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
Category: Transmission
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 2022-09-29 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 2022-09-22 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 2022-09-08 General
Unwanted Side Effects This paper from Paris found that, while infant head trauma (which is usually caused by child abuse) did not go up in 2020, it doubled in 2021. 😬 Vaccines Good news on the mucosal antibodies front! (Reminder: you want antibodies in the mucous because COVID-19 hits the mucous membranes of the respiratory… Continue reading week ending 2022-09-08 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
week ending 2022-07-28 General
Transmission Here’s another preprint (from the UK) which says that the “you don’t have to isolate longer than five days” guidance is bullshit. It says that the median person was infectious — even if asymptomatic — for 7 to ten days. This paper from the USA found that while adults who were not exposed to… Continue reading week ending 2022-07-28 General
week ending 2022-07-14 General
Vaccines This article reports that Moderna has been approved in Canada for kiddies between six months and five years old. This article reports that an Alberta judge ruled that it was okay to require transplant patients to get a COVID vax, given the scarcity of organs and the much higher likelihood that unvaxxed organ recipients… Continue reading week ending 2022-07-14 General
week ending 2022-06-30 General
Folks, BA.5 is coming and it’s going to be bad. Mentally prepare yourself for a big wave this summer. I don’t know where to put it, but this paper says that compared to peer countries, Canada: Did really well on per capita vaccinated, cases, and deaths. (You could argue that we’re fudging the numbers, but… Continue reading week ending 2022-06-30 General