7 Comments
Dec 14, 2021Liked by John Skylar, PhD

Enjoy your first WorldCon!

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Dec 13, 2021Liked by John Skylar, PhD

Have fun at WorldCon!

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Dec 13, 2021Liked by John Skylar, PhD

Come by the Winnipeg in 2023 parties, which I'm helping to organize.

I took an antigen test yesterday, taking another one today (it's one of the two-part tests) before I leave tomorrow. Bringing more (but not one per day) to the con. Over on Facebook I did advise everyone coming to test beforehand.

Wearing KF94 respirators (easier to source than N95, tested to be very, very good if worn correctly).

See you there, I hope.

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There are now a small handful of studies on vaccination's effect (or lack thereof) on long COVID. Unfortunately, some find either no effect (see: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.26.21265508v1.full.pdf) or a much more modest one (see: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1062160/v1). A number of commentators have expressed skepticism that billing codes would adequately capture the phenomenon either way.

In any case, if we're going to "live with" SARS-CoV-2, then we desperately need to figure out how to prevent it from leading to debilitating conditions in large numbers of people.

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Re: vaccine efficacy vs. Omicron, the concern I've seen expressed is that the immune response will prove to be not very durable. Peter Hotez has been in full-on panic mode given this prospect over the past couple of days. Too early to know for sure, of course, but it would seem to accord with the results seen in this study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.07.21267432v1

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