Pathology This article says that people with mental illnesses are at much higher risk of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death. I gather that it’s not the mental illness per se, but the consequences of mental illness that put them at risk. Mitigation Measures This article reports that the Government of Canada has ended its COVID-era… Continue reading 2021-11-20/21/22 General
Category: Vaccines
2021-11-19 General
Vaccines This article reports that Health Canada and NACI have approved the pediatric Pfizer vaccine for 5-11 year olds! Interestingly, NACI says that kids should space the influenza and COVID-19 vaccinations, not because they shots are less effective, but because if there is an adverse effect, they want to be able to tell which shot… Continue reading 2021-11-19 General
2021-11-17 General
Vaccines This study (in the US) found that for counties with vaccination rates above 40%, for each percentage increase in vaccination rate, the COVID-19 case incidence dropped by 1.5% and the death incidence dropped by 2.7%. Go vaccines! I prefer to wait until things are done-done before publishing about them, but this is important: anonymous… Continue reading 2021-11-17 General
2021-11-13/14/15 General
Vaccines This article says that Novavax — once it gets approved and once the manufacturing line gets booted up in 2022 — will be produced in Montreal! The article says they expect to be able to make about 2M doses per month. This article mentions how the US’ vaccination of young children has an added… Continue reading 2021-11-13/14/15 General
2021-11-12 General
Vaccines This article reports that Health Canada has approved half-dose Moderna as a booster for people over 18. Mitigation Measures This article says that organized crime stole relief funds in various ways. Recommended Reading In the Before Times, there were a fair number of international medical personnel stationed in Uganda. This article says that when… Continue reading 2021-11-12 General
2021-11-11 General
Assholes to Assholes This article says that people are paying money for fake vax cards, and the providers… just pocket the money and never send the card. LOL. Vaccines This article from the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations says that the world is going to have a glut of vaccines by June 2022.… Continue reading 2021-11-11 General
2021-11-09 General
Vaccines This article reports that Health Canada approved the Pfizer booster for everyone over 18 today. This study gives the Phase 3 results for the pediatric Pfizer shots, showing a vaccine effectiveness of 90.7%. Recommended Reading This article is about the theory of risk compensation — which they say is bogus and harmful. You won’t… Continue reading 2021-11-09 General
2021-11-04 General
Genetics This preprint talks about using virus-like particles to study viruses. It looks enough like SARS-CoV-2 that it can get into cells, but then it can’t replicate. Essentially, it’s shooting blanks. This study identified a specific gene variant (which comes from Neanderthals!) which gives a 2x risk of respiratory failure. About 60% of people of… Continue reading 2021-11-04 General
2021-11-03 General
Deaths/Demographics In addition to just “numbers of deaths”, you can also estimate “years of life lost” to describe how bad an epidemic is. For example, HIV had a huuuuge number of years of life lost because the people who died from it were unusually young. This article looked at years of life lost to COVID-19… Continue reading 2021-11-03 General
2021-11-02 General
Vaccines This article says that vaccine effectiveness in England was only about 50-60% against infection in the June/July 2021 period. There’s a stat called the number needed to vaccinate (NNV), which is a measure of how many people you would need to vaccinate to prevent some outcome. The NNV for 80 year olds to prevent… Continue reading 2021-11-02 General