Ever since Newton/Leibniz invented the infinitesimal calculus in the latter half of the 1600s, it seems like the world has been enthralled by beauty and possibility of the continuum. This event marked the beginning of modern physics and mathematics, and there is virtually no topic in either of these fields that is not deeply interwoven with calculus.

Sometimes, though, I think they may have been a little too successful.

On February 22nd, PLOS medicine published a paper on cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) following vaccination on which I was the lead author. CVST is a type of blood clot in the brain that can lead to stroke and death. In this paper, we carried out a pooled analyis of 11.6 million people in England, Scotland and Wales, comparing the rate of CVST events in individuals before and after receiving the vaccine. We found that in the 4 weeks following vaccination with Oxford-AstraZeneca, the risk of CVST events approximately doubled. We did not see any increase in risk of CVST events following Pfizer.

A paper has recently come out claiming that lockdowns had minimal effects on COVID mortality, causing quite a stir. The headline figure is that in Europe and the USA, lockdowns reduced mortality by 0.2%. Fifty words in and the authors are already dropping bombs like this:

There have been interesting reports from Public Health Scotland that COVID infection rates amongst the unvaccinated have been consistently lower compared to those who have had one or two doses of vaccine since early December 2021, though higher compared to those with a booster dose. See a news story here, based on the original report here. I believe this has led many people to question vaccine effectiveness.

There has been a great deal of controversy over the way COVID-19 deaths are calculated. Initially in the UK, the count that was most widely reported consisted of all who died within 60 days of a positive PCR test, or who died more than 60 days after a positive test but had COVID-19 listed as a cause of death on their death certificate.

The main objection to this is that, for example, someone could test positive for COVID-19, recover fully, then die in e.g. a car crash and still be counted as a COVID-19 death.