Vaccination Half of eligible Canadians have gotten their second dose, woohoo! Transmission This study looked at viral loads over time and found three interesting things: The total infectiousness (load integrated over time) was very different between different people. The viral load went up in saliva before it went up in nasal mucous. They suggest that… Continue reading 2021-07-13 General
Category: Vaccines
2021-07-12 General
Vaccines This article reports COVID-19 patients who got a flu shot had significantly fewer complications than patients who did not. COVAX is getting 100M doses immediately from Sinopharm and Sinovac. This is great news. It’s not enough, of course, but double what COVAX has distributed already. (There’s another 390M coming later, which is also great… Continue reading 2021-07-12 General
2021-07-10 General
Vaccines This article says that the Sputnik V vaccine is turning out to be a good one, with effectiveness in the 90% range — and not just with Russian data, either. (I still wouldn’t get one because of the quality control problems which Brazil uncovered.)
2021-07-08 General
Vaccines Pfizer says that a third shot boosts antibody levels 5x to 10x against COVID Classic and Beta. Remember that antibodies aren’t the whole story, and that Pfizer has incentive to get as many people as possible to buy their vax. They also said they are working on a Delta-specific booster. The US FDA immediately… Continue reading 2021-07-08 General
2021-07-07 General
Vaccines A few days ago, there was a Israeli Ministry of Health report saying that Pfizer was only 64% effective against the Delta strain, which was far lower than other studies had found. It looks like the study in Israel was against all infection, including asymptomatic infection, while the others were against symptomatic infection. That… Continue reading 2021-07-07 General
2021-07-06 General
Vaccines In yesterday’s General blog post, I pointed to a study from Israel that said that Pfizer was only 64% effective. This thread does a takedown of that study. This preprint also says that AZ+Pfizer is a lot better (in test tubes, anyway) than AZ+AZ, and even a bit better than Pfizer+Pfizer. Disease This article… Continue reading 2021-07-06 General
2021-07-03/04/05 General
Seroprevalence This study from 18 June 2021 found that at the end of the second wave, between 5 and 6% of Canadians had antibodies to COVID-19, up from 2% after the first wave. Vaccines This study (done in Ontario) says that Moderna scores best against all the variants, and that Moderna does well against Delta… Continue reading 2021-07-03/04/05 General
2021-07-02 General
Mitigation Measures Trudeau put in writing that the border stays closed to foreign nationals entering from anywhere but the United States until 75% of the population (not the adults, not the eligible) are fully vaxxed. The “anywhere but the United States” is interesting, I think it basically bans air travel. Foreign nationals entering from the… Continue reading 2021-07-02 General
2021-06-30 General
Vaccines/Innoculation This paper poses an interesting idea: maybe masks and distancing help not just in preventing spread but also from lowering the number of virus that one is exposed to to a level where people got micro-innoculations from sick people! They base it on the observation that many countries in Europe had increased cases without… Continue reading 2021-06-30 General
2021-06-29 General
Note: It was hot again today, so today’s postings are going to be short. I’ll try to catch up in the next few days Deaths This report suggests that COVID-19 deaths in Canada were wickedly undercounted. NB: I haven’t had time to do a deep dive into it yet, but I would like to. So… Continue reading 2021-06-29 General