Comments closedWe don’t understand all the implications of long COVID. Basically, this virus gets into your body and it doesn’t leave. […] And it invades the lining of the blood vessels and every organ of your body.
Dozens of studies have shown that not only do N95 masks work on an individual level, but they lower transmission when people actually follow guidelines. Even the strongest critics of mask policies are forced to admit that masks themselves are effective.
Comments closed“A hard public health reset is urgently required in Canada to protect the vulnerable and prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed by long COVID patients. Policymakers should immediately implement a pandemic action plan to save lives in the coming weeks and months.”
Comments closedEU lawmakers approved a report on lessons to take from COVID-19 on Wednesday (12 July). The text analysed the impact of the pandemic, evaluated EU and national health systems’ responses and set a roadmap for future health emergencies.
The European Parliament adopted the report “COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons learned and recommendations for the future” by 385 votes in favour, 193 against and 63 abstentions.
Comments closedFor the first time in three years, millions traveled within China earlier this month to reunite with loved ones for the country’s most important holiday, the Lunar New Year. Unfortunately, these celebrations coincided with — and are sure to exacerbate — a Covid-19 outbreak currently spreading throughout the country.
Comments closedAs leaders have shifted to the position that masks and tests are matter of personal choice rather than collective self-preservation, they have implicitly silenced a vital message to the citizenry about how pandemics actually come to an end. It is this: less transmission means fewer mutations; fewer mutations means less variation, the fuel of evolution. Reducing infections, then, puts the brakes on viral evolution.
The combined actions of “letting the virus rip” in a population with varying degrees of protective and waning immunity created by vaccines or previous infections “has led to unprecedented increase in viral diversification in 2022,” as one group of researchers explained in a recent paper published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
Comments closedDo not listen to powers that be who pretend that getting infected with COVID multiple times is now no big deal. They’re asking you to lower your guard for a nasty virus that can invade the brain, disregulate the immune system and damage the vascular system.
This strategy has led to predictable results — more direct deaths, more excess deaths, more disease and some 1.4 million Canadians reporting some form of long COVID over the last two years.
Comments closedFor nearly three years now, China has had incredible success at keeping its number of COVID deaths relatively low. So far, the country has recorded only about 6,000 deaths among 1.4 billion people. By comparison, the U.S. has recorded more than a million deaths in a population of only 330 million.
China has accomplished this feat with what’s known as a “zero COVID” policy – using strict lockdowns and community-wide testing and other measures to keep case counts close to nil.
Comments closedAnecdotally, Covid-19 has picked up again in Yellowknife. But tracking the disease in the Northwest Territories is not nearly as easy as it once was.
That’s largely a function of relaxed restrictions. Eliminating mandatory isolation, and the requirement to take a test and report the results when symptomatic, restored freedoms but shut down data sources.
The NWT government’s Covid-19 dashboard, which existed for almost two years, was taken offline at the start of July.
Comments closedThe verdict is in on the nation’s light touch approach. More died. Herd immunity proved a mirage.
Comments closedTwo weeks ago marked the two-year anniversary of New Zealand’s adoption of the elimination strategy and a lockdown that successfully stamped out the first wave of Covid-19. By chance, it was also the week that the government announced a major relaxation of Covid-19 control measures in response to the Omicron variant wave sweeping the country.
Comments closedThroughout much of the pandemic, Sweden has stood out for its ostensibly successful effort to beat COVID-19 while avoiding the harsh lockdowns and social distancing rules imposed on residents of other developed nations.
Swedish residents were able to enjoy themselves at bars and restaurants, their schools remained open, and somehow their economy thrived and they remained healthy. So say their fans, especially on the anti-lockdown right.
A new study by European scientific researchers buries all those claims in the ground. Published in Nature, the study paints a devastating picture of Swedish policies and their effects.
Comments closedThe places that chose to pursue elimination suffered less overall. Unfortunately, few had the determination to do so.
Comments closedCOVID-19 deaths led to a five-month decrease in life expectancy at birth last year, recent data released by Statistics Canada suggest, potentially putting the country at a level not seen in seven years.
Comments closedEarly one morning, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She also saw a few people she didn’t know, including Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19, and other expert advisers to the WHO. It was just past 1 pm Geneva time on April 3, 2020, but in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Marr lives with her husband and two children, dawn was just beginning to break.
Comments closedThe past year of Covid-19 has taught us that it is the behaviour of governments, more than the behaviour of the virus or individuals, that shapes countries’ experience of the crisis. Talking about pandemic waves has given the virus far too much agency: until quite recently the apparent waves of infection were driven by government action and inaction. It is only now with the emergence of more infectious variants that it might be appropriate to talk about a true second wave.
As governments draw up their battle plans for year two, we might expect them to base their strategies on the wealth of data about what works best. And the evidence to date suggests that countries pursuing elimination of Covid-19 are performing much better than those trying to suppress the virus. Aiming for zero-Covid is producing more positive results than trying to “live with the virus.”
