Mitigation Measures This article says that the Government of Canada has come out with new vaccine mandates. All federal employees — including those who work from home or in a different country — have until 29 October to get vaccinated. Everyone over 12 must be vaccinated to take a plane or train inside Canada. Transmission… Continue reading 2021-10-06 General
Category: Variants
2021-09-10 General
Vaccines The National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommends a third shot for various types of immunocompromised people. From this tweet, using data from Public Health England: From this tweet, also using data from Public Health England (note that it’s a LOG scale!): This US CDC report says that: the effectiveness against hospitalization was 76% for… Continue reading 2021-09-10 General
2021-09-09 General
Variants A US CDC report found that COVID-19 didn’t cause more hospitalized children to go to the ICU than in pre-Delta times. Vaccines Moderna announced that they have gotten really good results (in mice) from a vaccine which combines COVID-19, influenza, and RSV. This article says that COVID-19 frequently attacks kidneys, and that it really… Continue reading 2021-09-09 General
2021-09-04/05/06/07 General
Testing/Transmission This preprint says that getting a swab stuffed waaaay up your nose for a COVID-19 test makes about 20% of people cough or sneeze, which generates aerosols (which are dangerous). Men cough or sneeze significantly more than women do. (Maybe women are more conscientious about holding it in?) Pro tip, y’all: if you need… Continue reading 2021-09-04/05/06/07 General
2021-09-03 General
Vaccines This tweet has this nice graph, made with data pulled from the Public Health England Variants of Concern Technical Briefing 22. Variants This preprint from Denmark says that people who were not fully vaccinated were 2.8x times as likely to get hospitalized for Delta as for Alpha. (For people who were fully vaccinated, there… Continue reading 2021-09-03 General
2021-08-27 General
Variants This preprint says that Delta is twice as likely to put you into the hospital than Alpha is. Transmission This article says that the US has identified the first cases of COVID-19 in deer. That’s kind of odd, because this article from July 2021 says that the USDA found antibodies in deer. Maybe it’s… Continue reading 2021-08-27 General
2021-08-23 General
Vaccines This Twitter thread is an excellent discussion of how to understand the “do vaccines wane” discussion. Please go read it. The US FDA today gave full approval to Pfizer, as opposed to the Emergency Use Authorization that it had given. This is important because there were entities which were not legally able to require… Continue reading 2021-08-23 General
2021-08-18 General
Vaccines There has been a lot of discussing recently about waning effectiveness of vaccines. I want to editorialize for a moment: you expect vaccine effectiveness against infection to appear worse in real life than in the studies, and to appear worse over time. More time to get infected. If the vaccine is 95% effective over… Continue reading 2021-08-18 General
2021-08-17 General
Variants This article talks about a lot of things, but says: Breakthrough cases appear to be increasing for Delta. However, they don’t give any “before” numbers, and it’s not clear if it’s just because the number of vaccinated people is increasing. The absolute number of breakthrough cases is still low. The average age of a… Continue reading 2021-08-17 General
2021-08-14 General
Mitigation Measures Huh. This web page from the US CDC says that an N95 with an exhalation valve is as good or better at source control (i.e. protecting the people the wearer is close to) than a procedure mask (the standard medical hook-over-your-ears mask that you see unfortunately frequently see lying on the ground as… Continue reading 2021-08-14 General