There’s no BC-specific post this week because the province is only providing most data on the first Thursday of the month. They are still providing wastewater information — and even a bit more because of the World Cup — so I have added BC wastewater measurements into the General post. COVID-19 COVID-Related Excess Death and… Continue reading 2026-06-12 General
Category: Transmission
2026-06-06 General
COVID-19 Long COVID ‼️‼️ This paper from USA (2026-05-28) reports evidence that Long COVID — at least with with neurocognitive symptoms — is an autoimmune disease. They first used flourescently-tagged antibodies to find ones that looked like they were attacking the self. Next, they tested they extracted these autoantibodies and tested them against human cell… Continue reading 2026-06-06 General
2026-05-29 General
Note: there is no BC post this week. Metro Vancouver did not publish the wastewater data, and there’s not any other BC-specific news. The province is supposed to release case/hospitalization/death data next week, so there should be a BC post next week. This General blog post is also very short today. There is a huge… Continue reading 2026-05-29 General
2026-05-22 General
COVID-19 Long COVID 💊🎉 This paper from Japan (2026-05-15) reports that outpatients with confirmed COVID-19 who took ensitrelvir/Xocova were 14% less likely to get Long COVID than controls who took placebos. Patients who took molnupiravir had a 19% lower risk, but the change in risk was not statistically significant for nirmatrelvir+ritonavir/Paxlovid. (Editor’s Note: Xocova has… Continue reading 2026-05-22 General
2026-05-15 General
COVID-19 Long COVID This paper from Japan (2026-05-08) reports that Long COVID rates dropped from Delta to Omicron/2022 to Omicron/2024, in both children and adults: Note that most people with Long COVID symptoms got better relatively quickly, but it then plateaued: if you weren’t better after ten months, you weren’t likely to be better at… Continue reading 2026-05-15 General
2026-05-01 General
COVID-19 Vaccines ❌ The acting head of the US CDC, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, blocked publication of a paper in the US CDC’s weekly (and highly respected) journal. It is hugely unusual for a paper to get blocked like that by a high official (probably unprecedented, though I don’t know all of the US CDC’s history),… Continue reading 2026-05-01 General
2026-04-18 General
Multiple Pathogens Hospitals This article (2026-04-16) about this report (2026-04-16) says that the number of hospitalizations for vaccine-preventable respiratory diseases for Canadians more than doubled between 2019 and 2024, from 66 per 100,000 to 142 per 100,000. (BC had 125 vaccine-preventable respiratory diseases per 100,000 in 2024.) There were almost 60,000 vaccine-preventable respiratory hospitalizations in… Continue reading 2026-04-18 General
2026-04-10 General
Multiple Pathogens 💊 Metformin seems to be a bit of a wonder drug. It helps Type 2 diabetics, people with polycystic ovary syndrome, and it inhibits weight gain. Studies of using metformin to treat or prevent COVID-19 and Long COVID are mixed, but on balance it tends to help, and it helps some groups with… Continue reading 2026-04-10 General
2026-04-03 General
COVID-19 Treatments 🎉 This paper from Israel (2026-03-25) reports that they’ve isolated a monoclonal antibody from recovered COVID-19 patients which works against all variants known so far! The antibody works against a highly-conserved area, and makes the top part of the spike fall off prematurely. Without the top part, the virus can’t dock with the… Continue reading 2026-04-03 General
2026-03-27 General
Multiple Pathogens Pathology This paper from Ontario (2026-03-22) reports, to put it bluntly, that the “immunity debt” theory is hogwash. (The immunity debt theory says that the immune system is like a muscle, and requires exercise to stay in top form so when lockdown reduced exposure to pathogens, the immune system “got out of shape”.)… Continue reading 2026-03-27 General