Category: Pathology

week ending 2022-11-03 General

Vaccines This paper from Qatar says that 2 doses of Pfizer doesn’t actually give kids much protection against Omicron infection, and the protection wanes quite quickly. 🙁 In last week’s General blog post, I gave the disappointing news that two papers found that the bivalent vaccines weren’t that much better than the monovalent boosters. There… Continue reading week ending 2022-11-03 General

week ending 2022-10-20 General

Advice A friend of mine in Seattle told me that they’d gotten COVID-19, and asked me what they should do next. What could they do to get better sooner/faster/better? How should she protect their partner? This is the advice I gave: Isolate until you test negative The US CDC says to isolate until five days… Continue reading week ending 2022-10-20 General

week ending 2022-10-13 General

There seem to be an unusually high percentage papers and articles this week which I’m bored with. Things like: Oh look, the pandemic is not over! Huh, boosters actually do work! Yes, vaccines are safe for pregnant women (and COVID-19 is really bad for pregnant women). Myocarditis in young men is a rare, mild side… Continue reading week ending 2022-10-13 General

week ending 2022-10-06 General

Mitigation Measures As this article reports, all travel restrictions have been waived in Canada. No proof of vaccination, no masks on planes, etc. HOWEVER, reminder, non-USA citizens arriving in the US by air still have to be vaccinated (per this US government site). This report is from the US (about Ohio and Florida, specifically) and… Continue reading week ending 2022-10-06 General

week ending 2022-09-22 General

Vaccines This paper says that there is a blood-olfactory barrier (similar to the blood-brain barrier) and that blood-borne antibodies can’t get to the olfactory epithelium (mucous membrane lining). (Note that SARS-CoV-2 can get to the brain via the olfactory bulb. !!) That suggests that we are never going to get to sterilizing immunity (i.e. you… Continue reading week ending 2022-09-22 General

week ending 2022-09-15 General

Pathology This paper from the USA says that what gut microbes you have affects how badly COVD-19 hits you. (That’s a slight simplification — they looked at population-level frequency of various gut bacteria and compared it to population-level hospitalization rate.) This article from July 2020 says that the amount of fermented food that people eat… Continue reading week ending 2022-09-15 General

week ending 2022-09-01 General

Vaccines This article says that Health Canada approved a BA.1 booster from Moderna today for adults and immunocompromised children over 12. 780K are supposed to arrive in-country tomorrow, with another 10.5M at the end of September. There isn’t good data from random clinical trials in humans yet for the new bivalent vaccines. This preprint from… Continue reading week ending 2022-09-01 General

week ending 2022-08-25 General

Long COVID This article reports on this (difficult-for-lay-people-to-understand) research report which says that Long COVID patients had an imbalance in the clot-promoting and clot-removing proteins in the blood. (Note: in the Recommended Reading section, there’s a link to a long article on clotting and Long COVID.) Pathology This paper says that physical exercise makes your… Continue reading week ending 2022-08-25 General

week ending 2022-08-18 General

Live Attenuated Virus Vaccines This paper from Massachusetts found that vaccination with the tuberculosis BCG vaccine gave a 92% efficacy against COVID-19. (Also see this mass media article, which talks about other studies too.) BCG is a live attenuated virus vaccine (LAV); I’ve talked about LAVs before and how they appear to boost the innate… Continue reading week ending 2022-08-18 General