Saturday Stories: Delta, Ventilation, and Childhood COVID

Jennifer Yang and Kenyon Wallace, in The Toronto Star, on how cities, provinces and countries awash in vaccines can still mess things up if they're not cautious with the Delta variant. 

Tavia Grant, in The Globe and Mail, on the need to address ventilation in workplaces.

Edward Nirenberg and Risa Hoshino, in Medpage Today, on COVID in childhood.

Saturday Stories: Not Individuals, And Long COVID And Kids

Ed Yong, in The Atlantic, on how health, including during pandemics, cannot be framed as a matter of individual/personal choice.

Elizabeth Cooney, in STAT, on what we do and don't know about children COVID long haulers. 

Saturday Stories: The Finish Line and Microchips

Jessica Smith-Cross, in QP Briefing, on Ontario's (and really everywhere's) COVID finish line. 

James Heathers, in The Atlantic, ponders whether or not he received a microchip in his COVID vaccine.

Saturday Stories: The Latest Scary Variant, Systematic Evidence, And Lab Leaks

John Michael McGrath, for TVO, on what we do and don't know about the latest scary variant B.1.617

Hilda Bastian, in her blog Absolutely Maybe, on the evidence behind the systematic evidence behind all matters COVID. 

David Leonhardt, in The New York Times, with an explainer on the lab leak mess that is suddenly being discussed everywhere. 

Saturday Stories: They Were Loved

More than 25,000 Canadians have been lost to COVID-19 (and terrible governance given the bulk of those deaths were preventable), Macleans is collecting their stories. Please take the time today to click at least a few.

Saturday Stories: Vaccinating Kids, Hatred And COVID

Gideon M-K, in Medium, on whether or not we should be vaccinating kids against the coronavirus (tl;dr - yes) 

Bernie Farber and David Fisman, in The Globe and Mail, on the overlap between racism, hate, and COVID denialists. 

Photo byAnthony Crider; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:37, 9 April 2018 (UTC) - Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68193094

Saturday Stories: Blood Clots, NNTs, And Incentives

Kai Kupferschmidt and Gretchen Vogel, in Science, explore the future of vaccines with rare risks of blood clots.

Andrew Althouse, in Medscape, on vaccines and the failure of NNTs.

John Michael McGrath, in TVO, makes the case for paying people to get vaccinated

Saturday Stories: One Universal Coronavirus Vaccine, Fringe Science, And The Misnomer Of Vaccine Hesitancy

James Hamblin, in the Atlantic, on the promise of a single coronavirus vaccine which would protect us against SARS, MERS, COVID-19, and every other coronavirus-related disease, forever and ever.

David Robert Grimes, in Scientific American, on how COVID has opened the floodgates of fringe science. 

Stefanie Friedhoff, in STAT, on why we need to stop talking about vaccine "hesitancy".

Saturday Stories: Unanswered Questions, Ontario's Misery, And Vietnam's Triumph

Helen Branswell, in STAT, with the questions experts still have about COVID.

Justin Ling, in Macleans, with the almost unbelievable story of Ontario's science table and its recommendations versus what our government is doing. 

Julia Belluz, in Vox, on Vietnam, not an island, and it's incredibly successful strategy for dealing with COVID 

Saturday Stories: Is Canada a Country, The Gaslighting of Science, And A Non-COVID Piece From Me

Lauren Dobson-Hughes, in The Line, reflecting on Canada's responses to COVID wonders if we are actually a country?

Zeynep, in Insight, on the gaslighting of science.

And in non-COVID writing, here's my latest in Medscape How Dare There Be Effective Drugs for Obesity? which covers the bizarrely negative reaction that effective drugs for obesity face from the medical community and society as a whole

Saturday Stories: The End Of Year One, The End Of Hygiene Theatre, And The End Of The Whole Thing

Stephen Maher, in Macleans, with the comprehensive story of Canada's first year with the pandemic.

Emily Anthes, in The New York Times, on the end of overzealous cleaning.

Gregg Gonsalves, in The Nation, on what comes after the end of this stage of the pandemic. 

Saturday Stories: Anti-Science, The Pandemic's Wrongest Man, And The Not Great Indoors

Dangerous numpty. If you see, ignore.

Peter Hotez, in Scientific American, on the anti-science movement and the danger it poses to global public health. 

Derek Thomspon, in The Atlantic, explains why you should unfollow, unfriend, or at the very least ignore Alex Berenson and question those in your lives who share his ideas.

Dyani Lewis, in Nature, explains the simplest COVID rule of all to remember, if you're inside, you're in danger. 

Saturday Stories: Vaccine Passports, Canadian Vaccine Manufacturing, and Not Delaying Vaccine Boosters For The Vulnerable

Saskia Popescu and Alexandra Phelan, in The New York Times, discuss the unwieldy realities that vaccine passports might face. 

Leslie Boehm and Gregory P. Marchildon, in Policy Options covers the past realities and future needs of Canadian vaccine manufacturing. 

Isaac Bogoch and David Naylor, in The Globe and Mail, present the case for not delaying second shot vaccinations for Canada's most vulnerable. 

Saturday Stories: Africa's Incredible COVID Supply Chain, On AstraZeneca's Vaccine, And Asymptomatic Transmission

Javed Anees, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Reid Wilson, in The Hill, on the world leading way in which Africa approached COVID treatment and prevention supplies. 

David Spiegelhalter, in the Guardian, on why you need not be terribly worried about receiving AstraZeneca's COVID vaccine.

Angie. Rasmussen and Saskia Popescu, in Science, with everything we know about asymptomatic COVID infections and transmission.

Saturday Stories: Vaccines For Longhaulers, EMT Reflections, And Societal Reopening

Akiko Iwasaki, in Medium, on how vaccination might help COVID longhaulers.

Jennifer Murphy, in The New York Times, reflects on her experiences as a NYC EMT during the worst of their pandemic.

Jane Philpott and David Walker, in The Ottawa Citizen, discuss the equitable reopening of society.

Saturday Stories: Windows, Mindestabstandsregelung, And Anti-Racist COVID Responses

Sarah Zhang, in The Atlantic, on the forgotten power of windows in a pandemic.

Luisa Beck, in The Washington Post, on the 1,200 new German words coined for the pandemic.

Aisha Lofter, in TVO, on the need for an anti-racist response to COVID.

Saturday Stories: Vaccines Will Work, The Vaccine Whisperer Hilda Bastian, And The Secret Life of SARs-CoV2

Angela L. Rasmussen, in the New York Times, explains how yes, the vaccines will work to stop the spread.

Julia Belluz, in Vox, interviews the inimitable Hilda Bastian, the scientist who has been right on COVID vaccines every step of the way. 

Carl Zimmer, in The New York Times, on the secret life of a coronavirus.

Saturday Stories: Which Vaccine Should You Get, And Summertime

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, in The Guardian, discusses which vaccine you should get.

James Hamblin, in The Atlantic, on what summer might look like (in the US mind you, here in Canada, given our exceedingly slow pace of vaccination, this might not apply)

Saturday Stories: No Herd Immunity Without Vaccines, Hygiene Theatre, And Sleepwalking Into Disaster

Michaeleen Doucleff, in NPR, explains how a small town in Brazil has tragically shown us that without vaccines, herd immunity is impossible.

Derek Thompson, in The Atlantic, on the waste of resources and the disinformation that is hygiene theatre

Brooks Fallis, in The Globe and Mail, on how Canada is sleepwalking into our next disastrous surge.

Photo by By Jesus Solana from Madrid, Spain - Black sheep . Do u also feel different? // la Oveja negra. Tambien te sientes diferente?, CC BY 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5050231

Saturday Stories: The Australian Response, The Brazilian Variant, And The Russian Vaccine

Damien Cave, in The New York Times, on how Australia is maintaining near normalcy of life in the time of COVID19

James Hamblin, in the Atlantic, on the Brazilian variant that's currently rampaging through a city that had been thought to be immune due to acquired immunity from a previously brutal wave in April 2020.

Joshua Yaffa, in The New Yorker, on Russia's Sputnik V vaccine and their race to immunity.