Other News These aren’t COVID-19 pieces, but I think they are important. I had thought that RSV vaccinations weren’t available in Canada yet because NACI and the province had not figured out the parameters, but they are! My flu shot vaccinator said that they have RSV on hand. It costs a bunch (almost $300), but… Continue reading 2023-10-20 General
Category: Treatments
2023-10-03 General
Long COVID Huge news! — if it pans out. This paper from USA found that a protein called WASF3 f’s with mitochondria, and that it was elevated in people with ME/CFS. (Here’s a lay article explaining/describing the paper.) The authors also made mice with excess WASF3, and found the mice acted fatigued. This might be… Continue reading 2023-10-03 General
2023-09-08 General
Long COVID This paper from USA looked at Long COVID in US veterans over two years. It found: Note, however, that this study did not look at the risk of diagnoses of other illnesses, e.g. diabetes, cardiovascular incidents, neurological impairments, etc. which other studies have found. Also, this study was done on US veterans, an… Continue reading 2023-09-08 General
2023-05-30 General
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
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
2023-03-23 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
2023-03-16 General
Many people mark 11 March 2020 as the day “shit got real” with COVID-19. That was the day that Tom Hanks announced that he’d gotten COVID-19 and the NBA shut down. To mark the anniversary, there were a ton of three-year retrospectives this week, and there apparently was a Canadian National Day of Observance (which… Continue reading 2023-03-16 General
2023-03-09 General
I feel like I haven’t done as much research this week, but I’m just flat too tired today to do more. I will probably make tomorrow’s “tiny” posting beefier. There’s also supposed to be a press conference tomorrow; I plan to watch that and report on it. Vaccines Per this Statement, NACI recommends that vulnerable… Continue reading 2023-03-09 General