I had an ugly thought. Maybe it makes a certain sense from the majority’s standpoint, to remove all restrictions because it would level the playing field. If COVID-19 does cause lasting damage, e.g. in increasing the risk of death or disability, then the people who have never had COVID-19 have an advantage over the people… Continue reading 2023-05-04 General
Category: Pathology
2023-04-20 General
Folks, we have a problem. We have a problem with language. When I say “Long COVID”, you probably immediately think “brain fog and/or fatigue” (and maybe you’ll think of a persistent cough and/or loss of smell/taste). What you probably do not think of is a higher chance of severe illness/death from something that doesn’t look… Continue reading 2023-04-20 General
2023-04-06 General
Transmission It is pretty clear to me that COVID-19 spread is airborne — there has been lots of evidence in the literature for that — but I had not seen any evidence that it spread via surface contact (fomites). This paper from the UK makes a strong case for fomites being important. They tracked household… Continue reading 2023-04-06 General
2023-03-30 General
Long COVID This paper from Switzerland says that there are fewer Long COVID symptoms after an Omicron infection than for previous variants. The number of symptoms on a survey given to people who tested postive were: Strain of infection # Symptoms COVID Classic 1.12 Alpha/Delta 0.67 Omicron 0.52 no infection 0.39 Interestingly, for Omicron infections,… Continue reading 2023-03-30 General
2023-03-23 General
Transmission This report on seroprevalence in blood donors says that, by mid-January: This means that almost a quarter of Canadians had not had COVID-19 by mid-Jan 2023. Long COVID This article says that Long COVID isn’t as common as the press makes it out to be. This study says that COVID-19 causes lingering symptoms in… Continue reading 2023-03-23 General
2023-03-10 General
Special bonus post today! Mental Health I wasn’t sure if I should file this under Long COVID, Pathology, or Mitigation Measures, so I made a new category. This paper looked at a bunch of English-language studies and found that ER visits for girls attempting suicide went up 39% in the pandemic. (Boys didn’t change much.)… Continue reading 2023-03-10 General
2023-03-09 General
I feel like I haven’t done as much research this week, but I’m just flat too tired today to do more. I will probably make tomorrow’s “tiny” posting beefier. There’s also supposed to be a press conference tomorrow; I plan to watch that and report on it. Vaccines Per this Statement, NACI recommends that vulnerable… Continue reading 2023-03-09 General
2023-03-02 General
Health Care System This article says that federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos intervened in November with Canada’s drug price regulator to drop a policy reform process. 😠😬 Mitigation Measures This article (drawing from information in a number of papers) says that early targeted border closures were ineffective. (Basically, shutting down flights from South Africa and… Continue reading 2023-03-02 General
2023-02-23 General
Funding This article says that Canada is giving $30M to the World Health Organization, mostly to support vaccine delivery in hard-to-reach areas. This sounds like a lot, but the next article I read says that BC is giving the same amount — $30M — in one-time grants to arts events struggling to recover from COVID-19.… Continue reading 2023-02-23 General
2023-02-16 General
Long COVID This paper from USA is yet another which says that people are more likely to develop diabetes after a COVID-19 infection than the uninfected. In this paper, they found an adjusted increased risk of 58%. This study from NY found that racialized COVID-19 patients did worse than white ones. (NB: This is not… Continue reading 2023-02-16 General