2023-10-27 General

Long COVID This preprint from USA says they used PET scans to look at inflammation in the brains of long haulers, and found more inflammation in long haulers than in controls. This preprint from many places says that they found evidence of reactivation of herpesvirus type 6 in long haulers (mostly a childhood disease, where… Continue reading 2023-10-27 General

2023-09-15 General

This week, there have been a TON of articles with “What you need to know” in the headline. “What you need to know about the fall vaccines”, “What you need to know about BA.2.86”, “What you need to know about COVID this fall”, “What you need to know about COVID rapid tests heading into the… Continue reading 2023-09-15 General

2023-09-08 General

Long COVID This paper from USA looked at Long COVID in US veterans over two years. It found: Note, however, that this study did not look at the risk of diagnoses of other illnesses, e.g. diabetes, cardiovascular incidents, neurological impairments, etc. which other studies have found. Also, this study was done on US veterans, an… Continue reading 2023-09-08 General

2023-08-16 General

Okay, I’m done with the things I was super busy with, but I’m still catching up. I’m hoping to pump out several posts in the next week or two. Unexpected Side-effects This paper reports that fertility in the US went up after the first year of the pandemic, the first time births per capita went… Continue reading 2023-08-16 General

2023-05-04 General

I had an ugly thought. Maybe it makes a certain sense from the majority’s standpoint, to remove all restrictions because it would level the playing field. If COVID-19 does cause lasting damage, e.g. in increasing the risk of death or disability, then the people who have never had COVID-19 have an advantage over the people… Continue reading 2023-05-04 General

2023-04-06 General

Transmission It is pretty clear to me that COVID-19 spread is airborne — there has been lots of evidence in the literature for that — but I had not seen any evidence that it spread via surface contact (fomites). This paper from the UK makes a strong case for fomites being important. They tracked household… Continue reading 2023-04-06 General

2023-03-02 General

Health Care System This article says that federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos intervened in November with Canada’s drug price regulator to drop a policy reform process. 😠😬 Mitigation Measures This article (drawing from information in a number of papers) says that early targeted border closures were ineffective. (Basically, shutting down flights from South Africa and… Continue reading 2023-03-02 General