Long COVID This paper from Switzerland says that there are fewer Long COVID symptoms after an Omicron infection than for previous variants. The number of symptoms on a survey given to people who tested postive were: Strain of infection # Symptoms COVID Classic 1.12 Alpha/Delta 0.67 Omicron 0.52 no infection 0.39 Interestingly, for Omicron infections,… Continue reading 2023-03-30 General
Category: General
2023-03-23 General
Transmission This report on seroprevalence in blood donors says that, by mid-January: This means that almost a quarter of Canadians had not had COVID-19 by mid-Jan 2023. Long COVID This article says that Long COVID isn’t as common as the press makes it out to be. This study says that COVID-19 causes lingering symptoms in… Continue reading 2023-03-23 General
2023-03-16 General
Many people mark 11 March 2020 as the day “shit got real” with COVID-19. That was the day that Tom Hanks announced that he’d gotten COVID-19 and the NBA shut down. To mark the anniversary, there were a ton of three-year retrospectives this week, and there apparently was a Canadian National Day of Observance (which… Continue reading 2023-03-16 General
2023-03-10 General
Special bonus post today! Mental Health I wasn’t sure if I should file this under Long COVID, Pathology, or Mitigation Measures, so I made a new category. This paper looked at a bunch of English-language studies and found that ER visits for girls attempting suicide went up 39% in the pandemic. (Boys didn’t change much.)… Continue reading 2023-03-10 General
2023-03-09 General
I feel like I haven’t done as much research this week, but I’m just flat too tired today to do more. I will probably make tomorrow’s “tiny” posting beefier. There’s also supposed to be a press conference tomorrow; I plan to watch that and report on it. Vaccines Per this Statement, NACI recommends that vulnerable… Continue reading 2023-03-09 General
2023-03-02 General
Health Care System This article says that federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos intervened in November with Canada’s drug price regulator to drop a policy reform process. 😠😬 Mitigation Measures This article (drawing from information in a number of papers) says that early targeted border closures were ineffective. (Basically, shutting down flights from South Africa and… Continue reading 2023-03-02 General
2023-02-23 General
Funding This article says that Canada is giving $30M to the World Health Organization, mostly to support vaccine delivery in hard-to-reach areas. This sounds like a lot, but the next article I read says that BC is giving the same amount — $30M — in one-time grants to arts events struggling to recover from COVID-19.… Continue reading 2023-02-23 General
2023-02-16 General
Long COVID This paper from USA is yet another which says that people are more likely to develop diabetes after a COVID-19 infection than the uninfected. In this paper, they found an adjusted increased risk of 58%. This study from NY found that racialized COVID-19 patients did worse than white ones. (NB: This is not… Continue reading 2023-02-16 General
2023-02-10 General
I am travelling and yesterday my ISP had some problem, so this week’s posts are late and will also be light. Vaccines This article reports that Medicago, the only manufacturer of COVID-19 vaxes in Canada, is shutting down. 😞 This article says that the governments of Quebec and Canada are trying to help find a… Continue reading 2023-02-10 General
2023-02-02 General
Vaccines It’s here! This preprint from India has the first data for nasal vaccines in humans that we’ve seen. It compares of the same inactivated adenovirus delivered nasally (BBV154) and intramuscularly (Covaxin), both from Bharat Biotech: Levels of antibodies and good things range from about 1.5x to almost 2x higher when delivered nasally. There were… Continue reading 2023-02-02 General