Watching for the flu

It’s that time of year again — time for the Walgreens Flu Index! See when influenza is coming to your town!

They call it “Delta Plus”

And it’s giving the UK a spike in Covid-19 cases. On the one hand, “Experts say it is unlikely to take off in a big way or escape current vaccines.” On the other hand…

According to a briefing from the UK Health Security Agency, released on Friday, “a Delta sublineage newly designated as AY.4.2 is noted to be expanding in England.”

Which, when you understand British understatement, translates to, “This could be a real problem.”

The other scary thing in Britain

They’re learning that unvaccinated people can not only be reinfected, but reinfected repeatedly. The protection from a vaccine is significantly greater than the protection from catching Covid.

New analysis has suggested that unvaccinated individuals should expect to be reinfected with Covid-19 every 16 months, on average.

You should cancel your trip to Singapore

The State Department is warning against it, raising the city-state’s warning to the highest level — 4, or “Do Not Travel.” The island’s attempt at reining in the disease failed.

After many months pursuing a “Covid zero” policy, keeping its borders closed, and staying under a hundred new Covid-19 cases a day for about a year, Singapore is now at “Covid lots more than zero.”

Flu twist: Medication mission creep

Several meds that have nothing to do with the flu turn out to affect the virus after all.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Estonian researchers, but they’ve been hard at work with their Norwegian and Finnish colleagues. And they’ve discovered that atorvastatin, candesartan, hydroxocobalamin, and other common meds “can alter how the virus interacts with our cells.”

“Some of the medicines amplify the effect of viruses in the cells, while others dampen them. The response depends on the target of the drugs in our cells.”

Because the virus reacts differently to these other meds, there’s no clear standard of care. What’s needed is more detail about potential interference — offensive or defensive.

From your nose to your eyes

The FDA has approved the first nasal spray for … dry eye. It’s Oyster Point’s varenicline solution (Tyrvaya to its friends). A spray in each nostril twice a day and you’re all set. Well, mostly. “The most common adverse reaction reported in 82% of patients was sneezing.”

Mono as a risk factor for multiple sclerosis

Epidemiologists at University College London thinks so. “Glandular fever [aka, mononucleosis] during the teenage years,” one writes, “really is a risk factor for subsequent MS.”

This flips the conventional wisdom, which says that MS makes mono more likely because it compromises the immune system. So the team decided to test that, looking at the medical history of 2.5 million Swedes, including 6,000 who contracted MS after age 20.

The results confirm that glandular fever, and almost certainly other infections, are important risk factors for MS and able to trigger the disease.

What’s scary is that it can take literally decades to show, “because the damage to the brain caused by MS develops slowly until it makes someone sick enough to receive a diagnosis.”