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
Category: Variants
2021-11-26 General
Variants This article talks about the race to contain B.1.1.529, now formally named Omicron (not Nu). This article reports that Pfizer/BioNTech say that they will know in under two weeks how effective their vax is against Omicron, and that they can have a revamped shot done in 100 days. Moderna says they’ve been working on… Continue reading 2021-11-26 General
2021-11-25 General
Variants Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Remember how yesterday I wrote this totally depressing analysis of how hard it was going to be to vaccinate our way out of this mess with our current vaccines? It just got harder. There’s a new variant under investigation — B.1.1.529 — with thirty fucking two mutations. People who I follow and respect… Continue reading 2021-11-25 General
2021-11-19 General
Vaccines This article reports that Health Canada and NACI have approved the pediatric Pfizer vaccine for 5-11 year olds! Interestingly, NACI says that kids should space the influenza and COVID-19 vaccinations, not because they shots are less effective, but because if there is an adverse effect, they want to be able to tell which shot… Continue reading 2021-11-19 General
2021-11-10 General
Treatments Okay, this preprint is wild — if I understand it correctly. My understanding is that the authors made a thing — a Therapeutic Interfering Particle or TIP — which looks just like SARS-CoV-2 except it has a vastly stripped-down genome, one that doesn’t have all the instructions needed to make the enzymes and proteins… Continue reading 2021-11-10 General
2021-11-06/7/8 General
Disease As I mentioned back in May 2020, they discovered a new coronavirus in Malaysia in samples from 2017 and 2018 which appears to have jumped directly from dogs to humans. They found this coronavirus because someone decided to go looking for unknown coronaviruses, and whaddayaknow, there one is! There wasn’t a big fuss because… Continue reading 2021-11-06/7/8 General
2021-10-29 General
Vaccines This article says that NACI recommended boosters for a few more groups: People who got two doses of AZ or one of J&J, on the grounds that those seem to wane over time. People over 70 who could become severely ill from the disease. People from First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities. Front-line health-care… Continue reading 2021-10-29 General
2021-10-23/24/25 General
Transmission In this small study of Italian health-care workers who were tested regularly, all of the people who tested positive but were asymptomatic tested negative the very next day. The mean time for the symptomatic patients to test negative was 11 days. Pathology This preprint says they found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the cerebrospinal fluid of… Continue reading 2021-10-23/24/25 General
2021-10-20 General
Variants As this article says, they are starting to see a new variant in England called AY.4.2 or “Delta plus”. It is gaining ground on Delta, although slowly. It might be a little bit more contagious than Delta, but not hugely. It’s not like the huge advantage over Alpha that Delta had. Recommended Reading This… Continue reading 2021-10-20 General
2010-10-09/10/11/12 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that the US will allow fully-vaccinated Canadians to enter, starting sometime in November. “Fully-vaccinated” has not been clearly defined yet. Vaccines Novavax has published data from their Phase 3 trials in the USA and Mexico in this preprint. I wanted to be snarky and say that maybe this means that… Continue reading 2010-10-09/10/11/12 General