COVID-19 US Politics I avoid talking about 🇺🇸US politics too much; I try to focus on what is relevant for BC. But as this article (2025-03-25) reports, the Trump administration has cancelled USD$11.4 billion (with a B) in US CDC funds for COVID-19 testing, vaccination, community health workers, initiatives to address Covid health disparities among… Continue reading 2025-03-28 General
Category: Pathology
2025-03-15 General
COVID-19 📆 There have been a huge number of “it’s been five years since the start of the pandemic” articles. (For example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.) What have we learned? How… Continue reading 2025-03-15 General
2025-03-07 General
COVID-19 Long COVID 🙁🛌 This preprint using data from USA and UK (2025-03-01) reports that people with hypermobility are at increased risk of Long COVID. People with generalized joint hypermobility have a 29% higher risk of Long COVID than controls; people with extreme hypermobility have a 112% higher risk than controls. This higher risk is… Continue reading 2025-03-07 General
2025-03-01 General
Recommended Reading 🐎🤮 Did you know there was a horse flu epidemic in 1872 (also see this Wikipedia section) which crippled the US (and probably Canada)? I didn’t. 🤯 COVID-19 Long COVID 🎉 This older paper (2023-02-07) reports that maraviroc and pravastatin — two HIV treatments — significantly reduced symptoms in Long COVID patients. (Both… Continue reading 2025-03-01 General
2025-02-15 General
I have been avoiding saying much about the chaos in the US government health sector, but it’s been difficult. COVID-19 Long COVID AGAIN 🧪This paper from Australia (2025-01-13) reports that people with Long COVID and ME/CFS both have bigger left hippocampal subfields than healthy controls. Furthermore, the size of the left hippocampal subfield correlated with… Continue reading 2025-02-15 General
2025-01-07 General
COVID-19 Long COVID AGAIN 😞 This article (2025-02-04) refers to this paper from the USA (paywalled, 2025-02-03), which reports that 1.4% of children surveyed had had Long COVID, and 0.4% currently have Long COVID. 80% of the kids with active Long COVID have an ability limitation that they didn’t have before catching COVID-19. They also… Continue reading 2025-01-07 General
2025-01-31 General
It is still a little harder finding good articles / papers than a few weeks ago. In addition to all the chaff from Trump in the health sites I monitor, there are now a ton of news articles saying, “Today is the five year anniversary of the first COVID case appearing in <jurisdiction>, what have… Continue reading 2025-01-31 General
2025-01-25 General
Health news was harder to find this week. A lot of my sources were overrun with articles about what trouble the new US president is fomenting, leaving little room for articles about COVID, mpox, or H5N1. ☹️ You might have noticed that I sometimes mark snippets with “AGAIN”. Why do I bother showing studies that… Continue reading 2025-01-25 General
2025-01-10 General
I want to talk for a moment about human metapneumonia virus (HMPV). It is NOT some strange new virus which is killing people in China — again. HMPV has been circulating for at least sixty years, I have almost certainly had it, you have probably had it. BC has been tracking it for years: I… Continue reading 2025-01-10 General
2024-12-27 General
NB: No BC post this week because the are not publishing new data until 3 Jan 2025. This post is kind of short because for some reason there has been less news the past few days. Happy Holidays! Recommended Reading This article from USA (2024-12-26) talks about three issues to watch in global health: H5N1,… Continue reading 2024-12-27 General