Alberta Alberta is in a world of hurt. They have 25,155 active cases, meaning about 1 out of every 173 people in Alberta has COVID-19 right now. Yow! This means that Alberta is a pretty significant potential source of infections. Outbreaks There has been an outbreak in a poultry processing plant in Surrey. (Didn’t BC… Continue reading 2021-05-08 BC
2021-05-08 General
Immunity A huuuge study in Denmark looked for reinfections and from that, figured out the efficacy of getting sick in preventing later infections and found that it was 80·5%, 47·1% for those aged 65 years and older. And yes, mRNA vaccines are like 95% efficient, so yes, the mRNA vaccines are higher efficacy than actually… Continue reading 2021-05-08 General
2021-05-07 General
Drug interactions Apparently some people were worried that Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) would make a COVID infection worse. Not so, says this study. Variants Remember yesterday when I said that B.1.617.2 was not of concern? I was too fast. While it does not seem to have unusually good immunity/vaccine evasion, it does seem to be… Continue reading 2021-05-07 General
2021-05-07 BC
Data As I mentioned briefly yesterday, there was a leak of BC CDC data. Looking through it, there are a few things that stand out. OMG. The yellow line is the % of cases in that Community Health Service Area, with the blue lines being the % of population for that CHSA. OMG, Surrey has… Continue reading 2021-05-07 BC
2021-05-06 General
My computer is in the shop, and working with my other computers is extremely painful, so these posts are likely to be shorter in the next six days. I particularly am likely to skip posting many “oh look, vaccines again show that they are really effective!” unless it is against a VOC. Variants There was… Continue reading 2021-05-06 General
2021-05-06 BC
My computer is in the shop today, so I’m writing this up on my inferior computers. Thus it’s going to be shorter today (and probably for the next six days). Data The Vancouver Sun published some leaked data from the provincial public health, showing much more detail in geographic area and demographics than what they… Continue reading 2021-05-06 BC
2021-05-05 General
Vaccines Pfizer has been approved down to age 12, yay!! Moderna has been doing a clinical trial with a booster made to mimic the spike proteins of B.1.351 instead of COVID Classic, and their press release says it works better against B.1.351 and P.1 than a third shot of Moderna Classic. (Note: it “works better”… Continue reading 2021-05-05 General
2021-05-05 BC
Measures The PNE will not open this summer. Colour me unsurprised. A little sad, because I think we are going to have very few cases in July, and it will be outdoors, but unsurprised. Remember the guy who turned his penthouse into a nightclub? He got sentenced (and the judge was NOT happy with him).… Continue reading 2021-05-05 BC
2021-05-04 General
Vaccines Good news — we should expect immunity to COVID-19 to last a long time. This preprint says that COVID immunity lasts for at least eight months, yay! This paper found antibodies to MERS six years after infection, and this paper found antibodies to SARS after SEVENTEEN years! (SARS and MERS are both closely related… Continue reading 2021-05-04 General
2021-05-04 BC
Eligibility Pregnant people are now eligible to get vaccinated! And grocery workers in VCH and Fraser Health! Vaxxing the kids As I mentioned, the US FDA is going to approve Pfizer for 12-15 y/os next week, and Canada usually approves at about the same time as the US. How are we going to vaccinate them?… Continue reading 2021-05-04 BC