There seem to be an unusually high percentage papers and articles this week which I’m bored with. Things like: Oh look, the pandemic is not over! Huh, boosters actually do work! Yes, vaccines are safe for pregnant women (and COVID-19 is really bad for pregnant women). Myocarditis in young men is a rare, mild side… Continue reading week ending 2022-10-13 General
Category: Variants
week ending 2022-10-06 General
Mitigation Measures As this article reports, all travel restrictions have been waived in Canada. No proof of vaccination, no masks on planes, etc. HOWEVER, reminder, non-USA citizens arriving in the US by air still have to be vaccinated (per this US government site). This report is from the US (about Ohio and Florida, specifically) and… Continue reading week ending 2022-10-06 General
week ending 2022-09-22 General
Vaccines This paper says that there is a blood-olfactory barrier (similar to the blood-brain barrier) and that blood-borne antibodies can’t get to the olfactory epithelium (mucous membrane lining). (Note that SARS-CoV-2 can get to the brain via the olfactory bulb. !!) That suggests that we are never going to get to sterilizing immunity (i.e. you… Continue reading week ending 2022-09-22 General
week ending 2022-09-01 General
Vaccines This article says that Health Canada approved a BA.1 booster from Moderna today for adults and immunocompromised children over 12. 780K are supposed to arrive in-country tomorrow, with another 10.5M at the end of September. There isn’t good data from random clinical trials in humans yet for the new bivalent vaccines. This preprint from… Continue reading week ending 2022-09-01 General
week ending 2022-08-25 General
Long COVID This article reports on this (difficult-for-lay-people-to-understand) research report which says that Long COVID patients had an imbalance in the clot-promoting and clot-removing proteins in the blood. (Note: in the Recommended Reading section, there’s a link to a long article on clotting and Long COVID.) Pathology This paper says that physical exercise makes your… Continue reading week ending 2022-08-25 General
week ending 2022-08-04 General
Variants The current data, while confusing and somewhat contradictory, at least shows that our wave is not getting lots worse, and might even be going down. This seems really strange, when compared to how many other jurisdictions have gotten hammered. According to this blog post, the US had large shares of BA.2.12.1 — which shares… Continue reading week ending 2022-08-04 General
week ending 2022-07-28 General
Transmission Here’s another preprint (from the UK) which says that the “you don’t have to isolate longer than five days” guidance is bullshit. It says that the median person was infectious — even if asymptomatic — for 7 to ten days. This paper from the USA found that while adults who were not exposed to… Continue reading week ending 2022-07-28 General
week ending 2022-07-21 General
You might have noticed that I now frequently put the country where the research was carried out next to the link. I do think because different countries have different demographic profiles, different vaccination programs/history, different wave histories, etc. Sometimes this matters, and I am not clever enough to figure out when. If work is done… Continue reading week ending 2022-07-21 General
week ending 2022-07-07 General
Long COVID This paper says that they have found a really good blood marker (IL-2 release) for Long COVID. This paper from Italy found that risk of Long COVID decreased as the number of vaccines increase. (It was still 16% with three vaccines, however, still not good.) It found that things that decreased your risk… Continue reading week ending 2022-07-07 General
week ending 2022-06-23 General
Sorry this was late. Life happened. Pathology This article summarizes this paper which says that the chances of bad COVID outcomes are cumulative with exposures. Getting COVID-19 twice is worse than once, three times is worse than two, etc. (Here’s a blog post which talks about this paper more.) As you can see, you are… Continue reading week ending 2022-06-23 General