Long COVID This paper from Germany has some good news: it says that mild to moderate COVID infections in unvaccinated people does not lead to cognitive deficits several months after recovery than in controls. The caveat is that the study had only 223 people in each arm of the study, so it might not have… Continue reading 2023-05-30 General
Category: General
2023-05-21 General small
Vaccines This preprint from India found that a nasally-administered adenovirus-vectored vaccine gave mice good protection against BQ.1.1 and XBB.1.5. This preprint from China found that in mice, one Omicron booster after two COVID Classic vaccinations wasn’t as effective as one would like due to imprinting on COVID Classic (aka “original antigenic sin”). The good news… Continue reading 2023-05-21 General small
2023-05-04 General
I had an ugly thought. Maybe it makes a certain sense from the majority’s standpoint, to remove all restrictions because it would level the playing field. If COVID-19 does cause lasting damage, e.g. in increasing the risk of death or disability, then the people who have never had COVID-19 have an advantage over the people… Continue reading 2023-05-04 General
2023-04-20 General
Folks, we have a problem. We have a problem with language. When I say “Long COVID”, you probably immediately think “brain fog and/or fatigue” (and maybe you’ll think of a persistent cough and/or loss of smell/taste). What you probably do not think of is a higher chance of severe illness/death from something that doesn’t look… Continue reading 2023-04-20 General
2023-04-06 General
Transmission It is pretty clear to me that COVID-19 spread is airborne — there has been lots of evidence in the literature for that — but I had not seen any evidence that it spread via surface contact (fomites). This paper from the UK makes a strong case for fomites being important. They tracked household… Continue reading 2023-04-06 General
2023-03-30 General
Long COVID This paper from Switzerland says that there are fewer Long COVID symptoms after an Omicron infection than for previous variants. The number of symptoms on a survey given to people who tested postive were: Strain of infection # Symptoms COVID Classic 1.12 Alpha/Delta 0.67 Omicron 0.52 no infection 0.39 Interestingly, for Omicron infections,… Continue reading 2023-03-30 General
2023-03-23 General
Transmission This report on seroprevalence in blood donors says that, by mid-January: This means that almost a quarter of Canadians had not had COVID-19 by mid-Jan 2023. Long COVID This article says that Long COVID isn’t as common as the press makes it out to be. This study says that COVID-19 causes lingering symptoms in… Continue reading 2023-03-23 General
2023-03-16 General
Many people mark 11 March 2020 as the day “shit got real” with COVID-19. That was the day that Tom Hanks announced that he’d gotten COVID-19 and the NBA shut down. To mark the anniversary, there were a ton of three-year retrospectives this week, and there apparently was a Canadian National Day of Observance (which… Continue reading 2023-03-16 General
2023-03-10 General
Special bonus post today! Mental Health I wasn’t sure if I should file this under Long COVID, Pathology, or Mitigation Measures, so I made a new category. This paper looked at a bunch of English-language studies and found that ER visits for girls attempting suicide went up 39% in the pandemic. (Boys didn’t change much.)… Continue reading 2023-03-10 General
2023-03-09 General
I feel like I haven’t done as much research this week, but I’m just flat too tired today to do more. I will probably make tomorrow’s “tiny” posting beefier. There’s also supposed to be a press conference tomorrow; I plan to watch that and report on it. Vaccines Per this Statement, NACI recommends that vulnerable… Continue reading 2023-03-09 General