2021-11-18 General

Treatments This article talks about the good long-term results of AstraZeneca’s polyclonal antibody (brand name Evusheld). The article says it’s a two shot therapy like a vaccine, and given pre-exposure gives 83% protection over six months, sort of like a vaccine. Unlike a vaccine, however, it should work just as well in people who are… Continue reading 2021-11-18 General

2021-10-28 General

Treatment This paper says that a single infusion of a new-to-me polyclonal antibody — sotrovimab — is 85% effective at preventing hospitalization when given early to high-risk COVID-19 patients. The FDA already gave an EUA to sotrovimab on 26 May; Canada gave interim approval on 30 July (and bought 10,000 doses on 4 October), so… Continue reading 2021-10-28 General

2021-10-23/24/25 General

Transmission In this small study of Italian health-care workers who were tested regularly, all of the people who tested positive but were asymptomatic tested negative the very next day. The mean time for the symptomatic patients to test negative was 11 days. Pathology This preprint says they found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the cerebrospinal fluid of… Continue reading 2021-10-23/24/25 General

2021-10-14 General

Vaccines Someone is live-tweeting the La Jolla Immunology Conference, and during a panel about an important paper from May that I’ve already talked about, they said something which I missed: that inter-individual variations in antibody responses are larger than the variations between responses to different variants. I’ve talked about the two-proline (2P) and six-proline (6P)… Continue reading 2021-10-14 General

2021-10-13 General

Diagnosis / Equity This Twitter thread suggests that the reason darker-skinned people have higher fatality rates from COVID-19 is because, well, they have darker skin: pulse oximeters, which are used to judge how serious a case is, don’t work on dark-skinned people. Economic effects This video from January 2021 makes the economic case — not… Continue reading 2021-10-13 General

2010-10-09/10/11/12 General

Mitigation Measures This article says that the US will allow fully-vaccinated Canadians to enter, starting sometime in November. “Fully-vaccinated” has not been clearly defined yet. Vaccines Novavax has published data from their Phase 3 trials in the USA and Mexico in this preprint. I wanted to be snarky and say that maybe this means that… Continue reading 2010-10-09/10/11/12 General