Vaccines The vaccines are good, but not perfect. In the US (which has had much greater levels of the virus), they had a 0.008% chance of getting COVID (out of 66 million fully vaccinated) 0.00056% chance of being hospitalized (7% of these infections) 0.00001% chance of dying from COVID(7 in 66 million vaccinees) (Chance of… Continue reading 2021-04-15 General
2021-04-14 BC
Vaccinations The province did a whole-of-community vaccination of Prince Rupert, and we can now see the results: that vaccinations work! Here’s a graph that Justin McElroy made: Note that the line hasn’t even bottomed out. This reminds me of a graph Dr. Henry showed in 11 March 2021 presentation which showed that it took about… Continue reading 2021-04-14 BC
2021-04-14 General
Vaccines Health Canada today said that the AZ vaccine was okay for all ages. Note that this does not mean that provinces can immediately start using AZ for all ages — the National Advisory Committee on Immunizations (NACI) needs to change its advice before the provinces can do that. A company in Seattle making an… Continue reading 2021-04-14 General
2021-04-13 BC
Measures The BC Restaurant says that Minister Dix told them that in-restaurant dining would continue to be prohibited through to May. Statistics The case count is lower today, which looks extremely encouraging, except there’s a note saying that these numbers are only provisional because of *sigh* a problem with their data system. So wait before… Continue reading 2021-04-13 BC
2021-04-13 General
Mental Health The pandemic has clearly been a mental health disaster for many people. Interestingly, though, the number of suicides has not increased according to this study. Vaccines They have now found some problems with clotting with the J&J vaccine also. The alarm was first raised on Friday (the day this blog was ah impaired… Continue reading 2021-04-13 General
2021-04-12 General
Vaccines This preprint describes some early work on a vaccine which could work against ALL coronaviruses. This preprint found B.1.1.7 wasn’t more able to reinfect people, didn’t give different or longer symptoms, that it was more transmissible, and that lockdown was able to bring Rt below 1 even in the presence of lots of B.1.1.7.… Continue reading 2021-04-12 General
2021-04-12 BC
Ontario Someone asked me last week why Ontario is getting slammed and we are not, given that they have about the same daily case count and hospitalizations as we do. At that time, Ontario had about 2.3 cases per day per 10K population, vs. 2.1 cases per 10K for BC; Ontario had about 54.6 people… Continue reading 2021-04-12 BC
2021-04-11 General
Vaccines A followup on the J&J adverse reactions yesterday says that it was no big deal, but the same thing happened in Colorado. One person had an allergic reaction, but the others basically felt woozy/light-headed. Nine people were treated with juice and water. One possible explanation is that people who don’t like needles are probably… Continue reading 2021-04-11 General
2021-04-11 BC
Vaccination Clinics The province is going to do an all-of-community vaccination of Whistler over the next two weeks, like they did with Prince Rupert a few weeks ago, to try to contain the outbreak there. One might ask why they didn’t do this before the outbreak got out of control, and I think the answer… Continue reading 2021-04-11 BC
2021-04-09/10 General
Sorry that there was no blog posting yesterday, I got my first shot of AstraZeneca and was wiped out. Vaccines Pfizer has announced excellent results from their clinical trial with adolescents, and has asked the FDA for approval! It is not a surprise that it’s effective in children as well, but it’s great news that… Continue reading 2021-04-09/10 General