It has been aggressively hot for the past few days, such that I have not wanted to have a hot laptop on my lap. Updates are going to be a bit behind for a few more days. Origins This Twitter thread (from 17 May) is interesting. It from someone who describes the changes from bat… Continue reading 2021-06-26/27/28 General
Category: Vaccines
2021-06-25 General
Vaccines Apparently there’s some people being concerned about mRNA vaccine ending up in the ovaries. This Twitter thread takes that idea down. Tl;dr: the lipid envelopes which contain the mRNA migrate around, and a small amount ends up in the ovaries (as it does to lots of organs, most notably the liver), but such a… Continue reading 2021-06-25 General
2021-06-24 General
Vaccines This Research Letter says that vaccines do not decrease sperm production. There was actually an increase in sperm production, but that might be due to increased abstinence time before the second sample collection. This preprint from India says that the Delta strain is more resistant to antibodies in vitro, transmit from health care worker… Continue reading 2021-06-24 General
2021-06-23 General
Long COVID This paper makes a strong case that re-activated Epstein-Barr virus is involved in most Long COVID cases. This paper says that women are 2.7x more likely to get Long COVID as men. 44% of women and 24% of men in this study (in Norway) had symptoms. Vaccines This Twitter thread, which is a… Continue reading 2021-06-23 General
2021-06-22 General
Mitigation Measures This paper looks at the strategy of eliminating vs. mitigating and concludes that eliminating is better. It says that the countries which went for elimination (Australia, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea) have done much better than the ones which went for mitigation. Um, notice anything about those countries? None of them… Continue reading 2021-06-22 General
2021-06-21 General
Transmission This paper details a clever US study where they looked at COVID-19 cases in households which had recently had a birthday vs. households which had not recently had a birthday. They found 31% more COVID-19 case in households with birthdays than without, and the effect was much stronger in households with a child birthday… Continue reading 2021-06-21 General
2021-06-20 General
Variants I have been scaremongering about Delta, saying it is more transmissible, causes more severe cases, and is transmitted more in schools. I apparently need to back off a little bit. Delta is more transmissible, that’s uncontestable. This very interesting tweet thread says that the data does not support there being more transmission in schools.… Continue reading 2021-06-20 General
2021-06-19 General
Treatments This preprint might be important. It describes a novel treatment for COVID-19 (and possibly for all viruses). The active ingredient (SLR) activates a molecule called RIG-I, which in turn gooses the production of interleukin-1, which is a cytokine, part of the immune system associated with inflammation. Basically, SLR revs up the innate immune system… Continue reading 2021-06-19 General
2021-06-17 General
Vaccines The US just donated 1M Moderna doses to Canada. Canada received 330K Johnson & Johnson doses, but it’s going to sit on them right now because of concerns about contamination. Canada will also refuse any more J&J shipments. Today NACI advised Team AZ to get mRNA for the second dose. While I think this… Continue reading 2021-06-17 General
2021-06-16 General
Vaccines Oh, ouch! CureVac has really crappy preliminary Phase 3 results: 49%. CureVac is an mRNA vax, and they had made all kinds of partnerships with really big pharma companies to manufacture it. They were supposed to deliver 300M this year and 1B next year. That hurts. A survey says that about one in five… Continue reading 2021-06-16 General