Some More Links and Articles About COVID-19

I haven't posted much recently about COVID-19. That isn't because I think the pandemic is over. Far from it. Other things have been taking up my time. But it's time for some more articles and resources, posted here partly for easy future reference, and in the hope that you find them useful. 

Articles

• Don’t believe those who claim science proves masks don’t work. "A new scientific review of the efficacy of masks is deeply flawed. That hasn’t stopped some from touting it." I am still masking in public indoor settings and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
• Excess cardiovascular mortality across multiple COVID-19 waves in the United States from March 2020 to March 2022. "In summary, excess cardiovascular mortality has been persistently observed in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and its peaks were coincident with the peaks of COVID-19 mortality. This highlights the consistent burden of CVD deaths posed in healthcare systems even when COVID-19 activities waned in the community."
• There is no clear economic trade-off for saving lives during the pandemic. "Contrary to popular belief, it seems that countries that have protected their residents better during COVID-19 have not experienced a worse economic outcome."
• We got some key things wrong about long COVID. Here are 5 things we’ve learned.
• COVID-19 linked to 40% increase in autoimmune disease risk in huge study. "COVID-19 was most strongly linked to an increased risk of vasculitis, which causes inflammation of the blood vessels; the previously infected group had a 63% higher rate of a type of vasculitis called arteritis temporalis than the uninfected group did. Autoimmune-driven problems with the thyroid, a butterfly-shaped organ in the throat that releases hormones, and the skin condition psoriasis were also strongly linked to prior COVID-19 infection, as was rheumatoid arthritis, which causes swelling in the joints."

Resources

• COVID-19 Aerosol Transmission - evidence! "This site exists as a resource to outline that there has been scientific evidence for some time to first predict then support COVID-19 infection being driven by airborne/aerosol transmission. As some point there will be a number of judicial inquires as to how the approach for stopping the pandemic was so bad. its-airborne.org has collected evidence and organized into timelines."
• Masks to Prevent Respiratory Infection. Resources about masks, mask use, and research. Produced by a team from McMaster University with many international contributors
• Bill Comeau's Tableaux Site. "Number-cruncher, chart-maker, blog-writer, mask-wearer, hyphen-fan." He publishes many data-driven graphs about COVID-19."
• Indoor Air Quality Reports from the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers.  "In 2022, OSPE formed the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Advisory Group, responding to the need for evidence-based guidance around indoor air quality and transmission of COVID-19. The Advisory Group produced the following reports, identifying how COVID spreads and how Ontarians can combat its spread."
• COVID-19 deaths in the US continue to be undercounted, research shows, despite claims of ‘overcounts’. "Explaining the discrepancy between excess deaths and reported COVID-19 deaths is a more challenging task. But several threads of evidence support the idea that the difference largely reflects uncounted COVID-19 deaths."