Government This post says there is a rumour that Dr. Teresa Tam is going to step down, with Dr. Bonnie Henry a leading contender to replace her. This article reports that the Auditor General had some very not nice things to say about ArriveCan. She said that it cost at least CAD$59.5M to produce, wasn’t… Continue reading 2024-02-16 General
Category: Mitigation Measures
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
2024-01-05 General
Someone in the US tooted that there are 1000 COVID-19 deaths per week there, and is kind of incredulous that people don’t take it more seriously. “If I were to tell you that 5 to 10 airliners would fall from the sky every week, half of the US wouldn’t set foot in a plane.” I… Continue reading 2024-01-05 General
2023-12-08 General
This week’s post is a little short because I performed a rapid unscheduled cranio-planetary docking maneuver while on a bike ride. (I’m fine — helmets are awesome! — but I’m taking it easy for a few days.) Long COVID Two weeks ago, I reported on a case studies paper which found that nicotine patches helped… Continue reading 2023-12-08 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
2023-11-03 General
I read a paper which referred to “short COVID” to the acute, initial illness — y’know, the thing that lasts a week or two — and I think I might start using that term! Long COVID I haven’t talked about Long COVID biomarkers much because most biomarkers are relatively obscure proteins that you and I… Continue reading 2023-11-03 General
2023-10-20 General
Other News These aren’t COVID-19 pieces, but I think they are important. I had thought that RSV vaccinations weren’t available in Canada yet because NACI and the province had not figured out the parameters, but they are! My flu shot vaccinator said that they have RSV on hand. It costs a bunch (almost $300), but… Continue reading 2023-10-20 General
2023-05-21 General small
Vaccines This preprint from India found that a nasally-administered adenovirus-vectored vaccine gave mice good protection against BQ.1.1 and XBB.1.5. This preprint from China found that in mice, one Omicron booster after two COVID Classic vaccinations wasn’t as effective as one would like due to imprinting on COVID Classic (aka “original antigenic sin”). The good news… Continue reading 2023-05-21 General small
2023-05-04 General
I had an ugly thought. Maybe it makes a certain sense from the majority’s standpoint, to remove all restrictions because it would level the playing field. If COVID-19 does cause lasting damage, e.g. in increasing the risk of death or disability, then the people who have never had COVID-19 have an advantage over the people… Continue reading 2023-05-04 General