Mitigation Measures This article reports that, as advertised, the Government of Canada has dropped its requirement for a COVID test to enter the country for fully vaccinated travelers. Note that you do still need to fill out the ArriveCan app’s survey before you cross. Pathology Wow, this paper says that pregnancy increases your risk of… Continue reading 2022-03-31 and 2022-04-01 General
Category: Pathology
2022-03-26/27/28 General
Long COVID I have been seeing anecdotal reports for some time on Twitter that Paxlovid helped Long COVID, but nothing that seemed concrete enough to post here. Well, I can now point to this case study from a few weeks ago which says that Paxlovid completely got rid of Long COVID symptoms in one woman.… Continue reading 2022-03-26/27/28 General
2022-03-24/25 General
Vaccines This article reports that the World Health Organization’s COVAX project declined to approve Medicago’s vax — not because their vax doesn’t work, but because Medicago is largely owned by Big Tobacco, and that’s verboten. This preprint says that a trivalent version of the NDV-HXP-S vax with a mix of Beta, Gamma, and Delta spikes… Continue reading 2022-03-24/25 General
2022-03-23 General
Testing This article says that COVID-19 in wastewater is going up in many places across Canada. Mitigation Measures This article reports on an Italian study which found that better ventilation reduced COVID-19 cases dramatically in schools. Replacing classroom air 2.4 times an hour gave a 40 percent reduction in infections; 4 times an hour gave… Continue reading 2022-03-23 General
2022-03-20/21 General
Vaccines This study found that countries which use the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) have a higher rate of COVID-19 than those which use the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV), which uses a live attenuated virus. OPV is easier/cheaper to administer, but there is a (small) risk of getting polio from the vaccine. Yes, countries which use… Continue reading 2022-03-20/21 General
2022-03-15/16 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that the federal government is going to drop the COVID-19 test for travellers entering Canada, for both land and air crossings, for fully vaxxed travellers. Rumour has it that the requirement will be dropped on 1 April. Vaccines Remember J&J? The lame-ass one-shot vax that nobody wants? This article says… Continue reading 2022-03-15/16 General
2022-03-12/13/14 General
Long COVID This preprint says that people with Type O blood are 4.2x as likely to get Long COVID as non-O people. From this Twitter thread: Treatments This preprint looked at effectiveness of monoclonal antibodies against BA.1 and BA.2. It is striking to me how well a monoclonal antibody works against one of the strains… Continue reading 2022-03-12/13/14 General
2022-03-08 General
Pathology Yesterday, I posted this preprint which talked about how pre- and post-COVID brain scans showed changes in the brain. Yesterday I saw a Twitter thread talking about that study. The author said that a loss of brain matter is normal when you lose your sense of smell, due to the circuits not being exercised.… Continue reading 2022-03-08 General
2022-03-05/06/07
Pathology This preprint from the UK which compared brain scans made during the Alpha wave to brain scans in the same people several years prior. They found that people who had had COVID infections had more degradation in their brains (on average) than those who had not. They excluded people who had been hospitalized from… Continue reading 2022-03-05/06/07
2022-03-04 General
Long COVID As a reminder that Long COVID is a real problem, this report says that 2.4% of people in the UK report Long COVID symptoms more than four weeks after infection. Not 2.4% of the people who got Long COVID, 2.4% of ALL the people. Of that 2.4%, 45% (i.e. 1.08% of the total… Continue reading 2022-03-04 General