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
Category: Vaccines
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
2022-03-02 General
Pathology This preprint says that they used immuno–positron emission tomography to see SARS-CoV-2 infection in cells, and found it kind of all over the male genital tract of macaques. Here’s a lay article on the subject, which added that 10-20% of men who get COVID-19 have problems with their genitals. Men, don’t get COVID-19, it’s… Continue reading 2022-03-02 General
2022-03-01 General
Pathology This article reports that a team can predict with 83% accuracy the severity of COVID-19 by looking at three components of blood (mostly TH17, a helper T cell, and immune system cells IL-17 and IFNG). Vaccines Yesterday I referenced a preprint which said that vaccine effectiveness in kidlets was awful. Today, there’s a different… Continue reading 2022-03-01 General
2022-02-26/27/28 General
Transmission This preprint looked at COVID-19 in some white-tailed deer killed by hunters in Ontario. It found COVID-19 in ~6% of the deer, and the whole-genome sequencing found that the viruses have mutated a lot. (“Highly divergent” was the language in the preprint.) Furthermore, they found one human from the same geographic area with known… Continue reading 2022-02-26/27/28 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
2022-02-19/20/21/22 General
This post might look like it has a fair amount of stuff in it, but it’s four days’ worth (because of the Canadian stat holiday yesterday). I have noticed a big drop in the amount of content to pull from. I’m not even seeing a lot of “how do we transition to post-pandemic” articles now.… Continue reading 2022-02-19/20/21/22 General
2022-02-18 General
Vaccines This preprint from Israel says that a fourth dose is helpful, but not that much. The efficacy versus people who had three doses was: 30% for Pfizer; 11% for Moderna. In other words, in cohorts of N people with three doses, N people with three doses plus 1 dose of Pfizer, and N people… Continue reading 2022-02-18 General
2022-02-17 General
It was a really stunningly slow news day today. There are lots of articles navel-gazing about “what does it mean for the pandemic to be over?” but not much real news. Vaccines This article reports that Health Canada (finally) approved Novavax! Novavax had really good results — 90% effective against infection and 100% effective against… Continue reading 2022-02-17 General