2024-11-22 BC

Influenza levels are still low, both in BC and in the US northwest. I still don’t think it’s the optimum time yet to get a flu shot. H5N1 Transmission For info on the BC human H5N1 case, see the General post. This article (2024-11-17) says that there are now 37 infected poultry flocks in BC.… Continue reading 2024-11-22 BC

2024-11-16 BC

All indicators say that the levels of COVID-19 are coming down noticeably at the moment. Regarding influenza vaccines, flu rates have ticked up slightly but are still really low. It feels to me like we are about two weeks behind last year’s flu season, so I think that means flu will probably peak in late… Continue reading 2024-11-16 BC

2024-11-08 BC

I still think it’s not the right time yet to get a flu shot. There’s not a lot of flu going around, and historically it peaks in late December. It *did* peak early (at the end of November) two years ago — but that was our first season post-mitigation measures and we’d already seen a… Continue reading 2024-11-08 BC

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Categorized as BC

2024-11-03 BC

Other indicators are difficult to interpret, but wastewater COVID-19 levels are sharply, unmistakably down this week. Charts From the BC CDC Situation Report: From the Viral Pathogen Characterization page: In the week ending Oct. 26, among confirmed cases, there were Reminder: the graphs below don’t tell how many cases there were, but how many cases… Continue reading 2024-11-03 BC

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2024-10-26 BC

The hospitalizations per week and ICU admits per week charts look like they are going down, but I don’t believe them: the in-hospital chart looks like it is going up, and the hospitalizations per week and ICU admits per week pretty much always get adjusted upwards later. Meanwhile, the number of cases and the positivity… Continue reading 2024-10-26 BC

2024-10-18 BC

The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 has unmistakenly gone up since August, and there is a small but very real rise in the number of COVID-19 cases that they have seen. Positivity, however, hasn’t really moved all that much (and wastewater is hard to interpret), so I don’t know what to tell you… Continue reading 2024-10-18 BC

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Categorized as BC, Testing

2024-10-12 BC

Politics This article (2024-10-06) reports that the Conservative candidate for BC Premier, John Rustad seems to be open to the idea of punishing — possibly harshly — public health officials, doctors, police, and politicians for implementing various COVID-19 mitigation measures (particularly vaccinations). This is some dark and scary shit. However, in this video, Rustad says… Continue reading 2024-10-12 BC

2024-10-05 BC

Note: I urged people recently in several forums to get a flu shot. I should have qualified a little. I think you should get a flu shot THIS SEASON, but I don’t think you need to get it TODAY. Sure, if you want to get it done now so you don’t forget, fine. But I… Continue reading 2024-10-05 BC

2024-09-26 BC

Statistics Provincial weekly data releases have resumed effective today. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the statistics are different and not as transparent: the raw numbers are no longer published, just graphs (usually per million people). (This provincial report says the BC population is ~5.6M, by the way.) They have also removed… Continue reading 2024-09-26 BC

2024-09-25 General/BC

About scheduling: I seem to take longer and longer to get this done. Unless anybody says something about it, that’s not likely to change. COVID-19 Long COVID This paper from USA (2024-08-09) reports that 71% of pediatric Long COVID patients have problems with orthostatic intolerance, which basically means they have trouble with maintaining blood pressure… Continue reading 2024-09-25 General/BC