Multiple Pathogens 💊 Metformin seems to be a bit of a wonder drug. It helps Type 2 diabetics, people with polycystic ovary syndrome, and it inhibits weight gain. Studies of using metformin to treat or prevent COVID-19 and Long COVID are mixed, but on balance it tends to help, and it helps some groups with… Continue reading 2026-04-10 General
Category: Variants
2026-04-03 General
COVID-19 Treatments 🎉 This paper from Israel (2026-03-25) reports that they’ve isolated a monoclonal antibody from recovered COVID-19 patients which works against all variants known so far! The antibody works against a highly-conserved area, and makes the top part of the spike fall off prematurely. Without the top part, the virus can’t dock with the… Continue reading 2026-04-03 General
2026-03-27 General
Multiple Pathogens Pathology This paper from Ontario (2026-03-22) reports, to put it bluntly, that the “immunity debt” theory is hogwash. (The immunity debt theory says that the immune system is like a muscle, and requires exercise to stay in top form so when lockdown reduced exposure to pathogens, the immune system “got out of shape”.)… Continue reading 2026-03-27 General
2026-03-13 General
COVID-19 Long COVID A question that I get asked surprisingly frequently is, “but hasn’t Long COVID decreased a lot?” and I surprisingly didn’t have really good evidence either way to point to. Well, now I have something: this review paper (2026-03-10) reports that Long COVID prevalence was 35.5% in the pre-Omicron era and is 22.8%… Continue reading 2026-03-13 General
2025-10-18 General
COVID-19 Really really long COVID 🍆 This paper (2025-10-11) says that COVID-19 won’t just f you up, it’ll f your children up if you are male. They infected male mice with COVID-19 and then looked at their offspring. All of their children were exhibited more anxious behaviours than children of uninfected daddy mice. (Fortunately, the… Continue reading 2025-10-18 General
2025-06-06 General
There might not be a post next week because I will be travelling (with a mask on!). COVID-19 Long COVID This paper from USA (2025-05-15) reports that 3.89% of people over 65 in a ginormous cohort (3.5 million!) had Long COVID. People who had four vaccine doses had a 39% lower adjusted rate of Long… Continue reading 2025-06-06 General
2025-06-01 General
COVID-19 Variants 🦠🧬 NB.1.8.1 is still causing a lot of cases in Asia and Australia. It has acquired two nicknames: “NimBus” (from the two letters in its designation) and “Razor Blade Throat” because it apparently feels like you’ve been swallowing razor blades. Long COVID 🩸‼️ This preprint using UK participants (2025-05-26) has a potential explanation… Continue reading 2025-06-01 General
2025-05-24 General
COVID-19 Variants Other people are starting to notice all the cases in Asia. This article from USA (2025-05-23) says that CDC has discovered a bunch of cases of NB.1.8.1 — the variant which is causing havoc in Asia — in wastewater arriving in planes from abroad. I know, I know, the US is not Canada,… Continue reading 2025-05-24 General
2025-04-18 General
Omni-Testing 😮🩸‼️🎉 This paper (2025-02-21) reports on a method of sequencing the genomes of T-cells and B-cells from a patient’s blood sample which allows them to diagnose with great accuracy what pathogens the patient has been exposed to. Apparently B cells and T cells don’t have the genome of the rest of the body, but… Continue reading 2025-04-18 General
General 2025-03-21
COVID-19 Long COVID 🪧 This article (2025-03-15) says that there was a Long COVID protest at the Vancouver Art Gallery on 15 March. I’m bummed that I didn’t know about it ahead of time. 🐕🦺🤧 This older paper (2025-06-15) reports that dogs could be trained to detect Long COVID with high accuracy! They could distinguish… Continue reading General 2025-03-21