Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 29/03/2025It’s also worth making explicit, since I believe their seasonality is frequently conflated, that COVID (in this figure SARS-CoV-2) *does not conform to a respiratory virus season* in the same way that influenza or RSV do. One of these things is not like the others: 1166 0
Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 29/03/2025BC was at 15.5% test positivity for the most recent week presented, ending March 22. 100 0
Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 29/03/2025If the epidemic threshold for influenza is 5% test positivity, would it not make sense for that to also be the threshold below which the epidemic could be declared over? Right now Canada is at 18.6%. 110 0
Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 14/02/2025The majority of Canadian provinces give second doses at 18mo, and longstanding advice for travel outside Canada for those >=12mo is to receive two doses (minimum interval between doses is 4 weeks for MMR). I’ve been hoping to see proactive discussion of this issue for a while. 110 0
Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 26/01/2025In exactly the same situation right now. This is our first COVID illness in the family, most likely acquired during lunch at school. 032 0
Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 28/11/2024I’m not aware of culture or plaque assay work to confirm/quantify replication competent infectious virus… but this would potentially be like drinking a nice tall glass of someone else’s snot in the first few days of their influenza illness. www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 010 0
Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 22/01/2024It's been four long years now, and school boards are still seating kids three to a seat on school buses breathing air like this, at a time when an estimated 1 in 13 Canadians is currently infected with SARS-CoV-2. At 4408ppm, the equivalent of 1 in 10 breaths were recently in someone else's lungs. 053 0
Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 03/10/2023Masks required at Peterborough Public Health Vaccine clinics. Not so at some other health units, incredibly. 👏👏👏Dr. Piggott & PPH🙏🙏🙏 2152 0
Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 15/09/2023For context, this was an accounting of student absences due to illness at DDSB in Fall 2019 vs. Fall 2022, presented by board staff at a board meeting last year. Elementary students absent due to illness at ~2-fold to >3.6-fold the pre-pandemic rate. h/t @sueinnovates.bsky.social 011 0
Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 15/09/2023DDSB was the only school board in Ontario that provided transparent absence reporting last year. This is % absent due to illness: 152 0
Devon McDonald @mcdevonmd.bsky.social · 30/08/2023Moderna's bivalent BA.4/5 vaccine for 6mo-5yo has been available in the US since around the new year, under review in Canada since April a little over 4 months ago, and still hasn't been approved as of today's date. www.canada.ca/en/health-ca... 000 0
