Vitamins A study done on patients in Chicago found that black patients with low vitamin D levels were 2.64 times higher than those with higher levels. Folks, take your D! A different study found that patients who got Vitamin D supplements had a lower risk of dying or needing mechanical ventilation. Yet another study found… Continue reading 2021-03-21 General
Category: General
2021-03-20 General
VOCs There has been some research lately which pegs the P.1 transmissibility at 2.5x more than COVID Classic. Ulp. The good news is that everything I have seen is that the vaccines work well against it. Scientists have found that mice — just your regular standard lab mice — can get the P.1 and B.1.351… Continue reading 2021-03-20 General
2021-03-19 General
Vaccines Well, that’s depressing. A paper in The Lancet reports on a mathematical model which says that vaccination without pharmaceutical measures (e.g. masking, keeping 2m apart, etc) is likely to only bring R down to 1.58. Translation: vaccination alone won’t get rid of the virus. However, this smells off to me. Measles has an R0… Continue reading 2021-03-19 General
2021-03-08 General
Pandemic Positives There’s a great article by Zeynep Tufekci in The Atlantic which talks about three things which have been positive side effects of the pandemic: mRNA vaccines synchronous video communication really fast scientific communication / informal peer review It’s worth a read, to remind yourself, “oh yeah, that did happen”.
2021-03-17 General
Vaccines As more information is discovered, it looks like maybe the blood clotting problems soon after vaccination is causal and not coincidence. Research has shown that the spike protein can lead to an attack on blood vessels, and the common vaccines right now flood the body with spike proteins. This has made several countries concerned… Continue reading 2021-03-17 General
2021-03-16 General
Vaccines There’s yet another paper which says that AZ is crap against B.1.351 — 10.5%. There is some suggestion that AZ is um crap against B.1.351 because it doesn’t have the 2-proline stabilizer (unlike the mRNAs and J&J). The 2-proline stabilizer is a little tweak to the spike protein to keep it in its prefusion… Continue reading 2021-03-16 General
2021-03-15 General
Vaccines Moderna has registered to do a small Ph2/3 trials on children. A preprint says that the first vax dose for cancer patients is not very effective, but that the second dose gives them good protection. Zeynep Tufekci has an essay arguing that the language of “we should vaccinate them over there so they don’t… Continue reading 2021-03-15 General
2021-03-14 General
Long COVID There’s a preprint showing that getting a COVID vax helped long haulers a little bit: decrease in worsening symptoms (5.6% vaxed vs 14.2% unvaxed) increase in symptom resolution (23.2% v. 15.4%) They didn’t see any difference in response was between the three different types of vaccines. That’s great, but note that this was… Continue reading 2021-03-14 General
2021-03-13 General
Vaccines BioNTech (which is the company behind Pfizer’s vaccine) is going to partner with an additional 13 companies to make up to 2 billion (yes, billion with a B) doses this year. There’s a nice study done by Public Health Scotland where they looked at household members of healthcare workers who did and did not… Continue reading 2021-03-13 General
2021-03-12 General
Long COVID Respected COVID journalist Zeynep Tufekci points out problems with the claims that a very large percentage of the people who have Long COVID had very mild symptoms originally. She points out that the most commonly cited study has real problems with confirmation bias, definitions of “asymptomatic”, and missing baselines. Vaccines Novavax announced that… Continue reading 2021-03-12 General