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
Category: Pathology
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
2023-01-19 General
Long COVID This paper from the UK says that people who have had COVID-19 infections are five times as likely to die in the 18 months post-infection than controls. This paper says that people who were unvaccinated were more likely to have lingering illness for at 28 to 89 days than the vaccinated, and that… Continue reading 2023-01-19 General
2023-01-12 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that the US has put in a new rule that air travellers must be fully vaccinated before getting on a plane to the US. (Confirmed at this US CDC page.) This paper from Ontario (from August) found that parents, in addition to everything else they were dealing with, had a… Continue reading 2023-01-12 General
2023-01-05 General
Long COVID Even people who don’t have classic “Long COVID”, getting COVID-19 is bad for you long-term. This paper from Florida reports that people who had COVID-19 have all-cause-mortality rates in the year after their acute phase at much higher than those who did not get COVID-19. Compared to people who were not infected with… Continue reading 2023-01-05 General
2022-12-29 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that $14.8 million in quarantine fines have been given in BC, MB, ON, and Atlantic Canada. The article hints that most of that money will not be collected, but doesn’t really explain why. This article says that 54% of Canadians would be okay with a mask mandate if cases rise.… Continue reading 2022-12-29 General