Reminder: there’s no BC-specific post this week because the province is only providing most data on the first Thursday of the month. The wastewater chart is in the General post when there is no BC post. Bundibugyo Recommended Reading 😬 This interview with the head of the World Health Organization (2026-06-13) is really sobering. He… Continue reading 2026-06-19 General
Category: Influenza (non-bird)
2026-06-12 General
There’s no BC-specific post this week because the province is only providing most data on the first Thursday of the month. They are still providing wastewater information — and even a bit more because of the World Cup — so I have added BC wastewater measurements into the General post. COVID-19 COVID-Related Excess Death and… Continue reading 2026-06-12 General
2026-06-06 General
COVID-19 Long COVID ‼️‼️ This paper from USA (2026-05-28) reports evidence that Long COVID — at least with with neurocognitive symptoms — is an autoimmune disease. They first used flourescently-tagged antibodies to find ones that looked like they were attacking the self. Next, they tested they extracted these autoantibodies and tested them against human cell… Continue reading 2026-06-06 General
2026-05-22 General
COVID-19 Long COVID 💊🎉 This paper from Japan (2026-05-15) reports that outpatients with confirmed COVID-19 who took ensitrelvir/Xocova were 14% less likely to get Long COVID than controls who took placebos. Patients who took molnupiravir had a 19% lower risk, but the change in risk was not statistically significant for nirmatrelvir+ritonavir/Paxlovid. (Editor’s Note: Xocova has… Continue reading 2026-05-22 General
2026-05-08 General
COVID-19 Long COVID This conference presentation (which I think is from China) (2026-05-03) reports that SIM01, a mix of pre- and probiotics, significantly helped Long COVID patients compared to placebo. SIM01 reduced fatigue, insomnia, memory loss, and shortness of breath. (Unfortunately, there’s very little details or information, so this is only slightly more convincing than… Continue reading 2026-05-08 General
2026-04-10 General
Multiple Pathogens 💊 Metformin seems to be a bit of a wonder drug. It helps Type 2 diabetics, people with polycystic ovary syndrome, and it inhibits weight gain. Studies of using metformin to treat or prevent COVID-19 and Long COVID are mixed, but on balance it tends to help, and it helps some groups with… Continue reading 2026-04-10 General
2026-04-03 General
COVID-19 Treatments 🎉 This paper from Israel (2026-03-25) reports that they’ve isolated a monoclonal antibody from recovered COVID-19 patients which works against all variants known so far! The antibody works against a highly-conserved area, and makes the top part of the spike fall off prematurely. Without the top part, the virus can’t dock with the… Continue reading 2026-04-03 General
2026-03-13 General
COVID-19 Long COVID A question that I get asked surprisingly frequently is, “but hasn’t Long COVID decreased a lot?” and I surprisingly didn’t have really good evidence either way to point to. Well, now I have something: this review paper (2026-03-10) reports that Long COVID prevalence was 35.5% in the pre-Omicron era and is 22.8%… Continue reading 2026-03-13 General
2026-02-20 General
Multiple Pathogens This report from Spain (2026-02-19) says that 8.8% of hospitalized patients got a hospital-acquired infection (HAI) and they were about twice as likely to die as patients who did not get an HAI. The authors think at least half of those are preventable. The authors note that there are three times as many… Continue reading 2026-02-20 General
2026-02-13 General
I’ve got almost nothing on COVID-19 this week. There have been some extremely technical, boring, non-actionable papers; there have been news stories about the (*sigh*) normal fecal tornadoes in the US health administration, there have been stories about people convicted of defrauding various other governments of COVID-19 relief funds, stories of Olympians *gasp* wearing masks,… Continue reading 2026-02-13 General