Lucky husband & dad. Internist/ICU. Views are my own.
Mar 23, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
“the apparent damage of the CD8+ T cell response by [SARS-CoV-2] infection is cause for concern, and may leave even vaccinated individuals with a prior infection at risk for subsequent infections or other health issues.”
Other health issues, e.g. cancer.
cell.com/action/showPdf…
Authors make a comparison with treated HCV/HIV and point to this paper:
“The deterioration of CD8+ T cell function is seen in patients with active viral infections that had been either eliminated, in the case of HCV or greatly reduced (HIV).”
Update on absences due to illness from the 1/72 Ontario school boards (DDSB) transparently reporting this: ddsb.ca/en/our-schools…
Caveat: not an epidemiologist so take analysis with a grain of salt.
Here are schools along the y axis and dates progressing from Sept. 26 to Oct. 21, 2022 from left to right, broken up by grey weekly averages.
14 schools had 10+% absent at least one day last week (red) vs. 4-6 schools the previous three weeks. Orange is 7+% absent.
Oct 22, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Keeping up-to-date on routine childhood vaccinations is an important message.
I also think it would be interesting to understand why some parents have fallen behind.
🙋♂️I’ll start: aerosol/airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses has not been adequately addressed in many healthcare environments, particularly for children too young to reliably achieve a good seal with a respirator.
Uncomfortable truth.
May 3, 2022 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
A COVID story, with permission:
A healthy healthcare professional friend in her 30s (vaccinated x 3) successfully avoided COVID for two years by taking sensible precautions within her control, assisted by sensible collective protections in place for much of this period.
That all changed on March 21st with the removal of mask mandates in schools and other protections in Ontario.
Feb 22, 2021 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
1/ It's becoming clearer that 10 days of isolation for severe COVID is not sufficient.
In this study, virus was cultured from predominantly NP samples 3-4 weeks after symptom onset. Only 7 of the 87 patients with severe disease were admitted to ICU (i.e. most were on the ward).
2/ Here's another preprint suggesting persistently high viral load in LRT samples through to 10 days following symptom onset (the period sampled though it seems reasonable to extrapolate beyond this given no downward trend) in severe disease:
I wish I had a bigger follow to promote this paper because I think this kind of research is so important. I just joined twitter, so I don't, but I'll try to do my part anyway. Have a look at: medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
They found that HCWs were identified as cases of COVID at a rate 5.5x nonHCWs (range 2-6 mirroring the epidemic curve), and that 9.8% of HCWs likely transmitted to a household contact. Lots of other stuff in here but these were the findings I found most interesting.
