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Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 125

By April 8, 2022Commentary

Variant terrorism seems not to be working anymore either.  And China is helping the rest of the world realize that there has to be a more sane way to address the epidemic, as that country literally locks people in their homes and beats them if they leave for food or whatever.  Parents separated from children, no food, and so on are literally driving people to jump out the window.  Crazy.

Now here is a treatment that appears to actually have evidence supporting a reduction in hospitalization.  Fluvoxamine is a widely used anti-depressant, now available as a generic and this meta-review and analysis finds that the overall evidence shows a reduction of hospitalization when is is used on an outpatient basis.  The likely mechanism is reduction of inflammation.  (JAMA Article)

I am done with boosters.  They don’t appear to provide any longer protection than the original doses and there is a risk that they actually negatively affect the development of adaptive immunity.  Here is another study from Israel suggesting that a second booster, or fourth dose, is no better than the earlier ones.  While there is an initial jump in effectiveness against infection, it is short-lived.  And while the protection against severe disease appears better, the follow-up period was quite short.  (NEJM Study)

And this study similarly suffers from failure to have an adequate follow-up period and failure to account for the effect of time, but claims that a booster helped reduce infection risk.  That reduction was much lower against Omicron than against Delta and appeared to lessen even over the short follow-up period.  (NEJM Study)

Here is another great benefit of masks–they release particles that are likely harmful to human health–and there you are inhaling those particles for hours.  (NIH Study)

An interesting study from England that purports to track epidemic dynamics across variants and in different socioeconomic groups.  It found that while poorer groups and minorities initially had greater prevalence, that evened out over the epidemic.  In the case of both prior infected persons and vaxed persons, less protection was observed against Omicron than prior variants. Whether or not a person engages in testing behavior appears to be a significant confounding factor in assessing either vax effectiveness or protection from prior infection.  In general prior infection appears more protective than vax.   (Medrxiv Paper)

This is a limited study on one campus, but it did a daily tracking of infection status among a fully vaxed population.  It finds no difference in viral dynamics between Delta and Omicron in terms of viral viability over time, and this was unaffected by getting a booster.  Generally by six days people had no viable virus and were unlikely to be infectious.  Note however, that half of the supposedly infected persons never had viable virus by culture.  Somewhat hilariously, the authors turn the findings into a recommendation that everyone should mask for at least ten days.  (Medrxiv Paper)

LTC facilities had very bad CV-19 waves, with many deaths among residents and high infection rates in staff.  This study of LTC staff antibody responses finds that prior infection creates more durable antibody responses, that are not increased by vax.  (Medrxiv Study)

A metareview of studies on whether suicides increased during the epidemic finds that it does not appear they did, but that drug overdoses did rise.  I think many of those overdoses are suicides.  Alcohol-related deaths also rose, and as the authors point out, there are issues with how thorough some research is in finding either suicides or other self-harming events.  (Medrxiv Paper)

 

 

 

 

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  • Rob says:

    I wonder if the difference between a suicide and a drug overdose is which supervisor in the police department gets stuck with the case. And if there are federal incentives (read: $$) on classifying as overdoses.

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