You get a special two-for-one issue today because I uh was working on my taxes yesterday. Statistics Yesterday (Tuesday): +682 cases, +1 death, +18,093 first doses, +7 second doses, VOCs ID’d: +135 of B.1.1.7, 2 of B.1.351, 25 of P.1. Today: +716 cases, +3 deaths, +25,126 first doses, +12 second doses, +22 of B.1.1.7, +1… Continue reading 2021-03-23/4 BC
2021-03-23/4 General
Special double-issue today, and I spent all day yesterday doing my taxes. Vaccines Canada might be facing another vaccine drought. First, the European Union said yesterday they would embargo all vaccines from leaving the EU. Note that the EU is mad at AstraZeneca Inc. — the EU says that AZ has been sending vax to… Continue reading 2021-03-23/4 General
2021-03-22 BC
Statistics Fri/Sat: +556 cases, +9 deathsSat/Sun: +598 cases, +4 deathsSun/Mon: +631 cases, +3 deaths Over the weekend, +49,386 first doses, +22 second doses, +146 cases identified of B.1.1.7, +0 cases of B.1.351, +20 cases of P.1. Currently 303 in hospital / 80 in ICU, 5290 active cases, 9,330 under active monitoring, 85,746 recovered. The stats… Continue reading 2021-03-22 BC
2021-03-22 General
Vaccines A big Phase 3 trial of AZ in the US just finished. While their previous trials has some ah irregularities, this one seemed to be done well.. Fortunately, this trial showed good results in the general population and in old people. (And no blood clotting issues.) Except… there was a highly unusual announcement from… Continue reading 2021-03-22 General
2021-03-21 General
Vitamins A study done on patients in Chicago found that black patients with low vitamin D levels were 2.64 times higher than those with higher levels. Folks, take your D! A different study found that patients who got Vitamin D supplements had a lower risk of dying or needing mechanical ventilation. Yet another study found… Continue reading 2021-03-21 General
2021-03-21 BC
Vaccines The province says that these days you should expect get an appointment between 1 and 7 days after your booking. People have wondered to me if we’ll be able to ramp up to vaccinate to keep pace with even the big cohorts . I think so. The back-of-the-envelope calculations I have made say it’s… Continue reading 2021-03-21 BC
2021-03-20 General
VOCs There has been some research lately which pegs the P.1 transmissibility at 2.5x more than COVID Classic. Ulp. The good news is that everything I have seen is that the vaccines work well against it. Scientists have found that mice — just your regular standard lab mice — can get the P.1 and B.1.351… Continue reading 2021-03-20 General
2021-03-19 General
Vaccines Well, that’s depressing. A paper in The Lancet reports on a mathematical model which says that vaccination without pharmaceutical measures (e.g. masking, keeping 2m apart, etc) is likely to only bring R down to 1.58. Translation: vaccination alone won’t get rid of the virus. However, this smells off to me. Measles has an R0… Continue reading 2021-03-19 General
2021-03-19 BC
Statistics Today: +737 cases, +2 deaths, +24,438 first doses, +19 second doses, +54 cases of B.1.1.7 found, +0 cases of B.1.351, +14 of P.1. Currently 292 in hospital / 85 in ICU, 5,207 active cases, 9,412 under monitoring,84,078 recovered. Charts Another record day for vaccinations! For the third day in a row!
2021-03-08 General
Pandemic Positives There’s a great article by Zeynep Tufekci in The Atlantic which talks about three things which have been positive side effects of the pandemic: mRNA vaccines synchronous video communication really fast scientific communication / informal peer review It’s worth a read, to remind yourself, “oh yeah, that did happen”.