Vaccines Yet another paper which finds that, surprisingly, antibodies against COVID Classic work much better against P.1 than against B.1.351. A paper says that AstraZeneca is 70% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID from B.1.1.7 and only 29% effective against asymptomatic COVID from B.1.1.7, ouch. The paper says that it is 82% effective against symptomatic illness… Continue reading 2021-03-30 General
Category: General
2021-03-29 General
Vaccines Good news! The US CDC has released a report which says that the mRNA vaccines prevent infection well, not just symptoms. In other words, if you get a vaccination, you’re unlikely to be a carrier and get other people sick. Not only that, but the mRNA is 80% effective after just one dose, yay!… Continue reading 2021-03-29 General
2021-03-26 General
Vaccines It’s a little bit confusing, but I think the UK said that they can’t ship AZ from Britain to the EU (like the EU says they should) because the UK AZ supply chain includes a subcontractor’s plant which the EU has not given regulatory approval to. (They didn’t give regulatory approval because AZ did… Continue reading 2021-03-26 General
2021-03-25 General
Vaccines Pfizer is starting trials of really young children. VOCs This article remarks that SARS-CoV-2 actually is not mutating that much, and that the different VOCs seem to be coming up with the same mutations over and over again in convergent evolution. This suggests that there might not be that much more that the viruses… Continue reading 2021-03-25 General
2021-03-23/4 General
Special double-issue today, and I spent all day yesterday doing my taxes. Vaccines Canada might be facing another vaccine drought. First, the European Union said yesterday they would embargo all vaccines from leaving the EU. Note that the EU is mad at AstraZeneca Inc. — the EU says that AZ has been sending vax to… Continue reading 2021-03-23/4 General
2021-03-22 General
Vaccines A big Phase 3 trial of AZ in the US just finished. While their previous trials has some ah irregularities, this one seemed to be done well.. Fortunately, this trial showed good results in the general population and in old people. (And no blood clotting issues.) Except… there was a highly unusual announcement from… Continue reading 2021-03-22 General
2021-03-21 General
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
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”.