Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 55

Minnesota is in the national news because, despite our high vax rate and the wonderful job our Governor has done in his response to the epidemic, we have the highest rate of cases in the country right now.  Florida has one of the lowest, probably the lowest.  But no, the vaxed aren’t contributing at all to that wave.  A briefing was held yesterday, I am sure it will be sickening, but I will report the lies as soon as I can stomach them.

I may have mentioned this before, but I will mention it again.  I always like to be aware of what DOH isn’t telling us.  And one thing they are telling us anymore is how important it is to mask in schools, because there are so many fewer cases in mask-mandatory schools.   And I can tell you why they don’t give us that information, because there probably is no difference, who knows, maybe even mask mandatory schools have more cases.

This is review of studies on the protective effect against reinfection of a prior infection.  The Lancet is a prestigious journal and the review clearly finds that being infected creates a very strong adaptive immune response that protects against subsequent reinfection.  In fact, it likely is better than the one from vaccination.  (Lancet Article)

This is an interesting article on modeling and the need to learn from past epidemics instead of ignoring them, as we have done in this epidemic.  (Springer Article)

This study from China finds, as has other research, that during the CV-19 epidemic, other respiratory viral infections were largely suppressed, but later rebounded to levels above pre-epidemic ones.  The rebound is potentially dangerous as the population has lacked the typical pathogen challenge which prepares the immune system to fend off subsequent exposures.  (JID Article)

PCR testing is a big problem in the management of the epidemic.  The main point of this study was to compare the reliability and accuracy of various testing approaches, but the finding to really note is how few “positive” specimens in asymptomatic persons culture infectious virus, about 30% in fact.  Even in symptomatic people only 67% of positives cultured viable virus.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Here we are two years into the epidemic and we still aren’t sure about the basic reproductive rate, R, of the virus, and I am not sure how important it is.  But this study from Germany suggests that it is much lower than earlier estimates found.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Here is an early study on booster effectiveness, from England.  Short followup, effectiveness estimated in the 90% range.  Sound familiar?  Just like the early studies on the initial vaccine regimen.  Obviously we need long follow-up periods to actually evaluate the effectiveness.  (Medrxiv Study)

Qatar had an aggressive vaccination program and has done good research on effectiveness.  This study found that Moderna was generally more effective over a longer period of time than the Pfizer vaccine, both against infection and serious disease, but both vaccines showed the typical lessening of effectiveness against infection over time.  (Medrxiv Paper)

One adverse event fear has been the effect on women’s menstrual cycles.  This study examined rates of those events in a medium-sized cohort of women and found no signal of any effect.  (Medrxiv Paper)

The Chinese appear to be pretty far along in work on a live attenuated virus vaccine, which I think could be more effective.  This study was in animals for such a vaccine administered nasally and showed very good and lasting effectiveness.  (Medrxiv Paper)

I don’t think these studies are well done, but here is another one purporting to show that higher levels of vaccination are associated with lower case levels.  They are bad studies because of seasonality wave effects in different locations and time effects from dates of vaccination.  This study purports to compare states, which is just too large a unit as well.  The results make sense on one level, but I don’t think the methods are without serious limitations.  (Medrxiv Paper)