Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 127

Remember the really bad Bangladesh mask study that people tried to twist into saying that it showed masks slowed transmission.  Here is another critique finding that they actually hid data that showed the opposite.  (BD Study)

A study from Canada on household transmission has a couple of interesting findings.  One is that children are much less likely to be transmitters in a household than are adults.  The second is that wearing face masks had no impact, nor did isolation of a case.  The secondary attack rate in a household with a case was about 50%, and over a third of those cases were asymptomatic.  Adults were twice as likely as children to transmit.  Symptomatic persons were more likely to transmit than those without symptoms.     (CMJ Article)

Qatar continues to provide useful research.  This study on Omicron and Delta infections in children found that with neither variant was there any real amount of serious disease–none with Omicron–and that rates of even moderate disease were far lower in the case of Omicron infections.  (JID Paper)

This study from Israel attempts to find benefit from a second booster, but the follow-up period is extremely short and the benefits very modest even in that short follow-up.  Other Israeli studies show a rapid drop-off in protection from the second booster.  (NEJM Article)

Another study from Israel, this one in health care workers, also claims to find a benefit from the second booster, although smaller than that from the initial booster, but this follow-up period is even shorter.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Brazil has had a high rate of infection and mortality throughout the epidemic.  This study finds that the combination of vaccination and prior infection offered low protection against Omicron infection, but good effectiveness against serious illness.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This study from Canada claims to find good effectiveness of the vaccines against hospitalization and death, but also suffers from relatively short follow-up periods.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Low antibody levels are an obvious reason for why breakthrough infections occur and this paper finds that in fact antibody levels in vaxed persons who subsequently became infected were low, and lower than in those who did not become infected.  (Medrxiv Paper)