The good news: there were only 105 people in hospital on 13 April, which isn’t as low as the summer 2023 low or the low between Alpha and Delta, but it is lower that the low point between Delta and Omicron. Other indicators look flat or down slightly. The bad news: this article reports that… Continue reading 2024-04-26 BC
2024-04-26 General
This article reports that BC’s Ministry of Health will switch to monthly COVID reports after the May 2 update. I will obviously cut back on BC posts in the summer; I haven’t decided how much I will cut back on the General posts. H5N1 H5N1 is starting to hit the news, and I will post… Continue reading 2024-04-26 General
2024-04-19 BC
Levels are falling down pretty quickly! Yay for weather nice enough to open windows! Vaccines I have a friend who lives in BC but outside the core metro areas — not rural, but not The Big City. Because of some unusual medical conditions, Friend has really bad reactions to the mRNA vaccines. Friend thus tried… Continue reading 2024-04-19 BC
2024-04-19 General
Pathology Why do kids and old people have such different reactions to COVID-19? This paper from UK (2024-04-15) says that kid and adult epithelial cells (which line mucous membranes) are different. In particular, cells in elderly people had more of the receptors which SARS-CoV-2 uses to get into the cells, and kids’ cells generated more… Continue reading 2024-04-19 General
2024-04-12 BC
Well, after some nice drops in COVID-19 levels recently, it looks like we’ve gone back up — which is probably noise. But it looks stagnant at best. 🙁 Mitigation Measures This BC Ministry of Health press release says that masks are no longer required in health care settings. A lot of places weren’t masking or… Continue reading 2024-04-12 BC
2024-04-12 General
Long COVID This paper from USA (2024-04-06) found that Glutamate and N-acetyl-aspartate levels were significantly higher in people with Long COVID and ME/CFS than in controls. They found no significant differences between people with Long COVID and people with ME/CFS in any of the neurochemicals they looked at. They also found correlations between the amount… Continue reading 2024-04-12 General
2024-04-05 BC
While hospitalizations are stagnant, reported cases and wastewater are both clearly going down, yay! Statistics As of 4 April, the BC CDC situation report says that in the week ending on 30 March there were: +290 reported cases, +76 hospital admissions, +14 ICU admissions, and +16 thirty-day all-cause deaths*. In the week ending 23 March, they now… Continue reading 2024-04-05 BC
2024-04-05 General
Long COVID This paper from Sweden (2024-04-04) found that patients with Long COVID didn’t have a worse time after exercise than controls. This is, on its face, a surprising finding because other studies (like this one) have definitely found that post-exertional malaise (PEM) (i.e. crashing after exertion) is a real thing. I have two observations:… Continue reading 2024-04-05 General
2024-03-29 BC
While it definitely looks like levels are going down, BC CDC had a warning this week: “Note: Recent data for severe outcomes (hospitalizations, critical care admissions, and deaths) may not be complete due to the timing of data systems and processes. Data are updated and may become more complete over time.” So maybe it’s not… Continue reading 2024-03-29 BC
2024-03-29 General
Treatments This article from USA (2024-03-25) says that the FDA has approved Pemgarda, a monocolonal antibody, for use as a pre-exposure preventative for immunocompromised people. It will be used sort of like a vaccine. (Evusheld used to be effective for that, but SARS-CoV-2 mutated enough that Evusheld stopped being effective.) This is big news for… Continue reading 2024-03-29 General