VOCs This report from Public Health England says that Delta now makes up 97% of the genotyped cases. This report from Public Health England says that there have been a few cases of Lambda from international travel, but it does not seem to be out-competing Delta and does not seem to be particularly vax-evasive. It… Continue reading 2021-07-09 General
Category: General
2021-07-08 General
Vaccines Pfizer says that a third shot boosts antibody levels 5x to 10x against COVID Classic and Beta. Remember that antibodies aren’t the whole story, and that Pfizer has incentive to get as many people as possible to buy their vax. They also said they are working on a Delta-specific booster. The US FDA immediately… Continue reading 2021-07-08 General
2021-07-07 General
Vaccines A few days ago, there was a Israeli Ministry of Health report saying that Pfizer was only 64% effective against the Delta strain, which was far lower than other studies had found. It looks like the study in Israel was against all infection, including asymptomatic infection, while the others were against symptomatic infection. That… Continue reading 2021-07-07 General
2021-07-06 General
Vaccines In yesterday’s General blog post, I pointed to a study from Israel that said that Pfizer was only 64% effective. This thread does a takedown of that study. This preprint also says that AZ+Pfizer is a lot better (in test tubes, anyway) than AZ+AZ, and even a bit better than Pfizer+Pfizer. Disease This article… Continue reading 2021-07-06 General
2021-07-03/04/05 General
Seroprevalence This study from 18 June 2021 found that at the end of the second wave, between 5 and 6% of Canadians had antibodies to COVID-19, up from 2% after the first wave. Vaccines This study (done in Ontario) says that Moderna scores best against all the variants, and that Moderna does well against Delta… Continue reading 2021-07-03/04/05 General
2021-07-02 General
Mitigation Measures Trudeau put in writing that the border stays closed to foreign nationals entering from anywhere but the United States until 75% of the population (not the adults, not the eligible) are fully vaxxed. The “anywhere but the United States” is interesting, I think it basically bans air travel. Foreign nationals entering from the… Continue reading 2021-07-02 General
2021-07-01 General
Testing You might have heard of “Lateral Flow Tests”. They are a type of rapid test which has been deployed widely in the UK. This study evaluated six different brands of lateral flow tests and found that they are less sensitive than PCR tests, but most of them are still pretty good. Long COVID This… Continue reading 2021-07-01 General
2021-06-30 General
Vaccines/Innoculation This paper poses an interesting idea: maybe masks and distancing help not just in preventing spread but also from lowering the number of virus that one is exposed to to a level where people got micro-innoculations from sick people! They base it on the observation that many countries in Europe had increased cases without… Continue reading 2021-06-30 General
2021-06-29 General
Note: It was hot again today, so today’s postings are going to be short. I’ll try to catch up in the next few days Deaths This report suggests that COVID-19 deaths in Canada were wickedly undercounted. NB: I haven’t had time to do a deep dive into it yet, but I would like to. So… Continue reading 2021-06-29 General
2021-06-26/27/28 General
It has been aggressively hot for the past few days, such that I have not wanted to have a hot laptop on my lap. Updates are going to be a bit behind for a few more days. Origins This Twitter thread (from 17 May) is interesting. It from someone who describes the changes from bat… Continue reading 2021-06-26/27/28 General