Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 218

I harp on this constantly as well–people missed a lot of health care during the epidemic and some of it was for very serious diseases.  This study from England tracked almost 6 million people and reviews trends in cancer care–tests for diagnosis, receipt of treatment, etc.  The focus was breast, lung, prostate and colorectal cancers.  All common and all potentially fatal without early diagnosis and treatment.  There were dramatic reductions in the number of cancer tests and diagnoses.  The authors estimate that tens of thousands of cancers were missed.  (Medrxiv Paper)

I have no idea why schools were closed in the first year of the epidemic, none whatsoever.  Pure panic I suspect.  Children were at extremely low risk and suffered immense damage due to being out of school.  Now this study finds that not only were they at low personal risk, they had very low rates of transmission if they were infected.  (JAMA Article)

This study reviews all hospitalizations of children with a CV-19 diagnosis in England.  Only about 70% of the admissions were for actually for CV-19.  The rate of hospitalization was extremely low and most admissions involved children with significant other health conditions.  (BMJ Study)

In a multinational study using a surveillance cohort of children, no increase in incidence of Type 1 diabetes was seen following a CV-19 infection.  (NEJM Article)

While drug overdoses, especially from fentynal, tend to grab the headlines, alcohol has long been the cause of much serious disease and deaths.  This research finds that among both men and women rates of alcohol-related deaths have risen over the past two decades with a noticeable increase in that trend during the epidemic.  Men tend to still have much higher rates of alcohol-involved deaths.  And this is not a small problem, contributing to over 140,000 deaths annually.  (JAMA Article)

Challenge studies, in which an otherwise healthy person is infected with a pathogen, can tell us a lot about the response.  This article reports on a CV-19 challenge study and describes the typical antibody and T cell response for up to a year after infection.  Nasal antibodies appear early on, but fade in a few weeks, while blood antibodies tend to increase and continue circulating.  (Medrxiv Paper)