfizer had disappointing results with its first trial of COVID-19 vax for the under-5 year-olds. The youngest kids mounted an adequate response, but not the older kids, which to me says that the dose was too low. This article speculates that Pfizer will add a third minidose (3 mg, compared to the 50mg it… Continue reading 2022-01-21 General
2022-01-20 BC
Mitigation Measures This article says that the province has walked back their statement on unvaccinated people: unvaccinated people really do have to isolate for TEN days. (Maybe a staffer’s fingers slipped?) I am pleased. Transmission The BC COVID-19 Modelling Group has released another report. They think that: We will see ~50K cases per day at… Continue reading 2022-01-20 BC
2022-01-20 General
Transmission I found this article interesting. They modelled two air flights and got pretty good agreement with reality. On the first flight, early enough in the pandemic that people weren’t wearing masks, one infected passenger on a 12-hour flight in business class got 12 people sick. On the second flight, four infected passengers on a… Continue reading 2022-01-20 General