Transmission This great preprint of healthcare workers in the Netherlands finds that despite having similar PCR results for vaccinated and unvaccinated people, vaccinated people actually are less likely to have actual infectious viruses. PCR tests look for pieces of RNA, but the RNA might be fragments, it’s not necessarily whole virus which can cause infection.… Continue reading 2021-08-21/22 General
Author: Ducky
2021-08-20 BC
Press Briefing The biggest news from today’s snap press briefing was that Interior Health has announced a new set of health-authority-wide restrictions to combat the rising case counts there. This supplements the previous orders which were only for the Central Okanagan. Also, everybody is asked to avoid non-essential travel into the Interior. The next biggest… Continue reading 2021-08-20 BC
2021-08-20 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that masking was responsible for a 68% reduction in transmissions and that regular testing got the reduction up to 77%. This preprint looked at different mitigation measures in schools in Switzerland. Some highlights of the reductions in viral dosage they saw: Keeping all the windows open in winter: 14x Universal… Continue reading 2021-08-20 General
2021-08-19 BC
Statistics +689 cases, +2 deaths, +4,330 first doses, +11,283 second doses. Currently 121 in hospital / 56 in ICU, 5,982 active cases, 150,377 recovered. first doses second doses of adults 83.7% 75.3% of over-12s 82.9% 74.0% of all BCers 75.4% 67.3% We have 497,365 doses in fridges; we’ll use it up in 24.9 days at… Continue reading 2021-08-19 BC
2021-08-19 General
Vaccines I see a lot of anxiety about vaccines decreasing in effectiveness. In the US, Biden announced that third-dose-boosters would start being delivered on 20 August, never mind that the FDA has not yet approved boosters. Here is an example of someone showing the waning effectiveness of the vaccines: But some of the studies have… Continue reading 2021-08-19 General
2021-08-18 BC
Uh-oh This article reports that Kelowna General has started to cancel surgeries because of the COVID surge. The BC modelling group has released another report, which says we are fucked if we don’t introduce stronger mitigation measures and vaccination rates. Transmission This paper says that wildfire smoke makes COVID-19 more transmissible. Statistics +553 cases, +1… Continue reading 2021-08-18 BC
2021-08-18 General
Vaccines There has been a lot of discussing recently about waning effectiveness of vaccines. I want to editorialize for a moment: you expect vaccine effectiveness against infection to appear worse in real life than in the studies, and to appear worse over time. More time to get infected. If the vaccine is 95% effective over… Continue reading 2021-08-18 General
2021-08-17 BC
First Nations This Twitter thread shows that First Nations people are significantly less vaxxed than settlers. Statistics +501 cases, +1 death, +3,571 first doses, +13,507 second doses. Currently 111 in hospital / 51 in ICU, 5,296 active cases, 149,847 recovered. first doses second doses of adults 83.5% 74.9% of over-12s 82.7% 73.5% of all BCers… Continue reading 2021-08-17 BC
2021-08-17 General
Variants This article talks about a lot of things, but says: Breakthrough cases appear to be increasing for Delta. However, they don’t give any “before” numbers, and it’s not clear if it’s just because the number of vaccinated people is increasing. The absolute number of breakthrough cases is still low. The average age of a… Continue reading 2021-08-17 General
2021-08-16 BC
Vaccination Clinics This article says that one of the North Shore vax clinics is closing due to lack of demand (noting that the North Shore has really high vax rates). Statistics Fri/Sat: +532 casesSat/Sun: +441 casesSun/Mon: +461 cases +1 death, average +3,739 first doses, average +18,575 second doses over the weekend. Currently 104 in hospital… Continue reading 2021-08-16 BC