Crypto News: I just got boosted, so why do I have Covid?

Hi folks, it's Kristen, writing from my sunny homeland of Orange County, California, where my whole family is frantically Covid testing before a cousin's wedding. As we enter sniffle season, I've been fielding lots of questions on the best ways to avoid getting sick and why Covid can sometimes evade our defensive measures. But first...

People are holding off on Botox and other pricey aesthetic treatments amid rampant inflation and concerns about the economy.
US flu hospitalizations are the highest they've been in the last 12 years at this point in the season.
Health authorities in the UK have identified a number of omicron variants that could fuel waves of Covid-19 infections this winter.

I dodged Covid for 2.5 years and got my bivalent booster in September. Now I have Covid. How is that possible? Is it possible to know what variant I have? Dana, California

First off, our reader deserves congratulations for making it so long without catching Covid. At this point, the vast majority of Americans have had the virus — some more than once.

"While this bout with Covid may make you feel like your efforts were in vain, it's great that you protected yourself from repeated infections," says Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Each infection was a chance for severe disease in pre-vaccine days, and repeated infections increase the chances for long Covid and even, theoretically, creation of a new variant. Preventing all that was good!"

That fresh booster, Wallace says, can't totally prevent the spread of the virus but does lower the risk of developing a severe infection that results in hospitalization or death.

While it's exceedingly difficult for the reader to discover what variant she had, Wallace points out that the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants still account for about 70% of all infections detected by PCR testing. And nearly 90% of our US wastewater testing sites detected those same two variants last week. That's good news, since that's what the latest booster shots are designed to target.

But new variants are always popping up. Researchers have sequenced samples and found new omicron subvariants, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, that could be on the rise, says Wallace. They contain mutations that might allow them to circumvent some, but not all, of the protective defenses booster shots provide.

In general, there's probably much more Covid circulating than we realize, according to Jessica Justman, an infectious-diseases specialist and epidemiologist at the Columbia University Medical Center.

"Even though the number of confirmed cases in the US is relatively low, the widespread use of self-testing rapid test kits means many cases are not confirmed, so the confirmed case count is definitely an underestimate," she says. In New York, for example, researchers have found high levels of the virus in wastewater.

That highlights the importance of getting vaccinated and boosted. And, says, Justman, if you do catch Covid, there are now many great treatment options, such as antiviral medications. — Kristen V. Brown

When you really need to wash your hair but, well, don't really have the time, dry shampoo can save the day. But Unilever has taken several popular brands of the beauty product, including Dove, off the market. They contained benzene, a chemical that can cause cancer, reports Bloomberg's Anne Edney.

"The move once again raises questions about the safety of aerosols in personal-care products," Edney writes.

The nearly $40,000 price tag for just one shot of a very old cancer drug, from NPR.

What would it look like if we didn't have to test new drugs on animals, asks Neo.Life.

Delta "weaponized" mental health rules against a pilot. But she fought back, reports the Seattle Times.

Have you gone through a fertility treatment, like IVF or egg freezing? Or perhaps you have considered fertility treatment, but ultimately decided against it? We'd love to hear your story. So get in touch via AskPrognosis@bloomberg.net.