Mitigation Measures The land border into the USA from Canada will remain closed to non-essential non-Americans until at least 21 October. Vaccines This preprint says that the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine has a vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19 infection of 48% and 76% effectiveness against severe disease. I think this is huge news,… Continue reading 2021-09-21 General
Category: Mitigation Measures
2021-09-08 General
Vaccines This large study from Scotland from March 2020 to November 2020 found that household members of healthcare workers were less than half as likely to get an infection after the healthcare worker got vaccinated. (Note: don’t forget that some of the household members got infected in the community.) This study of Pfizer found that:… Continue reading 2021-09-08 General
2021-09-01 General
Treatments Good news! This preprint says that baricitinib reduces all-causes mortality of hospitalized COVID-19 patients by 38.2%! Vaccines Remember how I was saying that I thought we’d see that longer doses were better? It turns out that waaay longer is better. This preprint says that for AstraZeneca, antibody levels were four times higher in people… Continue reading 2021-09-01 General
2021-08-28/29/30 General
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
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
2021-08-20 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that masking was responsible for a 68% reduction in transmissions and that regular testing got the reduction up to 77%. This preprint looked at different mitigation measures in schools in Switzerland. Some highlights of the reductions in viral dosage they saw: Keeping all the windows open in winter: 14x Universal… Continue reading 2021-08-20 General
2021-08-19 General
Vaccines I see a lot of anxiety about vaccines decreasing in effectiveness. In the US, Biden announced that third-dose-boosters would start being delivered on 20 August, never mind that the FDA has not yet approved boosters. Here is an example of someone showing the waning effectiveness of the vaccines: But some of the studies have… Continue reading 2021-08-19 General
2021-08-17 General
Variants This article talks about a lot of things, but says: Breakthrough cases appear to be increasing for Delta. However, they don’t give any “before” numbers, and it’s not clear if it’s just because the number of vaccinated people is increasing. The absolute number of breakthrough cases is still low. The average age of a… Continue reading 2021-08-17 General
2021-08-14 General
Mitigation Measures Huh. This web page from the US CDC says that an N95 with an exhalation valve is as good or better at source control (i.e. protecting the people the wearer is close to) than a procedure mask (the standard medical hook-over-your-ears mask that you see unfortunately frequently see lying on the ground as… Continue reading 2021-08-14 General
2021-08-13 General
Hospitalizations An independent statistician pulled together this graph: Why does Quebec have such a fall-off in hospitalizations/confirmed case and ICU admissions/confirmed case when the other provinces do not? Because Quebec does a better job testing/finding cases, so the denominator is bigger. Note that the most recent data is excluded because the episode date is when… Continue reading 2021-08-13 General