Vaccines If I understand this paper correctly, scientists found spike protein in the blood of mice after vaccinating them with AZ. (See previous discussion of why that matters in the 26 May General blog posting.) There have been a number of papers which say that you are much less likely to transmit COVID if you… Continue reading 2021-05-29 General
Category: Vaccines
2021-05-27 General
Mitigation Measures Whaddayaknow, masks work. This literature review says so. Variants B.1.617.2 is now dominant in the UK. This is legit something to worry about, as one dose of vax is only about half as good as two doses. Vaccines Some scientists think that COVID-19 immunity from vaccines will last years, if not a lifetime.… Continue reading 2021-05-27 General
2021-05-26 General
Treatments This article explains how scientists can now make mini organs — like mini-lungs and mini-hearts — and infect them with COVID-19 to see what happens. This has the potential to make it much faster to try out different treatments. 😲 This paper reports that a nasal antibody spray can help hamsters recover from COVID-19.… Continue reading 2021-05-26 General
2021-05-25 General
Mitigation Measures This paper looked at movement restrictions in the US and found the following (independent) reductions in mobility from mitigation measures: Measure Reduction emergency declaration 9.9% social distancing policies 24.5% shelter-in-place 29% Further, they found that a 10% reduction in mobility was associated with a 17.5% reduction in case growth two weeks later. Vaccines… Continue reading 2021-05-25 General
2021-05-24 General
Diagnostics Dear Readers, go get yourself a pulse oximeter. A study showed that frequently people with COVID wait until they are short of breath to go to hospital. Unfortunately, with COVID, frequently you feel like you can breathe fine, but your blood oxygen actually is quite low. If your pulse oximeter is reading low and… Continue reading 2021-05-24 General
2021-05-22/23 General
Yesterday was a bit of a slow news day, plus I uh forgot to hit the Publish button, so today you get a 2-for-1 post! Schools A US CDC report says that schools that required teachers and staff to use masks had 37% lower rates of COVID-19. Schools which improved ventilation had 39% lower rates… Continue reading 2021-05-22/23 General
2021-05-21 General
Vaccines New data from a UK study of Novavax is out, and it looks really good: 96.4% against COVID Classic and 86.3% against B.1.1.7, with fewer side effects than Pfizer/Moderna/AZ. (No sign of blood clots, either, but rare events like that are unlikely to show up in a trial.) Meanwhile, a Novavax trial in South… Continue reading 2021-05-21 General
2021-05-20 General
Vaccines SinoVac/CoronaVac did a clinical trial in kids down to age 3. They found that compared to adults, the kids had better immune responses and fewer side-effects. They also tested full-doses vs. half-doses, and while a half-dose might be enough for the smallest kids, it interestingly didn’t make the side-effects any better. That surprised me:… Continue reading 2021-05-20 General
2021-05-19 General
Disease This preprint found that patients with COVID-19 made a bunch of antibodies which attacked their own innate immune system. Putting those antibodies into mice with a human ACE2 receptor made them more susceptible to COVID-19. Remember yesterday, how I talked at length about how live attenuated virus vaccines (LAVs) appear to rev up the… Continue reading 2021-05-19 General
2021-05-18 General
Vaccines I took a look at a paper about a South African trial of AstraZeneca — I think this is the final paper of the preprint I’d seen before — and it says that AZ is really crappy against B.1.351. I knew that, I preach that. HOWEVER, something I hadn’t noticed before is that there were no… Continue reading 2021-05-18 General