COVID-19 Data Dispatch

Tag: Featured sources

  • Sources and updates, June 4

    • Medicaid coverage losses by state: KFF Health News published a story this week sharing new data on the Americans who lost Medicaid coverage due to the end of a COVID-19 policy that prevented states from kicking people off the insurance during earlier stages of the pandemic. More than 600,000 people in 14 states have lost coverage since April 1, according to reporter Hannah Recht’s analysis. That represents about 36% of the people whose Medicaid eligibility was up for review in these states, though the number is much higher in some states (about 80% in Oklahoma). Recht also published the underlying data from her analysis for other reporters to use.
    • Library of Congress COVID-19 history project: The Library of Congress has announced a new project to collect COVID-19 oral history stories, partnering with the StoryCorps interview archive. Congress has provided funding for the COVID-19 project, which will provide grants to researchers working to document the experiences of specific groups. This project is focusing on frontline workers and the survivors of people who died from COVID-19, but other Americans are welcome to share their stories through the StoryCorps website.
    • Children often cause household COVID-19 spread: Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Kinsa, a health tech company, used data from smart thermometers to track how the coronavirus spreads inside households. Among about 39,000 instances of household transmission, a child was the initial case 70% of the time. The study suggests that children are major drivers of disease spread, especially during the school year; it also demonstrates the potential utility of smart thermometer data. (For more about Kinsa, see this post from last fall.)
    • Disproportionate COVID-19 impacts within a city: Another study that caught my attention this week: researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and collaborators evaluated how severe COVID-19 impacts differed by ZIP code within the city of Austin. Their analysis found that ZIP codes with more vulnerable populations (based on the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index) had higher rates of COVID-19 cases, but were less likely to have their cases reported. When limited surveillance data are available, the researchers suggest, health agencies should direct resources to more vulnerable communities.
    • Assessing who’s not connected to public sewers: One commonly-cited limitation of wastewater surveillance data is that about one in five U.S. households aren’t connected to public sewers. A new preprint from scientists at Harvard University and Biobot Analytics looks at this issue in more detail, using publicly available datasets describing sewer connectivity. The researchers found that, overall, some demographic groups (such as Native Americans, wealthier people in rural areas, etc.) are less likely to be connected to public sewers, as are some regions (such as Alaska and Navajo Nation). But public datasets have many gaps and biases, making it challenging to thoroughly assess this problem. Lead author QinQin Yu has a Twitter thread with more details.

  • Sources and updates, May 28

    • New Long COVID papers from the Patient-Led Research Collaborative: Speaking of new Long COVID research: the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, a group of long-haulers who do and support research on their condition, has recently published two new papers. The first, published in Nature and based on a patient survey, discusses Long COVID’s intersection with common psychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety. The second, published in Fronteirs in Rehabilitation Science, is a review paper going over the reproductive health impacts of Long COVID. Long COVID frequently causes disruptions to the menstrual cycle, gonad function, fertility, and other areas of reproductive health, yet these symptoms are understudied.
    • FDA fully approves Paxlovid: The FDA has provided full approval to Pfizer for its antiviral COVID-19 pill, Paxlovid. Millions of Americans have received Paxlovid since it earned Emergency Use Authorization in late 2021, and many studies have shown that it’s effective in reducing the risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms. With the federal public health emergency’s end, the FDA has encouraged pharmaceutical companies to apply for full approval for their COVID-19 products so that they can permanently remain on the market; Paxlovid is a high-profile example of that trend.
    • Bivalent COVID-19 vaccines protect, but wane: The CDC published another study this week evaluating the bivalent (or Omicron-specific) COVID-19 booster shots. These vaccines clearly provide additional protection against severe COVID-19 symptoms, the study finds, but this immune system boost goes away after several months. In the study, vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization declined from 62% in early weeks post-vaccination, to 24% at three to six months post-vaccination. The study shows that additional boosters and/or newer vaccines are needed for vulnerable adults.
    • Value of regular testing for controlling outbreaks: Another notable new study: researchers at the University of Wyoming compared how well different mitigation strategies work for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases, using a model informed by both epidemiological and economic factors. They found that frequent testing—paired with isolation for people who tested positive—was more effective at reducing disease spread than physical distancing measures, like closing businesses or having employees work from home. The paper suggests that testing can help reduce illness while keeping businesses open.
    • Funding for a WHO disease surveillance initiative: The Rockefeller Foundation and World Health Organization recently announced a new partnership, with the foundation providing $5 million to support the WHO’s Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. This Hub was established in 2021, with goals including fostering global collaboration on disease surveillance, providing better (and more complete) data, and improving tools for public health decisions. Rockefeller’s support will help with scaling up genomic surveillance, real-time data collection, and more.

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  • Sources and updates, May 21

    • New funding from CDC’s forecasting center: The CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Analytics (CFA) announced a new funding opportunity for state and local health agencies to develop new disease modeling tools. CFA is a relatively new center itself; it launched last year with the goal of modernizing the U.S.’s disease forecasting capacities (see my FiveThirtyEight article about the center for more details). This funding opportunity will, I expect, enable the CFA’s growing staff to work directly with health agencies on advancing analytical methods. I look forward to seeing the results of those projects.
    • Experts argue to keep masks in healthcare: A new commentary article, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, argues in favor of keeping mask requirements in healthcare settings. The experts (from the National Institutes of Health and George Washington University) point to real-world experience, suggesting transmission between patients and healthcare workers is less likely when everyone is wearing a mask, preferably one of high quality. This article coincides with an advocacy campaign to keep masks in healthcare, including virtual and in-person actions across the U.S.
    • CDC releases provisional drug overdose data for 2022: The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics has released overdose data for 2022, reporting that nearly 110,000 Americans died of overdoses for the second year in a row. Overdoses have leveled off from 2021, but the 2022 data still represent a sharp increase from pre-pandemic trends. Some states in the South and West Coast (such as Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Washington) saw the sharpest increases from 2021 to 2022, according to the CDC. These data are all preliminary and will be updated later in the year.
    • Pediatric COVID-19 boosters could save school days: A new modeling study, published this week in JAMA Network Open, suggests that the U.S. could have seen about 10,000 fewer kids hospitalized with COVID-19 and 5.5 million fewer school days lost during the 2022-2023 respiratory virus season, if kids received booster shots in large numbers. The researchers arrived at these estimates through a model that simulated COVID-19 booster vaccination rates at similar levels to annual flu vaccination in kids. Future booster campaigns should focus on children in addition to older adults, the authors argue.
    • RSV vaccine for infants moves ahead: Speaking of pediatric vaccinations: the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee met last week to discuss a new vaccine candidate from Pfizer, which would protect infants from RSV. Unlike most pediatric vaccines, this shot would be delivered to pregnant parents in order to protect their babies at birth. While the FDA’s advisors endorsed the vaccine for its effectiveness, some committee members expressed concerns over safety. Helen Branswell at STAT has more details.

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  • Sources and updates, May 14

    • CDC updates ventilation guidance: On Friday, the CDC made its first-ever official air quality recommendation for all indoor spaces, in an update to its overall ventilation guidance. The agency now says all buildings should strive for five air changes per hour (ACH) at a minimum; in other words, clean air should circulate through the space every 12 minutes or more. This update is a victory for many clean air advocates who’ve pushed for better guidelines during the pandemic as a way to reduce the risk of COVID-19 and other respiratory pathogens. As expert and advocate Devabhaktuni Srikrishna said to me on Twitter: “This is exactly the clarity we were pushing CDC for for since last year… Now the question becomes, how does everyone do it in their home, school, and office? How much does it cost? Where do you get it?” 
    • Millions Missing in Washington, D.C.: On Friday, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and Long COVID patient advocates held a demonstration at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to show U.S. leaders how chronic disease has pulled millions of Americans out of public life. The demonstration, organized by ME Action and Body Politic, included an installation of 300 cots with hand-made pillowcases created by patients across the country. Each cot is intended to represent people who can no longer work or do other day-to-day activities that were routine before they got sick with Long COVID or a similar chronic illness. You can learn more by watching ME Action’s press conference from the demonstration.
    • Post-PHE prices for COVID-19 testing: Researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation put together a new report describing how much Americans will likely pay for PCR and at-home tests now that the federal government no longer supports blanket insurance coverage. At-home test prices range from $6 to $25 per test, depending on the brand and number of tests purchased at once, the KFF analysis found based on a variety of data sources. PCR tests and others performed in healthcare settings range from $25 to $150 per test, with medians around $50. Tests including COVID-19 and other pathogens are the priciest.
    • Sleep apnea and Long COVID risk: A new paper, published this week in the journal SLEEP, finds that people with sleep apnea have a higher risk of developing Long COVID compared to those who don’t have this condition. Researchers at New York University (and other institutions) compared Long COVID symptoms among adults and children with and without sleep apnea through multiple electronic health record databases, finding people with sleep apnea had up to a 75% higher risk of long-term COVID-19 symptoms. This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s RECOVER initiative. Like other papers to come out of RECOVER (including another recent study looking at comorbidities), it’s utilized health records rather than the actual cohort of patients recruited into the NIH’s research program.
    • Diagnosing COVID-19 through breath: Another notable recent paper, published in the Journal of Breath Research in April: researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology have found they can identify whether a patient has COVID-19 by testing their breath. The technique involves using sensitive lasers and artificial intelligence to differentiate between chemicals in a patient’s breath; it’s similar to a breathalyzer for alcohol testing, though more complicated. In addition to COVID-19, breath testing might help identify other diseases.

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  • Sources and updates, May 7

    • KFF Medicaid Unwinding tracker: The Kaiser Family Foundation just published a new tracker detailing Medicaid enrollment by state. Enrollment rose to record levels during the pandemic, as a federal measure tied to the public health emergency forbid states from taking people off the insurance program. Now, states are going through the slow process of evaluating people’s eligibility and taking some off the program, in a process called “unwinding.” The KFF tracker is following this process, presenting both Medicaid enrollment data by state and information on each state’s timeline for evaluation.
    • Biden administration ends vaccine mandates: In time with the federal public health emergency’s end, the Biden administration has announced that it will lift its COVID-19 vaccine rules for federal workers and contractors. International travelers to the U.S. also will no longer need to provide proof of their vaccination status, and the administration is working to end requirements for other groups of workers and travelers. This change is, essentially, another signal of the administration giving up on mass vaccination campaigns; after all, most of the people who got their shots under these rules haven’t received an Omicron booster.
    • Vaccine protection wanes over time: A new review paper from researchers in Trento, Italy, published this week in JAMA, shows the importance of booster shots for maintaining protection from COVID-19. The researchers compiled and analyzed findings from 40 studies that evaluated vaccine effectiveness. Overall, they found, the protection that both primary series and booster shots provide against an Omicron infection drops significantly by six months and nine months after vaccination. Remember: Americans over 65 and/or immunocompromised, you’re now eligible for another bivalent/Omicron-specific booster.
    • Disparities in COVID-19 deaths persist: Two new studies this week examine COVID-19 deaths by race and ethnicity. The first study, from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, examined deaths of all causes during the pandemic, finding that Black and Native Ameircans had higher death rates than other racial/ethnic groups. COVID-19 was the fourth highest cause of death in 2022, after heart disease, cancer, and unintentional injury. The second study, from Andrew Stokes and collaborators, examined COVID-19 deaths during the U.S.’s first Omicron wave compared to earlier surges, finding that disparities decreased—but only because white deaths went up during the second year of the pandemic.
    • Characterizing Long COVID neurological symptoms: Another new study from this week: researchers at the NIH performed detailed examinations of 12 Long COVID patients to better understand their neurological symptoms. The researchers used an approach called “deep phenotyping,” which involves a variety of tests that aren’t typically used in clinical settings. They found that the patients had a number of abnormalities in their immune systems and autonomic nervous systems compared to healthy controls, pointing to different potential drivers of symptoms.
    • FDA approves RSV vaccine: Finally, a bit of non-COVID good news: for the first time, the FDA has approved a vaccine for RSV, the seasonal respiratory virus that can cause severe symptoms in older adults and young children. This vaccine, made by GSK, was approved for adults ages 60 and up and will likely get distributed during the next cold/flu season. Scientists have been working on RSV vaccines for decades, making this a major milestone for reducing the disease’s impact. Helen Branswell at STAT has more details.

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  • Sources and updates, April 30

    • Local COVID-19 resources from the People’s CDC: In advance of the federal public health emergency’s end, advocacy and communications organization the People’s CDC has compiled a list of COVID-19 resources for people still seeking to stay safe during the ongoing pandemic. The list includes testing and treatments, food support, mutual aid, advocacy organizations, and links to other People’s CDC resources.
    • Premature deaths during the pandemic: A new analysis from the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker examines the impact of COVID-19 on premature deaths, or deaths that occurred before the person reached age 75. This analysis included all excess deaths (so, not just those deaths officially reported as COVID-19, but also deaths from other diseases, drug overdoses, violence, etc.). All demographic groups experienced an increase in premature mortality during the pandemic, the researchers found, but deaths increased more for people of color than for white people. Hispanic and Native Americans had the highest impact, with premature all-cause mortality rising 33% betweeen 2019 and 2022.
    • Youth risk behaviors during COVID-19: This week, the CDC published a wealth of data and analysis from its 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a regular survey examining health-related behaviors among U.S. high school students. The survey asks questions about gun violence, unstable housing, mental health, sexual behaviors, dietary behavior, drug use, and more. As this survey is conducted every two years, the 2021 iteration was the first to capture youth behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it included some questions specifically designed to look at COVID-19’s impacts.
    • Lessons from COVID-19 report: A new book, published this week, explores what went wrong (and right) from the U.S.’s COVID-19 response. 34 leading experts from a variety of backgrounds collaborated on the book; the group originally convened in anticipation of a 9/11 Commission-style inquiry into the federal government’s COVID-19 response, and continued to investigate what went wrong even though that commission did not actually come into being. For highlights from the book, see this Q&A between two of the authors and STAT’s Helen Branswell.
    • Long-term financial issues after COVID-19: A new paper, published this week in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, finds that a COVID-19 diagnosis may lead to financial challenges. Researchers at the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins studied this issue by linking healthcare records from a large Michigan-based insurance network with financial records from the credit company Experian. The study included over 132,000 Michigan residents. People who had COVID-19 were more likely to see their credit score drop following that infection, the researchers found; those who were hospitalized with severe symptoms had the highest risk of this financial impact.

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  • Sources and updates, April 23

    • External review of the CDC: The People’s CDC, a group of public health experts, scientists, and educators dedicated to advocating for increased COVID-19 precautions, released a new report reviewing the federal CDC’s actins during the pandemic. The report incorporates feedback from a survey of almost 500 experts and from over 200 reports. Overall, the People’s CDC “found that the CDC has prioritized individual choice and short-term business interests over sharing accurate scientific evidence with the public and protecting population health.” (Disclaimer: I was one of the experts surveyed for this report!)
    • Use of COVIDTests.gov: This new paper, published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), reports on how Americans used COVIDTests.gov, the USPS/HHS effort to distribute free at-home tests. Since the site’s launch in January 2022, about one in three U.S. households received a test kit from this program, the research team found. They also found that this program may have helped improve equity in COVID-19 test access, as Black and white Americans utilized the free tests at similar rates. Of course, the program has been discontinued as of this spring.
    • Impact of racial discrimination on vaccination: Speaking of health equity: another report published in MMWR this week shares a correlation between discrimination and vaccination status. Researchers at the CDC and their collaborators analyzed data from the CDC’s National Immunization Survey, including about 1.2 million survey results from April 2021 through November 2022. Among the respondents, people who reported experiencing racial or ethnic discrimination in a healthcare setting were less likely to be vaccinated for COVID-19. The findings confirm many health experts’ equity concerns from early in the vaccine rollout.
    • Declining childhood vaccinations worldwide: Vaccine equity is a concern on the global scale, too. A new report from UNICEF shows that 67 million children worldwide missed at least one vaccination between 2019 and 2021, as healthcare systems were strained. The report also presents new data on global confidence in childhood vaccines: in some countries, this confidence has dropped by up to 44 percentage points. Vaccine confidence only improved in three countries (China, India, and Mexico). “The threat of vaccine hesitancy may be growing,” UNICEF warns.
    • Healthcare workers present while sick: One more paper that caught my attention this week: researchers at the Veterans Affairs healthcare system in Boston tracked a cohort of about 4,000 healthcare workers between December 2020 and September 2021. In addition to PCR testing, the workers conducted daily COVID-19 symptom reviews, and received guidance to stay home or leave work if they didn’t feel well. But the researchers found that many workers didn’t actually stay home: among 255 workers who had symptomatic COVID-19 during the study period, almost half reported that they were present, at work, at the time they received a positive test result. The paper indicates why it’s important to keep masks in healthcare settings, even when community cases are lower.

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  • Sources and updates, March 26

    • Paxlovid may lower risk of Long COVID: Taking paxlovid in the acute phase of a COVID-19 case may lower a patient’s risk of long-term symptoms by about 25%, according to a paper published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine. The paper, which summarizes an analysis of health records in the Veterans Affairs database, was originally posted as a preprint in the fall; lead author Ziyad Al-Aly and his colleagues at the St. Louis VA did more number-crunching during the peer review process. Several clinical trials (including one just announced at Yale this week) will test paxlovid as a potential treatment for Long COVID, with a longer course than people typically take during the acute disease.
    • Estimating true vaccination rates in the U.S.: A new report from the COVID States Project, a group of academic researchers focused on connections between social behaviors and COVID-19 spread, provides estimates of vaccination rates by state in the U.S. The researchers compared vaccination data from the CDC to polling sources, including the Kaiser Family Foundation and original polling conducted by the COVID States Project. They found that CDC data often diverged from survey data, suggesting that the public health agency’s information has errors due to the CDC’s inability to connect disparate immunization records from different states. (In other words, if someone got their primary series in one state and a booster in another, they might show up twice in the CDC’s data.)
    • Comparing COVID-19 outcomes by state: Another report looking at state-by-state data: researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation compared COVID-19 death rates to state actions on COVID-19. The researchers found that states with higher poverty, more income inequality, higher Black and Hispanic/Latino populations, and less access to healthcare faced higher COVID-19 rates. States where more people voted for Trump in 2020 also saw more COVID-19. These patterns “seem to reflect the release of public health mandates” in more Republican states, journalist Amy Maxmen wrote in a Twitter thread summarizing the study.
    • COVID-19 origins docs, raccoon dog analysis: Federal intelligence documents about investigations into the coronavirus’ origins will be declassified in the coming months, as required by a new law that President Biden signed this week. The law specifically requires that the Director of National Intelligence release “all information relating to potential links between China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology and COVID-19.” This information will first go to Congress, and then may become public. Meanwhile, there’s been some controversy about a recent analysis of viral samples at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan: news about this analysis was shared in the media before a scientific report was completed, and some researchers who worked on the analysis had their access to sequence repository GISAID revoked. This article in Science Magazine has more details on the situation.
    • Increased Candida auris spread during the pandemic: C. auris is a pathogenic fungus that has developed resistance to multiple common drugs, and that can pose a serious threat to human health. (Yes, a fungus similar to the one that causes a pandemic in “The Last of Us”—though C. auris doesn’t turn people into zombies.) The fungus has spread more widely during the pandemic according to a recent CDC report, with a 44% increase in cases from 2019 to 2021. Other types of anti-microbial resistance have been on the rise as well, as COVID-19 led to less rigorous monitoring and heightened antibiotic use in many hospitals. More recent CDC data on the fungus are available here.

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  • Sources and updates, February 26

    • Deaths in U.S. prisons: Throughout the pandemic, the UCLA COVID Behind Bars Data Project has been a leading source for data on COVID-19 cases and deaths in carceral settings. As COVID-specific data on prisons and jails have become more sporadic, the project recently turned its attention to overall mortality data in these settings. Last week, the UCLA team released a new dataset sharing all-cause deaths in prisons through 2020, which combines data from public reports and records requests. The full dataset is available on GitHub, and a summary of this project’s findings on all-cause mortality was published in the New York Times last weekend.
    • BIOFIRE syndromic trends data: BIOFIRE Diagnostics is a biotech company focused on diagnostic testing, offering tests for a variety of viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. The company publishes anonymized test results from its labs on its Syndromic Trends dashboard; this dashboard is a helpful way to get an overview of test positivity for COVID-19 compared to other common diseases. (H/t Force of Infection.)
    • R&D roadmap for COVID-19 vaccines: The University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy has published a new report outlining the research and development steps needed for the world to produce coronavirus vaccines that are “broadly protective,” not tied to a specific variant. It includes recommendations for research on virology, immunology, and vaccine technologies, along with information on using animal models and guidance on vaccine policy. Related: the CDC’s Advisory Community on Immunization Practices met this week to discuss COVID-19 and other vaccines.
    • CDC reports on travel surveillance: Two new studies about COVID-19 among international travelers to the U.S. were published in this week’s CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Both studies describe results from the agency’s Travel Surveillance program, which is a collaboration with biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks and testing company XpresCheck. One report compares traveler test results from before and after the U.S. ended its pre-departure testing requirement for international flights, finding that travelers were much more likely to have COVID-19 after the requirement was lifted. The second report provides results from a pilot program testing airplane wastewater at JFK Airport; this report found that the vast majority of plane samples tested were positive for SARS-CoV-2, and researchers identified a variety of Omicron variants. More work is needed to really get airplane wastewater testing going in the U.S., but it’s good to see early results showing this program’s feasibility.
    • Early data from XBB.1.5 in NYC: Another notable study in CDC MMWR this week provided analysis from New York City’s health department on Omicron XBB.1.5. The subvariant was first identified in the city in October 2022 (though it may have evolved somewhere else), and quickly spread through the region; it accounted for 81% of sequenced COVID-19 test samples by early January. The NYC health department linked sequencing data with patient outcomes data, finding that people infected with XBB.1.5 were not significantly more likely to be hospitalized or to die from COVID-19 compared to those infected with other variants. In other words, XBB.1.5 appears to not cause more severe disease, based on this report.
    • Predicting COVID-19 cases based on wastewater results: One more newsworthy study to share this week: researchers at Hokkaido University developed a mathematical model to predict COVID-19 cases based on coronavirus concentration levels in Sapporo, Japan. I’m always on the lookout for studies like this, as wastewater data become increasingly important to track true infection numbers. (Here’s a prior example, from the University of Florida.) Of course, it’s worth noting that the Hokkaido researchers had consistent wastewater and case data from spring 2020 through 2022 to use for their model; for wastewater researchers working in the U.S. now, that consistency is often harder to achieve.

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  • Sources and updates, February 19

    Just a couple of updates today!

    • Test positivity will become less reliable after PHE ends: CBS News COVID-19 reporter Alexander Tin flagged last week that, after the federal public health emergency for COVID-19 ends this spring, private labs that process PCR tests will no longer be required to report their results to state health departments. States will still report any results they get to the CDC, but federal officials expect that this data will become much less reliable, according to a background press briefing from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Case data are already unreliable; soon, we won’t even have consistent test positivity data to tell us how unreliable they are. This may be one of several data sources that get worse after the end of the PHE.
    • HHS is supporting improved healthcare data sharing: The inability to connect different health records systems (or lack of interoperability, to use the technical term) has been a big problem during the pandemic, as researchers and health officials often couldn’t answer questions that require multiple health datasets. HHS has taken some steps to improve this situation, while also making it easier for individual patients to access their personal records. Most recently, HHS announced that it’s chosen six companies and organizations to develop data-sharing platforms, according to POLITICO. It’ll take some time for these organizations to start actually sharing data, but I’m glad to see any movement on this important issue.
    • Yes, vaccination is still the best way to get protected from COVID-19: A new study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, published in the Lancet this week, has been making the rounds on social media recently. Anti-vax pundits are claiming the study shows that immunity from a prior coronavirus infection is more effective than immunity from vaccination at preventing future severe COVID-19. While the study does show that a prior infection can be helpful, the authors found a significant drop in the value of this type of protection after Omicron variants started circulating in late 2021. And, as some commentators have pointed out, infections can always lead to severe symptoms and Long COVID—the risks from vaccination are much lower. Basically, this XKCD comic remains accurate.