week ending 2022-12-22 General

Pathology This paper from the USA says that the more physically active people were before catching COVID-19, the milder their case was. (If that sounds familiar, that’s because this paper from September from the USA said the same thing.) This paper from the USA found that five kids with MIS-C all had variants in a… Continue reading week ending 2022-12-22 General

week ending 2022-11-24 General

Mitigation Measures This press release from the Government of Canada says that all Canadians in federally regulated private workplaces (like banking, telecommunications and interprovincial transportation) get ten days of paid sick leave, starting on 1 Dec 2022. (They don’t get all ten days at once, it accrues.) About 6% of Canadians work in federally regulated… Continue reading week ending 2022-11-24 General

week ending 2022-11-10 General

Mitigation Measures This article reports that a poll found that 69% of Canadians would either support or “somewhat support” a mask mandate for indoor public spaces if there are rising case counts. In BC, 72% said they supported or “somewhat supported” such a mandate. Long COVID This paper from Germany lays at least part of… Continue reading week ending 2022-11-10 General

week ending 2022-09-29 General

Mitigation Measures This press release from the Government of Canada says that all border restrictions — ALL — are dropped as of 1 October 2022. They are also dropping mask requirements on planes and trains. This paper tells how to do mask fit-testing at home. This paper from Nov 2021 says that the death rate… Continue reading week ending 2022-09-29 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 2022-08-11 General

Mitigation Measures This paper from eastern Massachusetts found that school districts which dropped mask mandates right away had 44 cases of COVID-19 per 1000 students/staff (accounting for 30% of cases) compared to schools which kept masks. (Before they were allowed to drop mask mandates, the case rates were similar.) Here’s a Twitter thread with an… Continue reading week ending 2022-08-11 General

week ending 2022-06-23 General

Sorry this was late. Life happened. Pathology This article summarizes this paper which says that the chances of bad COVID outcomes are cumulative with exposures. Getting COVID-19 twice is worse than once, three times is worse than two, etc. (Here’s a blog post which talks about this paper more.) As you can see, you are… Continue reading week ending 2022-06-23 General

week ending 2022-06-16 General

Long COVID This article about Long COVID in the US is interesting. It says that a lot of the indicators which you would expect to see Long COVID shift (e.g. number of disability claims, health care expenditures), have not in fact shifted. The article gives a number of possiblities: A lot of disabled people died… Continue reading week ending 2022-06-16 General

week ending 2022-05-19 General

Testing This paper found that dogs could be trained to recognize COVID-19 patients by smelling skin swabs with an accuracy of over 90%. This report says that: The percentage of all Canadian blood donors who have been infected with COVID-19 was about 28.7%, with 44.3% among the 17-24-year-olds. 99.57% of Canadian donors had evidence of… Continue reading week ending 2022-05-19 General