Vaccines This Research Letter says that six to ten weeks after the second dose, antibody levels were higher in people who got Moderna doses than Pfizer doses. People who also had gotten sick with COVID-19 had higher antibody levels than those who had not. Younger people had more antibodies than older people. This preprint says… Continue reading 2021-08-28/29/30 General
Category: Long COVID
2021-08-27 General
Variants This preprint says that Delta is twice as likely to put you into the hospital than Alpha is. Transmission This article says that the US has identified the first cases of COVID-19 in deer. That’s kind of odd, because this article from July 2021 says that the USDA found antibodies in deer. Maybe it’s… Continue reading 2021-08-27 General
2021-08-26 General
Side Effects This paper says that cloth masks are the worst for speech intelligibility. Use a medical mask. Long COVID This preprint from China says that: The proportion of previously hospitalized patients with COVID who had symptoms dropped from 68% at six months to 49% at 12 months. The proportion with fatigue increased slightly, from… Continue reading 2021-08-26 General
2021-08-25 General
Vaccines This preprint says that giving solid organ transplant patients a fourth booster increases antibody levels. I have to wonder when it stops: do we give them five? six? twenty? when the rest of the world is clamoring for their first? This study found that there were three cases of myocarditis per 100K COVID-19 vaccinations,… Continue reading 2021-08-25 General
2021-08-24 General
Vaccines This thread gives a more general discussion of this preprint and says that while antibody levels in the blood, yeah, do go down for six months, the memory B cells totally rock at ramping up antibodies when needed. This thread gives a more general discussion of this preprint about waning vaccine effectiveness in Israel.… Continue reading 2021-08-24 General
2021-08-16 General
Vaccines In this preprint, they found antibody levels post-vax were (slightly) higher in women, younger people, Moderna vaccinees (vs. Pfizer), people who had prior COVID-19, and those who had significant side-effects. If I understand this table correctly, you are more likely to have significant side effects after dose 1 if you were over 60, female,… Continue reading 2021-08-16 General
2021-08-09 General
Transmission This study took COVID patients and counted the virus particles they emitted (well, RNA pieces). They found four interesting things: Being quiet keeps most of your viruses to yourself. A few people were more dangerous when talking than singing. Most of the viral load came from fine aerosol particles. There was a huge variation… Continue reading 2021-08-09 General
2021-08-04 General
Treatments This preprint says that injecting REGEN-COV (a monoclonal antibody treatment that you might know by the name of the company, Regeneron) into people who have been exposed to COVID-19 prevents developing a symptomatic infection with efficacy of 92.6%. This is a BFD. Before, they had to give it as an infusion i.e. the patients… Continue reading 2021-08-04 General
2021-07-31/08-01/02 General
Okay, I’ve been gone for a few days. First there wasn’t much news, then I was busy. Some general trends in articles I have noticed recently: There have recently been a number of articles expressing frustration and/or sadness that we thought we had the pandemic licked, and now Delta comes to get us. I have… Continue reading 2021-07-31/08-01/02 General
2021-07-30 General
Variants The US CDC changed its advice about masks, advising people to wear them more, because of what they’ve found about Delta. They were particularly shook by info from a big outbreak (~900 people) in Providencetown, MA. The study looked at 469 cases in more detail. (Here is the US CDC’s report on it, if… Continue reading 2021-07-30 General