Mental Health The pandemic has clearly been a mental health disaster for many people. Interestingly, though, the number of suicides has not increased according to this study. Vaccines They have now found some problems with clotting with the J&J vaccine also. The alarm was first raised on Friday (the day this blog was ah impaired… Continue reading 2021-04-13 General
Category: Vaccines
2021-04-12 General
Vaccines This preprint describes some early work on a vaccine which could work against ALL coronaviruses. This preprint found B.1.1.7 wasn’t more able to reinfect people, didn’t give different or longer symptoms, that it was more transmissible, and that lockdown was able to bring Rt below 1 even in the presence of lots of B.1.1.7.… Continue reading 2021-04-12 General
2021-04-11 General
Vaccines A followup on the J&J adverse reactions yesterday says that it was no big deal, but the same thing happened in Colorado. One person had an allergic reaction, but the others basically felt woozy/light-headed. Nine people were treated with juice and water. One possible explanation is that people who don’t like needles are probably… Continue reading 2021-04-11 General
2021-04-09/10 General
Sorry that there was no blog posting yesterday, I got my first shot of AstraZeneca and was wiped out. Vaccines Pfizer has announced excellent results from their clinical trial with adolescents, and has asked the FDA for approval! It is not a surprise that it’s effective in children as well, but it’s great news that… Continue reading 2021-04-09/10 General
2021-04-08 General
Vaccines Medicago, a Canadian vaccine manufacturer (yes! we have one 🇨🇦!) is expanding its Phase 3 trial in Brazil. CureVac says that they expect to get data from their Phase 3 trial in late April or May and is hoping for EU regulatory approval in June. CureVac is interesting because: It’s mRNA with a 2-proline… Continue reading 2021-04-08 General
2021-04-06 General
COVID effects A study in the UK found that about a third of COVID survivors were diagnosed with neurological disorders, with about a quarter of the total COVID patients getting their first-ever neurological diagnosis. (My interpretation says that this is things which happened during their first bout and Long COVID — they didn’t separate them.)… Continue reading 2021-04-06 General
2021-04-04/5 General
Vaccines Great news! There’s a next-gen, (probably) really effective, easy to make, cheap COVID-19 vaccine on the horizon! The COVID19 spike sidles up to the ACE2 receptor, and when the spike docks, it changes shape. Many of the vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, J&J) use a modification (the two proline, or 2P, modification) to the spike genome… Continue reading 2021-04-04/5 General
2021-04-01 General
Vaccines There is yet another study showing how good the vaccines are. This one, from Pfizer, shows that the vaccine remains 91% effective for at least six months, and is fully effective against B.1.351. Canada has given regulatory approval to the factory which made the AstraZeneca doses which the US is loaning to Canada! The… Continue reading 2021-04-01 General
2021-03-31 General
Vaccines Great news! Preliminary results say that the Pfizer vax works great in adolescents! This was to be expected, but this means we are methodically getting closer to being able to vaccinate children. More and more studies are showing that vaccines reduce asymptomatic infection by a lot — between about 75 and 95%, depending on… Continue reading 2021-03-31 General
2021-03-30 General
Vaccines Yet another paper which finds that, surprisingly, antibodies against COVID Classic work much better against P.1 than against B.1.351. A paper says that AstraZeneca is 70% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID from B.1.1.7 and only 29% effective against asymptomatic COVID from B.1.1.7, ouch. The paper says that it is 82% effective against symptomatic illness… Continue reading 2021-03-30 General