Schools Go read this Twitter thread, please. Vaccines This Twitter thread pushes back on the “vaccines are waning!” crowd. They point out some of the things I had pointed out about sketchiness in the various studies, plus a few others. Me, I think vaccines do wane in infectiousness some over time, but not as badly… Continue reading 2021-09-02 General
Category: Vaccines
2021-09-01 General
Treatments Good news! This preprint says that baricitinib reduces all-causes mortality of hospitalized COVID-19 patients by 38.2%! Vaccines Remember how I was saying that I thought we’d see that longer doses were better? It turns out that waaay longer is better. This preprint says that for AstraZeneca, antibody levels were four times higher in people… Continue reading 2021-09-01 General
2021-08-31 General
Vaccines This preprint from Israel says that in the second and third weeks after a third dose of Pfizer, there was a 48-68% drop and a 70-84% drop. This preprint says: Antibody levels are similar in unvaxxed people who get symptomatic and asymptomatic infections. Antibody levels decrease over time. Antibody levels were higher in people… Continue reading 2021-08-31 General
2021-08-28/29/30 General
Vaccines This Research Letter says that six to ten weeks after the second dose, antibody levels were higher in people who got Moderna doses than Pfizer doses. People who also had gotten sick with COVID-19 had higher antibody levels than those who had not. Younger people had more antibodies than older people. This preprint says… Continue reading 2021-08-28/29/30 General
2021-08-27 General
Variants This preprint says that Delta is twice as likely to put you into the hospital than Alpha is. Transmission This article says that the US has identified the first cases of COVID-19 in deer. That’s kind of odd, because this article from July 2021 says that the USDA found antibodies in deer. Maybe it’s… Continue reading 2021-08-27 General
2021-08-25 General
Vaccines This preprint says that giving solid organ transplant patients a fourth booster increases antibody levels. I have to wonder when it stops: do we give them five? six? twenty? when the rest of the world is clamoring for their first? This study found that there were three cases of myocarditis per 100K COVID-19 vaccinations,… Continue reading 2021-08-25 General
2021-08-24 General
Vaccines This thread gives a more general discussion of this preprint and says that while antibody levels in the blood, yeah, do go down for six months, the memory B cells totally rock at ramping up antibodies when needed. This thread gives a more general discussion of this preprint about waning vaccine effectiveness in Israel.… Continue reading 2021-08-24 General
2021-08-23 General
Vaccines This Twitter thread is an excellent discussion of how to understand the “do vaccines wane” discussion. Please go read it. The US FDA today gave full approval to Pfizer, as opposed to the Emergency Use Authorization that it had given. This is important because there were entities which were not legally able to require… Continue reading 2021-08-23 General
2021-08-21/22 General
Transmission This great preprint of healthcare workers in the Netherlands finds that despite having similar PCR results for vaccinated and unvaccinated people, vaccinated people actually are less likely to have actual infectious viruses. PCR tests look for pieces of RNA, but the RNA might be fragments, it’s not necessarily whole virus which can cause infection.… Continue reading 2021-08-21/22 General
2021-08-20 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that masking was responsible for a 68% reduction in transmissions and that regular testing got the reduction up to 77%. This preprint looked at different mitigation measures in schools in Switzerland. Some highlights of the reductions in viral dosage they saw: Keeping all the windows open in winter: 14x Universal… Continue reading 2021-08-20 General