Vaccines This article says that Moderna has formally filed a request that the US FDA approve their vax for children between 6 months and 5 years, yay! Moderna says the two-dose regime is 51% effective against infection. That doesn’t sound like much, but it is compared to kids without vax (who don’t get sick as… Continue reading week ending 2022-04-28 General
Category: Vaccines
Week ending 2022-04-21 General
Variants This paper shows the increase in average transmission for different SARS-CoV-2 variants relative to COVID Classic: Long COVID This paper says that people can shed COVID-19 RNA in their poo for like seven months after they got infected. They also saw a correlation between the amount of COVID-19 RNA is their poo and gastrointestinal… Continue reading Week ending 2022-04-21 General
Week ending 2022-04-14 General
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
2022-04-05/06 General
Vaccines Still don’t think you need a booster? Check out this graph from this awesome slide deck (referencing this paper) for people vaxxed with Pfizer: (I really doubt that it actually goes negative. I bet what that really shows is that the control group has some protection via infections, potentially recent infections.) Don’t get the… Continue reading 2022-04-05/06 General
2022-04-02/03/04 General
There wasn’t much good general news today. There were some technical papers, but most were either overly technical or said things we already knew (boosters work! Omicron is vax-resistant!). The non-technical materials were mostly OMG BA.2 IS COMING/HERE WHY DOES EVERYBODY ACT LIKE IT IS NO BIG DEAL?!?!?!?! Long COVID This preprint says that using… Continue reading 2022-04-02/03/04 General
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
2022-03-26/27/28 General
Long COVID I have been seeing anecdotal reports for some time on Twitter that Paxlovid helped Long COVID, but nothing that seemed concrete enough to post here. Well, I can now point to this case study from a few weeks ago which says that Paxlovid completely got rid of Long COVID symptoms in one woman.… Continue reading 2022-03-26/27/28 General
2022-03-24/25 General
Vaccines This article reports that the World Health Organization’s COVAX project declined to approve Medicago’s vax — not because their vax doesn’t work, but because Medicago is largely owned by Big Tobacco, and that’s verboten. This preprint says that a trivalent version of the NDV-HXP-S vax with a mix of Beta, Gamma, and Delta spikes… Continue reading 2022-03-24/25 General
2022-03-23 General
Testing This article says that COVID-19 in wastewater is going up in many places across Canada. Mitigation Measures This article reports on an Italian study which found that better ventilation reduced COVID-19 cases dramatically in schools. Replacing classroom air 2.4 times an hour gave a 40 percent reduction in infections; 4 times an hour gave… Continue reading 2022-03-23 General