I remember thinking it was really strange that more people died in the second year of the Spanish Flu pandemic than the first. I’m not surprised any more. Vaccines Someone asked me today, “would Omicron still have arisen if we’d had equitable and effective vaccine distribution globally? At first I hedged, and said we couldn’t… Continue reading 2021-12-17 General
Category: Variants
2021-12-16 General
I’m tired and kind of depressed. I (and many other people) saw Omicron coming weeks ago, and now it’s here. It’s just as bad as I feared, and perhaps even worse. 🙁 Omicron is dominating the news, but … it’s not really news. There’s a lot of people saying “OH SHIT! WE ARE FUCKED!”, but… Continue reading 2021-12-16 General
2021-12-15 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that the federal government is advising against international travel. (If you go to the travel advisory page, for every country, it says you shouldn’t go there.) This article says that the Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland committed a whole bunch of money to fight COVID-19 . Variants There were a ton… Continue reading 2021-12-15 General
2021-12-14 General
Variants According to this Twitter thread, which reported on a press conference in South Africa, Omicron now accounts for 90% of the cases in South Africa. (Note: it might not be displacing Delta, there might still be just as many Delta cases as before — I don’t now — but a huge number of Omicron… Continue reading 2021-12-14 General
2021-12-08/09/10 General
I was out of town for a few days. I think this mostly catches up. Variants This press release from Pfizer says that three doses of Pfizer will give reasonable protection against infection with Omicron, but two doses isn’t enough. Two doses should still protect against severe disease. This Twitter thread on a report from… Continue reading 2021-12-08/09/10 General
2021-12-07 General
A lot of highly technical material dropped today, on a day when I was kind of busy, so I have not had enough time to really understand everything. AND information about Omicron is still in flux. So if you don’ t understand something here, it’s not just you. Also, there will probably not be postings… Continue reading 2021-12-07 General
2021-12-04/05/06 General
Variants I referenced a preprint on Friday which said that Omicron’s doubling time was 1.2 days, but everybody else seems to be saying more like 2.5 days. This makes a difference: ten doublings (which is about 1000x) is either 12 days away or 25, which means before Christmas or after Christmas. Either way, don’t plan… Continue reading 2021-12-04/05/06 General
2021-12-03 General
Variants I had been hearing that Omicron had a doubling rate of something like 5 days. I finally went and scraped the data for Guateng province — which is only like two-thirds Omicron right now — and calculated a doubling time of 3.1 days. Then this preprint came out (which probably has information about just… Continue reading 2021-12-03 General
20211202 General
Variants I’m seeing a lot of news stories saying things along the lines of “don’t panic, Omicron might not be as 1) lethal, 2) immune-evasive, 3) contagious as you think!” #1: For the stories about the severity of the disease, note that South Africa’s population is a LOT younger than most of the developed world… Continue reading 20211202 General
2021-11-27/28/29 General
Variants The news has been almost “all Omicron all the time”, crowding out almost all other COVID-19 stories. (Spoiler: the answer is “they don’t know yet”.) Omicron has been found in lots of countries now, including Canada, Israel, Netherland, Australia, and 12 other countries. This article quotes a South African doctor as saying that the… Continue reading 2021-11-27/28/29 General