Vaccines Apparently there’s some people being concerned about mRNA vaccine ending up in the ovaries. This Twitter thread takes that idea down. Tl;dr: the lipid envelopes which contain the mRNA migrate around, and a small amount ends up in the ovaries (as it does to lots of organs, most notably the liver), but such a… Continue reading 2021-06-25 General
2021-06-24 General
Vaccines This Research Letter says that vaccines do not decrease sperm production. There was actually an increase in sperm production, but that might be due to increased abstinence time before the second sample collection. This preprint from India says that the Delta strain is more resistant to antibodies in vitro, transmit from health care worker… Continue reading 2021-06-24 General
2021-06-24 BC
Variants Yesterday, I mentioned that BC is having a much less difficult time with Delta than the UK is. Partly it’s that we caught it earlier (so that our pub health teams are succeeding in quashing it), partly it’s because we’re more thoroughly vaxxed. One thing I didn’t mention yesterday is that Pfizer’s effectiveness is… Continue reading 2021-06-24 BC
2021-06-23 BC
Vaccines I have wondered how much vax is getting wasted. DrH has assured us a few times (several months ago) that it’s “very little”, but the reporters have not asked for numbers and it’s not in the data. Well, yesterday, Dix said something like “We only have around forty thousand doses of Pfizer right now”.… Continue reading 2021-06-23 BC
2021-06-23 General
Long COVID This paper makes a strong case that re-activated Epstein-Barr virus is involved in most Long COVID cases. This paper says that women are 2.7x more likely to get Long COVID as men. 44% of women and 24% of men in this study (in Norway) had symptoms. Vaccines This Twitter thread, which is a… Continue reading 2021-06-23 General
2021-06-22 General
Mitigation Measures This paper looks at the strategy of eliminating vs. mitigating and concludes that eliminating is better. It says that the countries which went for elimination (Australia, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea) have done much better than the ones which went for mitigation. Um, notice anything about those countries? None of them… Continue reading 2021-06-22 General
2021-06-22 BC
Vaccine Clinics There are some drop-in clinics in VCH for first doses (second doses if you are over 70). Transmission The Surrey School district did not send any exposure notices home with kids yesterday, for the first time this school year. Yay! A study shows that BC teachers have exactly the same seropositivity rate as… Continue reading 2021-06-22 BC
2021-06-21 General
Transmission This paper details a clever US study where they looked at COVID-19 cases in households which had recently had a birthday vs. households which had not recently had a birthday. They found 31% more COVID-19 case in households with birthdays than without, and the effect was much stronger in households with a child birthday… Continue reading 2021-06-21 General
2021-06-21 BC
Variants Huh. I hadn’t paid attention to the Variants of Concern report in a while, and it turns out that the percentage of cases which are Delta is actually falling in BC. Not just the raw case count, but the proportion. I didn’t think that was supposed to happen! Gamma is rising, but Gamma isn’t… Continue reading 2021-06-21 BC
2021-06-20 General
Variants I have been scaremongering about Delta, saying it is more transmissible, causes more severe cases, and is transmitted more in schools. I apparently need to back off a little bit. Delta is more transmissible, that’s uncontestable. This very interesting tweet thread says that the data does not support there being more transmission in schools.… Continue reading 2021-06-20 General