Vaccines This article reports COVID-19 patients who got a flu shot had significantly fewer complications than patients who did not. COVAX is getting 100M doses immediately from Sinopharm and Sinovac. This is great news. It’s not enough, of course, but double what COVAX has distributed already. (There’s another 390M coming later, which is also great… Continue reading 2021-07-12 General
Category: Long COVID
2021-07-07 General
Vaccines A few days ago, there was a Israeli Ministry of Health report saying that Pfizer was only 64% effective against the Delta strain, which was far lower than other studies had found. It looks like the study in Israel was against all infection, including asymptomatic infection, while the others were against symptomatic infection. That… Continue reading 2021-07-07 General
2021-07-01 General
Testing You might have heard of “Lateral Flow Tests”. They are a type of rapid test which has been deployed widely in the UK. This study evaluated six different brands of lateral flow tests and found that they are less sensitive than PCR tests, but most of them are still pretty good. Long COVID This… Continue reading 2021-07-01 General
2021-06-29 General
Note: It was hot again today, so today’s postings are going to be short. I’ll try to catch up in the next few days Deaths This report suggests that COVID-19 deaths in Canada were wickedly undercounted. NB: I haven’t had time to do a deep dive into it yet, but I would like to. So… Continue reading 2021-06-29 General
2021-06-24 General
Vaccines This Research Letter says that vaccines do not decrease sperm production. There was actually an increase in sperm production, but that might be due to increased abstinence time before the second sample collection. This preprint from India says that the Delta strain is more resistant to antibodies in vitro, transmit from health care worker… Continue reading 2021-06-24 General
2021-06-23 General
Long COVID This paper makes a strong case that re-activated Epstein-Barr virus is involved in most Long COVID cases. This paper says that women are 2.7x more likely to get Long COVID as men. 44% of women and 24% of men in this study (in Norway) had symptoms. Vaccines This Twitter thread, which is a… Continue reading 2021-06-23 General
2021-06-22 General
Mitigation Measures This paper looks at the strategy of eliminating vs. mitigating and concludes that eliminating is better. It says that the countries which went for elimination (Australia, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea) have done much better than the ones which went for mitigation. Um, notice anything about those countries? None of them… Continue reading 2021-06-22 General
2021-06-17 General
Vaccines The US just donated 1M Moderna doses to Canada. Canada received 330K Johnson & Johnson doses, but it’s going to sit on them right now because of concerns about contamination. Canada will also refuse any more J&J shipments. Today NACI advised Team AZ to get mRNA for the second dose. While I think this… Continue reading 2021-06-17 General
2021-06-10 General
Vaccines AstraZeneca is in the process of developing a booster, AZD2816 (their original one was AZD1222), to do better against new strains. (As you might recall, AZD1222 is shit against Beta.) This paper says that it does well against all the strains in mice and test tubes. This article says there is a different AZ… Continue reading 2021-06-10 General
2021-05-12 General
Variants There is a somewhat worrying report from Qatar saying that the efficacy of only one dose of Pfizer is only 29.5% against infection from B.1.1.7 and 54% against hospitalization. If you only have one dose, maybe don’t go licking doorknobs just yet. However, this report, also out today, from the UK from December to… Continue reading 2021-05-12 General