In my little corner of the COVID-cautious world, there’s a real sense of bafflement as to why the whole world stopped caring. There’s a faction which is very bitter and angry at the government for deliberately misleading people in order to get us to be good little automatons and go back to economy-boosting (i.e. stock… Continue reading 2024-01-12 General
Category: Testing
2024-01-05 General
Someone in the US tooted that there are 1000 COVID-19 deaths per week there, and is kind of incredulous that people don’t take it more seriously. “If I were to tell you that 5 to 10 airliners would fall from the sky every week, half of the US wouldn’t set foot in a plane.” I… Continue reading 2024-01-05 General
2023-12-22 General
British Columbia is not going to release provincial COVID-19 data next week, so I’m not going to publish a BC post next week. I haven’t decided if I’m going to publish a General post next week or not. This week, I felt like I didn’t have much material to work with. Partly, it might be… Continue reading 2023-12-22 General
2023-12-15 General
Long COVID This (long) report from StatCan says that people who reported two COVID-19 infections were 1.7 times more likely to have Long COVID than people who only had one infection; people who had more than two were 2.6 times more likely to have Long COVID than those who had one infection. COVID-19 is not… Continue reading 2023-12-15 General
2023-12-01 General
Long COVID This preprint from USA (2023-11-08) discussed a small study with 16 Long COVID patients who had small fiber neuropathy verified by skin biopsies. Eight of the patients got intravenous immunoglobulin and saw big improvements. This paper from Pakistan (20231122) found that people who were fully vaccinated were 62% less likely to get Long… Continue reading 2023-12-01 General
2023-11-17 General
Long COVID This paper from Austria found that Epstein-Barr Virus antibody or DNA levels did not seem to be any different in Long COVID patients than controls (people who had had COVID-19 infections but did not get Long COVID). They also did not find markers of inflammation from viral infections in the Long COVID patients.… Continue reading 2023-11-17 General
2023-11-03 General
I read a paper which referred to “short COVID” to the acute, initial illness — y’know, the thing that lasts a week or two — and I think I might start using that term! Long COVID I haven’t talked about Long COVID biomarkers much because most biomarkers are relatively obscure proteins that you and I… Continue reading 2023-11-03 General
2023-10-20 General
Other News These aren’t COVID-19 pieces, but I think they are important. I had thought that RSV vaccinations weren’t available in Canada yet because NACI and the province had not figured out the parameters, but they are! My flu shot vaccinator said that they have RSV on hand. It costs a bunch (almost $300), but… Continue reading 2023-10-20 General
2023-09-15 General
This week, there have been a TON of articles with “What you need to know” in the headline. “What you need to know about the fall vaccines”, “What you need to know about BA.2.86”, “What you need to know about COVID this fall”, “What you need to know about COVID rapid tests heading into the… Continue reading 2023-09-15 General
2023-08-16 General
Okay, I’m done with the things I was super busy with, but I’m still catching up. I’m hoping to pump out several posts in the next week or two. Unexpected Side-effects This paper reports that fertility in the US went up after the first year of the pandemic, the first time births per capita went… Continue reading 2023-08-16 General