Long COVID This paper from Germany has some good news: it says that mild to moderate COVID infections in unvaccinated people does not lead to cognitive deficits several months after recovery than in controls. The caveat is that the study had only 223 people in each arm of the study, so it might not have… Continue reading 2023-05-30 General
Category: Transmission
2023-05-04 General
I had an ugly thought. Maybe it makes a certain sense from the majority’s standpoint, to remove all restrictions because it would level the playing field. If COVID-19 does cause lasting damage, e.g. in increasing the risk of death or disability, then the people who have never had COVID-19 have an advantage over the people… Continue reading 2023-05-04 General
2023-04-20 General
Folks, we have a problem. We have a problem with language. When I say “Long COVID”, you probably immediately think “brain fog and/or fatigue” (and maybe you’ll think of a persistent cough and/or loss of smell/taste). What you probably do not think of is a higher chance of severe illness/death from something that doesn’t look… Continue reading 2023-04-20 General
2023-04-06 General
Transmission It is pretty clear to me that COVID-19 spread is airborne — there has been lots of evidence in the literature for that — but I had not seen any evidence that it spread via surface contact (fomites). This paper from the UK makes a strong case for fomites being important. They tracked household… Continue reading 2023-04-06 General
2023-03-30 General
Long COVID This paper from Switzerland says that there are fewer Long COVID symptoms after an Omicron infection than for previous variants. The number of symptoms on a survey given to people who tested postive were: Strain of infection # Symptoms COVID Classic 1.12 Alpha/Delta 0.67 Omicron 0.52 no infection 0.39 Interestingly, for Omicron infections,… Continue reading 2023-03-30 General
2023-03-23 General
Transmission This report on seroprevalence in blood donors says that, by mid-January: This means that almost a quarter of Canadians had not had COVID-19 by mid-Jan 2023. Long COVID This article says that Long COVID isn’t as common as the press makes it out to be. This study says that COVID-19 causes lingering symptoms in… Continue reading 2023-03-23 General
2023-03-02 General
Health Care System This article says that federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos intervened in November with Canada’s drug price regulator to drop a policy reform process. 😠😬 Mitigation Measures This article (drawing from information in a number of papers) says that early targeted border closures were ineffective. (Basically, shutting down flights from South Africa and… Continue reading 2023-03-02 General
2023-02-23 General
Funding This article says that Canada is giving $30M to the World Health Organization, mostly to support vaccine delivery in hard-to-reach areas. This sounds like a lot, but the next article I read says that BC is giving the same amount — $30M — in one-time grants to arts events struggling to recover from COVID-19.… Continue reading 2023-02-23 General
2023-02-16 General
Long COVID This paper from USA is yet another which says that people are more likely to develop diabetes after a COVID-19 infection than the uninfected. In this paper, they found an adjusted increased risk of 58%. This study from NY found that racialized COVID-19 patients did worse than white ones. (NB: This is not… Continue reading 2023-02-16 General
2023-02-02 General
Vaccines It’s here! This preprint from India has the first data for nasal vaccines in humans that we’ve seen. It compares of the same inactivated adenovirus delivered nasally (BBV154) and intramuscularly (Covaxin), both from Bharat Biotech: Levels of antibodies and good things range from about 1.5x to almost 2x higher when delivered nasally. There were… Continue reading 2023-02-02 General