I knew this was coming. I knew this was coming. I knew this would be bad. I predicted that the health care system might collapse in multiple jurisdictions in the West. I’m still somewhat shocked at the ferocity and this wave. There are lots of people saying that Omicron is milder than previous variants (see… Continue reading 2021-12-18 General
Category: Pathology
2021-12-08/09/10 General
I was out of town for a few days. I think this mostly catches up. Variants This press release from Pfizer says that three doses of Pfizer will give reasonable protection against infection with Omicron, but two doses isn’t enough. Two doses should still protect against severe disease. This Twitter thread on a report from… Continue reading 2021-12-08/09/10 General
2021-12-04/05/06 General
Variants I referenced a preprint on Friday which said that Omicron’s doubling time was 1.2 days, but everybody else seems to be saying more like 2.5 days. This makes a difference: ten doublings (which is about 1000x) is either 12 days away or 25, which means before Christmas or after Christmas. Either way, don’t plan… Continue reading 2021-12-04/05/06 General
2021-11-25 General
Variants Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Remember how yesterday I wrote this totally depressing analysis of how hard it was going to be to vaccinate our way out of this mess with our current vaccines? It just got harder. There’s a new variant under investigation — B.1.1.529 — with thirty fucking two mutations. People who I follow and respect… Continue reading 2021-11-25 General
2021-11-23 General
Mitigation Measures I have heard that it is critically important for masks to fit well to be useful, yet most of the people I see wearing masks have big obvious gaps in them. How could these possibly work? And yet, clearly they do. In addition to multiple studies showing mask-wearing reduces cases, pretty much every… Continue reading 2021-11-23 General
2021-11-10 General
Treatments Okay, this preprint is wild — if I understand it correctly. My understanding is that the authors made a thing — a Therapeutic Interfering Particle or TIP — which looks just like SARS-CoV-2 except it has a vastly stripped-down genome, one that doesn’t have all the instructions needed to make the enzymes and proteins… Continue reading 2021-11-10 General
2021-11-04 General
Genetics This preprint talks about using virus-like particles to study viruses. It looks enough like SARS-CoV-2 that it can get into cells, but then it can’t replicate. Essentially, it’s shooting blanks. This study identified a specific gene variant (which comes from Neanderthals!) which gives a 2x risk of respiratory failure. About 60% of people of… Continue reading 2021-11-04 General
2021-10-26 General
Pathology/Treatment A really puzzling and important question has been: why do some people get really really sick from COVID-19 while others breeze through? This preprint reports on measuring the hell out of three groups of people — healthy, hospitalized, and ICE — to figure out what was different between them. They found: At least 10%… Continue reading 2021-10-26 General
2021-10-23/24/25 General
Transmission In this small study of Italian health-care workers who were tested regularly, all of the people who tested positive but were asymptomatic tested negative the very next day. The mean time for the symptomatic patients to test negative was 11 days. Pathology This preprint says they found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the cerebrospinal fluid of… Continue reading 2021-10-23/24/25 General
2021-10-21 General
Mitigation Measures This article talks about $7.4B in relief spending that the Government of Canada has announced. All three of these programs will go until 7 May 2022. Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) will be replaced by the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit and will provide $300 a week to eligible people. The Tourism and Hospitality Recovery… Continue reading 2021-10-21 General