The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 427 (927)

Both Moderna and Pfizer are seeking authorization to offer their bivalent boosters to children as young as five (Pfizer) or six (Moderna). Right now, the Pfizer booster can only be given to children ages 12 and older. Moderna can only be given to adults ages 18 and older.

There are more than a few covid symptoms related to a person's mental health. The one we hear the most about is probably cognitive and affective deficits or, in popular jargon, brain fog. Other mental health links include anxiety and depression, seizures, and suicidal behavior. There are some covid factors that may have affected children more than adults: changes to routine, virtual schooling, mask wearing, the absence of loss of a caregiver, and a family's financial instability. Besides children, there are other groups more likely to have experienced symptoms of mental illness during the pandemic. These include people from racial and ethnic minority groups, mothers and pregnant women, people with disabilities, people with pre-existing mental illness or substance use problems, and healthcare workers. Membership in more than one group may make a person more likely to contract covid.

 There is research ongoing on the interplay of covid and mental health. The National Institute of Mental Health is studying the use of mobile apps to address mental health disparities. NIMH is also looking at the impacts of the pandemic on under-served and vulnerable populations and on cognitive, social, and emotional development of children. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is looking at the effects of mask wearing on children including its effect of emotional and brain development. Finally, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism is studying how the pandemic has affected both the causes and the consequences of alcohol misuse. 

Omicron variants BA.2.75.2 and BQ.1.1 have not officially been labeled variants of concern, but the former is spreading in India, Singapore, and parts of Europe. The latter has been see in multiple countries around the world. Researchers in China and Sweden say that the spike protein from BA.2.75.2 can effectively evade nearly all monoclonal antibodies used to treat covid. In other words, these treatments could end up being no good. A small study of 18 blood samples showed that an immune system was less than one-sixth as effective at neutralizing BA.2.75.2 as with BA.5. A Swedish immunologist called BA.2.75.2 the "most resistant variant we've ever evaluated." A Chinese immunologist noted, "The scale of immune evasion has never been seen before, and the virus is still rapidly evolving. It's very bad." The Chinese researchers are more pessimistic than the Swedish. The next--coming--wave could suggest what factors might trigger or prevent severe disease. One researcher summed it up as "I think we're going to learn a lot this winter."

I' hope that we do learn a lot about the coronavirus this winter. Our initial interactions with it were somewhat ragged as we figured out what would work when, where, and how. The more we've learned, the better we've been able to protect ourselves and others. I hope we continue learning.