Because the rest of the world has decided that COVID doesn’t exist any more, I am dropping down to one post per week. I am going to stop posting articles which are repetitive, especially ones of the form “Oh look! {Vaccines, boosters, treatments} still work against {Omicron, older variants}”; “Oh look! Vaccines wane in effectiveness!”;… Continue reading Week ending 2022-04-14 General
Category: Treatments
2022-03-31 and 2022-04-01 General
Mitigation Measures This article reports that, as advertised, the Government of Canada has dropped its requirement for a COVID test to enter the country for fully vaccinated travelers. Note that you do still need to fill out the ArriveCan app’s survey before you cross. Pathology Wow, this paper says that pregnancy increases your risk of… Continue reading 2022-03-31 and 2022-04-01 General
2022-03-29/30 General
Vaccines This preprint took a very careful look at Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, and Novavax in test tubes. It measured a bunch of different components of the immune system in multiple ways. In general, the mRNAs waned the most and one shot J&J the least, but J&J started from a low enough place that even after… Continue reading 2022-03-29/30 General
2022-03-17/18 General
Mitigation Measures Yep, they did it. On Wednesday I said that the government planned to drop the testing requirement to enter Canada. This article reports that it happened. This article says that as more restrictions are being lifted, a hospital in Montreal reports seeing an increase in “normal” child trauma: broken legs, scrapes, stomach flu,… Continue reading 2022-03-17/18 General
2022-03-12/13/14 General
Long COVID This preprint says that people with Type O blood are 4.2x as likely to get Long COVID as non-O people. From this Twitter thread: Treatments This preprint looked at effectiveness of monoclonal antibodies against BA.1 and BA.2. It is striking to me how well a monoclonal antibody works against one of the strains… Continue reading 2022-03-12/13/14 General
2022-03-04 General
Long COVID As a reminder that Long COVID is a real problem, this report says that 2.4% of people in the UK report Long COVID symptoms more than four weeks after infection. Not 2.4% of the people who got Long COVID, 2.4% of ALL the people. Of that 2.4%, 45% (i.e. 1.08% of the total… Continue reading 2022-03-04 General
2022-03-03 General
Vaccines You might be wondering what the holdup is with shots for toddlers and babies. After all, the Pfizer shots were effective (during the Delta regime) for the under-two babies, just not for the toddlers (presumably because the dose:weight ratio was high enough for the babies but not the toddlers). This article about the approval… Continue reading 2022-03-03 General
2022-02-24 General
Vaccines This article reports that Health Canada approved Medicago’s Covifenz, a plant-derived protein subunit vaccine. In trials, Covifenz had 71% effectiveness against Delta infection, and 100% effective against hospitalization. According to their product monograph, it is fridge-stable, but needs to be handled gently. Medicago’s vax is a virus-like particle, what I generally call a “spikey… Continue reading 2022-02-24 General
2022-02-23 General
As I mentioned before, “everybody” seems to be acting like the pandemic is over. It’s not. Really it is not. I suspect people hear numbers like “60 per day in Canada” and think, “oh, well, 60 isn’t many people in a population of 39M”, but I think people just don’t understand just how rare death… Continue reading 2022-02-23 General
2022-02-12/13/14 General
Vaccines This preprint says that if you are unvaccinated and get Omicron, that protects you against Omicron, but your protection against anything else is pretty crappy. If you get Omicron after getting vaccinated, you get really really good protection against all known variants. Treatments Two articles have come out in the past week which say… Continue reading 2022-02-12/13/14 General