COVID-19 Long COVID This conference presentation (which I think is from China) (2026-05-03) reports that SIM01, a mix of pre- and probiotics, significantly helped Long COVID patients compared to placebo. SIM01 reduced fatigue, insomnia, memory loss, and shortness of breath. (Unfortunately, there’s very little details or information, so this is only slightly more convincing than… Continue reading 2026-05-08 General
Category: COVID-19
2026-05-01 General
COVID-19 Vaccines ❌ The acting head of the US CDC, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, blocked publication of a paper in the US CDC’s weekly (and highly respected) journal. It is hugely unusual for a paper to get blocked like that by a high official (probably unprecedented, though I don’t know all of the US CDC’s history),… Continue reading 2026-05-01 General
2026-04-24 General
COVID-19 Long COVID This long article (2026-04-21) on transauricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) talks a little bit about how some long haulers experimenting with (non-approved) taVNS self-treatment have found relief from taVNS, but the article talks even more about how it has negative effects for some long haulers. (TL;DR: be careful about your experimenting with… Continue reading 2026-04-24 General
2026-04-18 General
Multiple Pathogens Hospitals This article (2026-04-16) about this report (2026-04-16) says that the number of hospitalizations for vaccine-preventable respiratory diseases for Canadians more than doubled between 2019 and 2024, from 66 per 100,000 to 142 per 100,000. (BC had 125 vaccine-preventable respiratory diseases per 100,000 in 2024.) There were almost 60,000 vaccine-preventable respiratory hospitalizations in… Continue reading 2026-04-18 General
2026-04-10 General
Multiple Pathogens 💊 Metformin seems to be a bit of a wonder drug. It helps Type 2 diabetics, people with polycystic ovary syndrome, and it inhibits weight gain. Studies of using metformin to treat or prevent COVID-19 and Long COVID are mixed, but on balance it tends to help, and it helps some groups with… Continue reading 2026-04-10 General
2026-04-03 General
COVID-19 Treatments 🎉 This paper from Israel (2026-03-25) reports that they’ve isolated a monoclonal antibody from recovered COVID-19 patients which works against all variants known so far! The antibody works against a highly-conserved area, and makes the top part of the spike fall off prematurely. Without the top part, the virus can’t dock with the… Continue reading 2026-04-03 General
2026-03-27 General
Multiple Pathogens Pathology This paper from Ontario (2026-03-22) reports, to put it bluntly, that the “immunity debt” theory is hogwash. (The immunity debt theory says that the immune system is like a muscle, and requires exercise to stay in top form so when lockdown reduced exposure to pathogens, the immune system “got out of shape”.)… Continue reading 2026-03-27 General
2026-03-20 General
This week’s post is short. That happens sometimes. There just was not very much material that seemed appropriate/worthwhile this week. Multiple Pathogens Transmission 😲 This paper with data from three countries and regions over three years (2026-03-14) reports that an influenza A infection decreases your risk of COVID-19 by 94.24%(!) for five weeks. On the… Continue reading 2026-03-20 General
2026-03-13 General
COVID-19 Long COVID A question that I get asked surprisingly frequently is, “but hasn’t Long COVID decreased a lot?” and I surprisingly didn’t have really good evidence either way to point to. Well, now I have something: this review paper (2026-03-10) reports that Long COVID prevalence was 35.5% in the pre-Omicron era and is 22.8%… Continue reading 2026-03-13 General
2026-03-06 General
Multiple Pathogens Vaccines 💉👃 I know I am repeating myself, but there is something extraordinary going on that I want to repeat/summarize. I have talked about “universal vaccines” which work by revving up the immune system in isolation, but I want to point out that there are THREE nasal “universal vaccines” that have had animal… Continue reading 2026-03-06 General