The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 320 (820)

You may have noticed that from time to time news articles stating that this or that vaccination program is encouraging pregnant women to be vaccinated, or for women who are trying to become pregnant to be vaccinated. An article in JAMA Network Open reports that babies born to women who had covid while pregnant may face a higher risk of developmental disorders such as autism and bipolar disorder. This risk is not limited to covid infections. Infections with viruses such as influenza and measles raise the risk of disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, and depression. The covid study looked at the records of 7,550 babies. Three percent of babies born to mothers who did not have covid were diagnosed with a brain developmental disorder before their first birthday. For babies exposed to covid in utero, that percent was 6.3. After accounting for other factors that might influence a child's risk for these disorders--including preterm births, mother's age, and baby's gender--babies with in utero covid exposure were 86 percent more likely be diagnosed with a brain developmental disorder before their first birthday. 

The FDA is expected to rule this week on emergency use authorization for the Moderna and/or Pfizer vaccines given to children under the age of five. If the FDA gives emergency authorization, the CDC will have to ratify it. The CDC has ended the requirement that travelers entering the US by air have to present the results of a negative covid test. Sports teams will no longer have to travel by bus from Toronto to Buffalo to get on a plane there.

One candidate to be the Republican nominee in the race for governor in New York cannot appear in person at an upcoming debate. Andrew Giuliani, son of Rudy, has not been vaccinated for covid and refuses to get vaccinated. He says that he has "natural immunity" and will submit to multiple tests to prove he is not infected. The studio hosting the debate is holding firm on its vaccine mandate. Giuliani can appear in the debate remotely, though at least one of the other candidates is not at all happy with that ruling. He's holding out for in-person or not-at-all.

The last time I had my hair trimmed, my stylist told me that she and her housemates had gone through a bout of covid. She said she was glad she could not get it again and was not at all happy when I told her she could get infected again ... and again ... and... (She did not take her feelings out on my hair, thankfully.) Some people are reporting they've had covid three times now. Some scientists believe that covid will become "an inevitable infection that everyone gets multiple times," similar to the common cold. There are some differences, however. There is not as yet a seasonal pattern to covid. There is no long cold analogous to long covid. A case of Delta or an earlier variant was roughly 90 percent effective in preventing reinfection in both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Since Omicron appeared, however, infection offers only about 50 percent effectiveness. Immune defenses do wane; an October 2021 per-Omicron study estimated that reinfection could come after only three months.

Quickies: A vet in Thailand may have gotten covid from a cat. An as-yet-unpublished study found that ivermectin does not reduce the time needed to recover from covid. (Surprise! Surprise!) The president of the opposition party in India has been hospitalized with "covid-related issues." Finally, a team of international scientists assembled by WHO says in its first report that bats likely carried early versions on the coronavirus and may have transferred them to animals sold at the market in Wuhan.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 237 (737)

I am my own worst enemy. We are having company over Saturday night, and I decided I needed to do something about the shelves over the desk in the kitchen. Three hours later, the shelves look a lot neater and more organized. The pile of stuff that I still need to sort through is not. Channeling an inner housewife is hard because I don't think I even have one. 

I asked The Professor and Son #1 this morning what the second-largest risk factor for dying from covid is after old age. Son #2 figured it was asthma which is what I would have thought had I not just read a fascinating article on schizophrenia's being that second-largest factor. At one point during the pandemic, people with schizophrenia were almost three times more likely to die from covid than were people in the general population. It looks as if the immune system might be playing a role which would mean that schizophrenia could be a whole-body disease rather than one limited to the brain. This discovery opens the door to being able to look at the relationship between the immune system and psychiatric illness by looking at the effects of a single virus at a single point in time. I'm hoping to find out more about this, having majored in psychology in what now seems like a past life.

How bad is the situation in Hong Kong? A month ago, the US covid death rate was 90 times as high as Hong Kong's. Yesterday, the cumulative US death toll was only three and a half times as high as Hong Kong's. 

New York City is preparing to end its school mask mandate for children under the age of five. That end is contingent upon cases remaining as low as they are now. Waiting until April will permit the study of the effect of unmasking on older children. Their mask mandate was stopped a few weeks ago.

Pfizer has agreed to sell up to four million doses of Paxlovid for use in 95 lower-income countries. Using it won't be a walk in the park, though, given the lack of testing and a shortage of healthcare workers who could prescribe the drug. The price has not been announced, but Pfizer says it will be a "nonprofit price." Last week, 35 countries signed up to produce Paxlovid to sell inexpensively. These doses will not, however, be available as soon as the ones from Pfizer.

Been drinking more during the pandemic? You aren't alone. In fact, the number of alcohol-related deaths in 2020 reflected a 25 percent increase over 2019. Between 2018 and 2019, there was a five percent increase. On a longer time scale, deaths in 2019 were up only 3.6 percent from 1999, 20 years earlier. Up for trying to be sober-curious? I thought not.