Variants This is really strange. This article says that in New York City and also in some places in California, they have been seeing strange variants in their wastewater surveillance for the past year — variants they haven’t seen in any people. It wasn’t clear, but I think there are three main lineages (classed as… Continue reading 2022-02-03 General
Category: Variants
2022-02-02 General
Happy Twosday! Transmission This article reports on the results of the first human challenge trial (meaning: deliberate infection) of COVID Classic. You’re going WAIT WHAT? HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLY PASS ETHICS REVIEW? This happened in the UK (so different ethics boards), and they did work hard to minimize potential harm to the subjects (like making… Continue reading 2022-02-02 General
2022-01-29/30/31 General
Vaccines There’s a great, long Twitter thread which looks at the effect of vaccines. (It summarizes a paywalled article, if you want to see the whole thing.) One of the elements which I found striking was how the risk of COVID-19 relative to the flu has dropped over time. In mid 2020, the infection fatality… Continue reading 2022-01-29/30/31 General
2022-01-28 General
Variants I don’t like to warn about variants before there’s data. (I didn’t sound alarms about Mu, for example.) Well, I think it’s time to talk about BA.2 — an Omicron variant. (The Omicron variant which sprouted up first is BA.1.) BA.2 doesn’t look like it is lot worse than BA.1 — not like Delta… Continue reading 2022-01-28 General
2022-01-26 General
Mitigation Measures This preprint looked at high-risk exposures and said that the risk of catching COVID-19 was: 3.02x higher if the infected person was part of your household (versus not), 2.1x higher if the transmission was indoors (versus outdoors), 2.15x higher if the interaction lasted 3 hrs or more (vs. shorter) among unvaccinated and partially-vaccinated… Continue reading 2022-01-26 General
2022-01-22/23/24 General
Weather This article says that the amount of lightning decreased during the pandemic because of less fossil fuel burning and hence fewer aerosols. Vaccines This article says that in extremely rare circumstances, people report Long COVID symptoms after vaccination. Variants This preprint says that the risk of hospitalization from Omicron is 25% that of Delta,… Continue reading 2022-01-22/23/24 General
2022-01-18 General
Variants This preprint says that a Delta infection (by itself) does provide some protection against Omicron (in mice and test tubes), but an Omicron infection (by itself) does not provide good protection against Delta. However, if you have an Omicron or Delta infection plus a vaccine, then you get good protection against the other variant.… Continue reading 2022-01-18 General
2022-01-14 General
Variants This report says that Omicron is much much more likely than Delta to cause a sore throat, but much much less likely to cause loss of smell. Transmission This article reports on a study which says that 10% of people are still infectious for at least ten days. Genetics This article reports that scientists… Continue reading 2022-01-14 General
2022-01-13 General
Variants Everybody knows by now that Omicron appears to be more mild, but how much of that is because lots of people have partial immunity? This preprint looked at South African Omicron infections and found that when you controlled for vaccination status, Omicron is about 25% as severe. Vaccines This article says that inactivated virus… Continue reading 2022-01-13 General
2022-01-11 General
Variants This preprint says that Omicron is less virulent than Delta: ~50% less likely to get admitted to hospital from the emergency room; ~75% less likely to go to the ICU; ~70% shorter hospital stay. Note that something I’m seeing is people not seeing a shorter hospital stay in the UK, e.g. in this tweet.… Continue reading 2022-01-11 General