Pathology This article suggests that the reason that COVID-19 hits old people so much harder than young people is that old people have more antibodies to important pieces of their own innate immune system, particularly interferons. (In other words, they attack critical pieces of their own immune system.) They found that the proportion of people… Continue reading 2022-02-25 General
Category: Long COVID
2022-02-23 General
As I mentioned before, “everybody” seems to be acting like the pandemic is over. It’s not. Really it is not. I suspect people hear numbers like “60 per day in Canada” and think, “oh, well, 60 isn’t many people in a population of 39M”, but I think people just don’t understand just how rare death… Continue reading 2022-02-23 General
2022-02-19/20/21/22 General
This post might look like it has a fair amount of stuff in it, but it’s four days’ worth (because of the Canadian stat holiday yesterday). I have noticed a big drop in the amount of content to pull from. I’m not even seeing a lot of “how do we transition to post-pandemic” articles now.… Continue reading 2022-02-19/20/21/22 General
2022-02-18 General
Vaccines This preprint from Israel says that a fourth dose is helpful, but not that much. The efficacy versus people who had three doses was: 30% for Pfizer; 11% for Moderna. In other words, in cohorts of N people with three doses, N people with three doses plus 1 dose of Pfizer, and N people… Continue reading 2022-02-18 General
2022-02-16 General
Long COVID This preprint and this lay article report on a big US study of mental health effects after COVID-19 which found that people who had had COVID-19 had (compared to controls): 1.35x risk of anxiety disorders; 1.39x risk of depressive disorders; 1.38x risk of stress and adjustment disorders; 1.55x risk of antidepressant use; 1.65x… Continue reading 2022-02-16 General
2022-02-09 General
Vaccines You know how the mRNA vaccines are f amazing? I want to take a moment to say that I think the next generation of vaccines are going to be even more effective. There have been a rash of papers recently which indicate that we humans still have tricks up our sleeves: Multiple targets: All… Continue reading 2022-02-09 General
2022-02-05/06/07 General
Long COVID This paper and this preprint says that people who have recovered from a COVID-19 infection are at greater risk from heart complications afterwards. The first study followed patients for the next year and found that patients had the following elevated risk of any heart issue in the following year compared to non-infected controls:… Continue reading 2022-02-05/06/07 General
2022-01-29/30/31 General
Vaccines There’s a great, long Twitter thread which looks at the effect of vaccines. (It summarizes a paywalled article, if you want to see the whole thing.) One of the elements which I found striking was how the risk of COVID-19 relative to the flu has dropped over time. In mid 2020, the infection fatality… Continue reading 2022-01-29/30/31 General
2022-01-28 General
Variants I don’t like to warn about variants before there’s data. (I didn’t sound alarms about Mu, for example.) Well, I think it’s time to talk about BA.2 — an Omicron variant. (The Omicron variant which sprouted up first is BA.1.) BA.2 doesn’t look like it is lot worse than BA.1 — not like Delta… Continue reading 2022-01-28 General
2022-01-27 General
Pathology This study found that pregnant women were 1.77x as likely to develop preeclampsia if they got COVID-19; women who had not given birth before were 1.89x as likely. They found the risk of a preterm birth for all pregnant women with both COVID-19 and preeclampsia was 4.05x (and 6.26x for women who had never… Continue reading 2022-01-27 General