People continue to act like they are surprised that the epidemic response of terrorizing people and locking things down had an impact on health care. It was obvious from the start that the broader public health was being ignored. Here is another survey finding, that, gee golly whiz, a lot of people didn’t and couldn’t get needed health care and are paying the price for that inability. Such a shock too that it was worse among minorities and low income persons. (HC Story)
I am fascinated by our lack of understanding about CV-19’s ability to survive in various environments and retain viability for infection and replication. This would seem pretty critical and those gaps in our knowledge make it hard for use to understand risk factors for transmission and adopt measures that might limit transmission. This study looks extensively at certain environments, notably cold-storage ones, and finds that the virus does well in low temperatures and in saline water environments, among other things. I am convinced that CV-19, and other respiratory viruses, have a far greater capability than we currently acknowledge to persist in various environmental niches for extended times. (Medrxiv Paper)
This study looks at viral kinetics and clearance in young children compared to adults. The trajectory of infections and viral load were similar in the two groups although children cleared the virus about 3 days faster. Although people in both age groups tested positive for an extended time, they had viral loads that indicated likely infectiousness only on a fraction of those positive tests. The tests are and will continue to be in problem as long as they are used constantly and with little thought about the clinical consequences. (Medrxiv Study)
This is a school masking study which has signficant methodological flaws, unlike the Fargo, North Dakota one showing that mask mandates made no difference in transmission. This one, however, was done by ideologues purely to support masking kids, so it used whatever method was necessary to find that masks made a difference, the key one being ignoring differences in contact testing between the schools. Just another piece of garbage to make kids lives miserable. You can tell the authors are woke whackos because they have the obligatory references to structural racism and equity. (Medrxiv Paper)
Prisons are an interesting controlled setting to study CV-19 transmission, although not representative of the general population. This study found that during Omicron, a prior infection and vaccination were associated with a somewhat reduced risk of transmission by an infected person, and the combination had a further, more significant reduction of that risk. (Medrxiv Paper)
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at 
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I just looked at the Boston / Massachussetts school mask/non mask study.
My opinion is the study is much worse than you described.
Massachussetts lifted the statewide school mask requirement on Feb 22 , 2022 with all the school districts removing their respective mask mandates that week or the following week with the exception of the Boston school district and one other.
The statewide infection rate as of February 22 was at a near all time low, (bottom of the wave) so the comparison is between mask/unmask lows which a reasonable analsyis quite difficult to ascertain.
The reported new infection case rate for the non mask schools during that 15 week period is 2x-3x higher than the statewide new covid case rate. That implies there is a data collection problem. Gee – the study authors didnt see that?
As I pointed out, the start date of the study period was February 22, 2022 which was the bottom of the wave. The end of the study period was 15 weeks , the “delta ” started to disappear starting the 10th week. Wonder what happened in the 16th – 18th week at the end of the school year. Probably the same thing that happened with the Kansas mask study, when the study period was cut short after the mask counties started having higher case rates. Naw the authors never would have cherrypicked the end of the preferred study period!
Hi Kevin, thanks for updating us weekly on all of this. Do we know what the CDC today counts as being full vaccination status? How many boosters in are we? Also, do we know what the CDC says as far as how long a booster is good for till you need another? Finally, where can I find a stat on state to state fully vax rate? Thank you for any reply.