2024-05-04 General

I’m going to split blog postings into COVID-19 sections and H5N1 sections for now. I might someday split them into separate postings. Psychology Many years ago, I heard this George Carlin joke: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” It… Continue reading 2024-05-04 General

2024-04-05 General

Long COVID This paper from Sweden (2024-04-04) found that patients with Long COVID didn’t have a worse time after exercise than controls. This is, on its face, a surprising finding because other studies (like this one) have definitely found that post-exertional malaise (PEM) (i.e. crashing after exertion) is a real thing. I have two observations:… Continue reading 2024-04-05 General

2024-03-29 General

Treatments This article from USA (2024-03-25) says that the FDA has approved Pemgarda, a monocolonal antibody, for use as a pre-exposure preventative for immunocompromised people. It will be used sort of like a vaccine. (Evusheld used to be effective for that, but SARS-CoV-2 mutated enough that Evusheld stopped being effective.) This is big news for… Continue reading 2024-03-29 General

2024-02-03 General

Long COVID Very interesting news! My hand-wavy metaphor of what this paper from USA (2024-02-02) found is that the body gets allergic to COVID shrapnel. They found that pieces of dead SARS-CoV-2 viruses can recombine with double-strand DNA (dsDNA) to form things that look like antimicrobial peptides — proteins in the native immune system which… Continue reading 2024-02-03 General

2023-12-01 General

Long COVID This preprint from USA (2023-11-08) discussed a small study with 16 Long COVID patients who had small fiber neuropathy verified by skin biopsies. Eight of the patients got intravenous immunoglobulin and saw big improvements. This paper from Pakistan (20231122) found that people who were fully vaccinated were 62% less likely to get Long… Continue reading 2023-12-01 General

2023-11-25 General

Pathology This paper from USA says that 48.5% of people hospitalized with COVID-related fungal infections died, while only 12.3% of people hospitalized with non-COVID-associated fungal infections died. This paper from Taiwan found that people who got COVID-19 infections were 59% more likely to get shingles in the following year than controls. This report from Korea… Continue reading 2023-11-25 General