Vaccines There’s yet another paper which says that AZ is crap against B.1.351 — 10.5%. There is some suggestion that AZ is um crap against B.1.351 because it doesn’t have the 2-proline stabilizer (unlike the mRNAs and J&J). The 2-proline stabilizer is a little tweak to the spike protein to keep it in its prefusion… Continue reading 2021-03-16 General
Category: Vaccines
2021-03-15 General
Vaccines Moderna has registered to do a small Ph2/3 trials on children. A preprint says that the first vax dose for cancer patients is not very effective, but that the second dose gives them good protection. Zeynep Tufekci has an essay arguing that the language of “we should vaccinate them over there so they don’t… Continue reading 2021-03-15 General
2021-03-13 General
Vaccines BioNTech (which is the company behind Pfizer’s vaccine) is going to partner with an additional 13 companies to make up to 2 billion (yes, billion with a B) doses this year. There’s a nice study done by Public Health Scotland where they looked at household members of healthcare workers who did and did not… Continue reading 2021-03-13 General
2021-03-12 General
Long COVID Respected COVID journalist Zeynep Tufekci points out problems with the claims that a very large percentage of the people who have Long COVID had very mild symptoms originally. She points out that the most commonly cited study has real problems with confirmation bias, definitions of “asymptomatic”, and missing baselines. Vaccines Novavax announced that… Continue reading 2021-03-12 General
2021-03-11 General
Odds The Economist has a really great article which models the influence of age and comorbidities on hospitalization and death. Here’s a graph from the article: Vaccine Effectiveness Pfizer issued a press release, saying that its vaccine was 97% effective at preventing symptomatic disease in Israel (which has mostly B.1.1.7). (Are you getting the message?… Continue reading 2021-03-11 General
2021-03-10 General
It really seems to me like there is less COVID news than there used to be, even a month ago. There could be several contributing factors to the slowdown: Fewer massive screwups (especially in the US, especially compared to under the Trump administration). Less anxiety about the future. The vaccines have arrived, they are going… Continue reading 2021-03-10 General
2021-03-08 General
VOC A preprint says that people who had B.1.351 had antibodies that worked well against COVID Classic and also against P.1. This is outstanding news — it means that the counter-B.1.351 boosters being developed will work against the scaries! There is yet another study which says that, while the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines (Pfizer in… Continue reading 2021-03-08 General
2021-03-06 General
Treatments Fluvoxamine — an old anti-depressant — is being tested as a treatment for COVID. VOCs Yet another paper says that our vaccines (in this case, Moderna and Novavax) work against B.1.1.7.
2021-03-04 General
Vaccines Canada is probably going to approve the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in the next few days. That will make four vaccines, five if you count the Serum Institute of India’s vaccine as different from AstraZeneca. There is an article in the Economist which says that the differences in reported vaccine efficacy is really… Continue reading 2021-03-04 General
2021-03-03 General
Vaccines The Novavax vaccine — which had ~90% efficacy against B.1.1.7 — had only 60% efficacy against HIV-negative patients, most of whom had B.1.351. As a side effect, the study showed that having had COVID Classic didn’t give you any protection against B.1.351. Yikes. There is a report that, while rare, some delayed (5 days… Continue reading 2021-03-03 General