May (the Force be with you) in Covidlandia

An update from last month's galactic battles

A postcard from Covidlandia, painted by the senior Examined Artist-in-Residence. I think this is amazing, even if I’m biased as a family member of the artist ;)

Welcome back to the monthly installment of a series I call Covidlandia, a forgotten land between black and white, carefree and cautious, pandemic beginning and end. I reluctantly wrote a lot about Covid vaccines last month with the political incursions into the houses of medicine and public health. Here’s one more. This edition presents recent Covid news, scientific discoveries, and medical knowledge that caught my attention last month and that is of interest to primary care. I try to curate and comment, and realize that one human being cannot possibly keep up with everything. But I try to collect useful, actionable stuff. Twelve editions from 2024 are still relevant. Here’s 2025 in January, February, March, April, and now May. This one takes about 12 minutes to read, so go for it now or come back later.

In this edition we will be talking about the state of Covid, the coming summer wave, the LP.8.1 and the NB.1.8.1 variants, Covid shots for the fall, the new next generation Moderna shot coming to a pharmacy near you, N-acetylcysteine for treating Covid, nicotinamide for treating Covid, a really quick review of policy shenanigans, the fate of the combined flu + Covid vaccine, spike proteins from both vaccination and infections as they relate to increasing Parkinson’s disease risk, more about kids and Covid, mitochondrial damage from illness and a possible mitochondria protector, and how antivirals are still worth it when treating higher risk people. You know, good stuff.