We Just Got More Evidence That Long COVID Is a Brain Injury
The exact nature of long COVID is still coming to light, but we just got some of the best evidence yet that this debilitating condition stems from a brain injury.
Using high-resolution scanners, researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford have shown microscopic, structural abnormalities in the brainstems of those recovering from COVID-19.
Signs of brain inflammation were present up to 18 months after first contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
“We show that the brainstem is a site of vulnerability to long-term effects of COVID-19, with persistent changes evident in the months after hospitalization,” the authors of the study conclude.
https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awae215
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I think it’s important for people to realize:
A very bad cold or flu can totally damage your body and is how lots of older folks go unfortunately.
Covid without a vaccine would have been a terrible sickness.
What bugs me the most is so many people who don’t understand logical fallacies kept saying just wait a year or two and you’ll see mass deaths and weakened immunity… and they are conveniently silent now, probably blaming fires on DEI or something stupid like that.
I got it before the pandemic shut down. in February of 2020. I was working in a high contact environment with high risk. I ended up sick, then sicker, then my whole team was sick, and out of work. we were told to do training as wfh and we’d be back when we felt better. it felt like that wasn’t coming. I got sicker and bedridden, my dr prescribed a steroid inhaler and wasn’t sure what it was. then sent out some labs and said ‘inconclusive’. i stayed sick. moving from the bed into the attached bathroom and back was a 4 steo with breaks sitting on the floor process. i lost my job. i went on unemployment. it was another half of a month before I went back to the doctor. Covid. and they had no options for me but to wait it out. it wasnt bad enough.
They are seeing all these mass deaths. According to the antivaxx crowd almost every single person who gets sick or dies could have prevented this by not getting vaxxed. They don’t care, that this is absolute bullshit.
I got walking pneumonia last year. Took some antibiotics and got rid of it, but it basically brought back my childhood asthma. I’ve been stuck with it for about 10 months now. Really eye opening to me how long it has lasted.
A very bad cold or flu can totally damage your body and is how lots of older folks go unfortunately.
That was my view of COVID at the early stages of the pandemic. A lot of people were saying that it’s just a bad flu. I thought it being a bad flu is terrifying.
An even so, having caught the damn thing three times now even through vaccines, I think my view back then was overly optimistic.
Do you have a source for claiming it’d be worse without the vaccine? I haven’t seen any studies show it lessens the severity of brain damage caused by infections.
What I’ve seen is claims that even the asymptomatic infections are causing brain damage.
From what most of the vaccines seem to be is a marker (protein used for such) on am entity they want destroyed. Tells your immune system if you see guys with a red x on their shirt, start taking them out. If you don’t have the vaccine they enter and no one knows the red x is bad. They start to run rampant and doing bad things until something done bad enough is recognized and they say, hey shoot the ones with the red x. In both scenarios the red X’s infiltrated your body, in 1, your body is able to start defending itself sooner and it lessens the damages caused vs what may have occurred if it didn’t know to start attacking sooner. (That does not mean someone’s immune system couldn’t be worse than someone else’s and still react slower… just faster than it would have otherwise)
Covid without a vaccine would have been a terrible sickness.
And yet here in Denmark you can’t get the booster if you’re not old or very sick.
I image that’s because of the cost. In the US it costs $207 of you don’t have insurance when it was free for everyone until last summer.
Estonian, haven’t had a booster in what, 3 years? Maybe 2, idk. We can’t even get them anymore.
What I DO know is that last year, I got what was most likely covid (my second bout at that) and there are things I used to love eating and drinking that I find disgusting now, 11 months later. Not like “ew that tastes funny”. No, “Ew that’s not edible, how am I eating analog TV static noise and image”
So yeah, I suspect I have brain damage and it probably could’ve been reduced if I’d been able to keep up with my boosters.
That was my old boss. You described them to a T in Re: to the mass deaths in 2 years. She was an absolute idiot, and I have no doubt would put her political party over her own personal safety again if she knew Democrats were already doing the same as she needed to. She is incapable of thinking rationally.
These people are addicted to this feeling that they have discovered some secret that destroys conventional wisdom and sheds a whole new light on everything. They are addicted to this feeling that they’ve found a big lie everyone’s swallowed and they’re going to spit it out.
Every part of their worldview has to have that quality or they can’t hold onto it with their brains. There’s a great deal of straightforward, plain-as-day information that’s totally missing from their worldview because it doesn’t contain the drug their brain is addicted to.
My theory is that the type of person who falls for conspiracy nonsense is the same type of person who also succumbs to solipsism. They have a core belief that they are the protagonist of their own story, and their story can’t be plain, humdrum, or boring like their daily lives had been up until the moment they “uncovered” the grand plot to deceive the world. Acknowledgement of the fact that they are not special or somehow inherently different from any other individual is psychic death, so they retreat into safe spaces and echo chambers that validate them, which make them easy targets for pseudoscience and quasi-religious beliefs.
Conspiracy allows them to indulge in the fantasy of grandiosity, while also introducing them to a community of like-minded people who will welcome them and their beliefs, and never challenge them. That makes it all the more difficult for them to break out of the spell, even when presented evidence that runs contrary to what they believe.
Yep, agree. What makes this more complex is that movie culture has relentlessly programmed all of us to think this way for decades. I don’t think it’s just a case of genetic predisposition toward solipsism, though that is surely in there as well.
Virtually all blockbuster movies and many smaller ones are about some kind of chosen hero who shatters a corrupt system, often with a single act of redemptive violence (killing the bad guy, destroying the evil machine, etc).
From Star Wars: A New Hope to The Matrix to The Hunger Games this formula has been virtually the same. It’s so relentless and consistent, and people grow up on it from an early age. Is it any surprise, with this kind of programming, that people grow up lacking the will to dedicate themselves to making a small contribution toward incremental change? No. They need shattering upheaval that saves the world, and everything less is complicity in the evil of the system.
As Zizek said: you never get to see what the hero does the day after shattering the machine. How do they rebuild a better society? Okay, redemptive violence, then what? Popular culture has no answer to this. In real life it’s about compromise, hard work, incremental improvement. But we have generations of people who’ve been fed compelling narratives about everything but that.
I wonder if you’re on to something there. What if they do get a hit of dopamine every time they think they’re being clever even though they’re completely wrong, and so they deliberately lean towards all the crazy that makes them think they’re being clever just for the dopamine? That would explain a lot about the MAGA crowd, as they are actually physically addicted to the crazy in that case,
“The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room.” — Frank Lucas Many dumb people I’ve met simply get off by hearing themselves talk. They 100% get a dopamine hit every time the make a “point”.
Yes and there is one other aspect. When they get into this conspiracy shit, there is a whole community of people ready to welcome them. They are congratulated for seeing the light and joining the movement. This fulfills a social need for a lot of these people, who are lonely or in some cases estranged from family.
This process of feeling like you’ve drawn back the curtain on life, and, in the same stroke found “your people” is incredibly exhilarating to them. It’s like a whole new day in their lives. And THAT’S why they’ll defend their crap beliefs to the death. Because giving them up means going back to the humdrum world where they are just a nobody again.
There’s also a large community of conspiracy haters ready to welcome anyone who believes anything an authority figure says. They are congratulated for seeing the light and joining the movement. This fulfills a social need for … etc.
Is there? I don’t know of anyone who gathers together to bad mouth conspiracy theorists
There are many in this thread. I replied to one.
People who casually dismiss conspiracy theories are exactly as bad as those who unquestioningly believe them.
People who casually dismiss conspiracy theories are exactly as bad as those who unquestioningly believe them.
the occams razor is a crucial part of scientific thinking for a reason.
the space of all possibilities is infinite. the space of what people believe and say is enormous. the space of what is actually truth is comparatively smaller, unrelated and uncaring about either of those.
you can’t possibly consider everything everyone says - especially if what they are saying keeps changing as they see fit. you’ll just burn out if you try and end up in endless “discussions” with the people who are “just asking questions”…
that doesn’t mean i should dismiss or ridicule people, but it does mean i will not spend a single heartbeat thinking about another “proof” that the earth is flat or controlled by lizard prople or something.
Did you see someone whose social life is built around dismissing conspiracy believers or did you just reply to someone who rejects conspiracy thinking? I suspect it’s the latter.
The kind of person that latches onto one detail in an argument and doesn’t let go. Especially when it has nothing to do with the disagreement. You know the type.
conveniently silent
Always. When the previous conspiracy theory / rapture date / return of JFK / illuminati plot doesn’t turn out to be true, there’s no talking about it or self reflection, it’s just right onto the next conspiracy theory / rapture date / return of JFK / illuminati plot.
This should go both ways. What about :-
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Wuhan Lab leak possibility
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US sponsoring foreign GoF research
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Assange assassination plans
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Phones and tvs listening on conversations (Weeping Angel)
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NSA recording all internet traffic
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Remote car jacking
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McDonald’s ice cream breaking on purpose
Etc.
Ofc it goes both ways. To them, everything you listed is basically truth. Something so obvious everybody would know. They need something bigger. Something most people would never believe.
-
I knew a conservotard type. He never ventured out from his rural area so he never had to change his mind. He didn’t believe in COVID of course, until he lost all taste of food. I genuinely feel bad for the guy. He said everything smelled or tasted like shit. It was 3 months before he started tasting again. After that I laughed at every anti-COVID nut in my life pretty openly.
First time seeing the term ‘conservotard’. It definitely has a Spanish ring to it.
The biggest problem with social media is that it united the village idiots like your pal. Now, instead of being fringe, they find like minded dipshits online who reinforce their belief while also feeding them new, insane, ideas. I don’t know where it’s leading us to, but so far it ain’t good.
I’m anti-COVID and I’m pretty sure everyone else is, except the group of people you meant to refer to.
Don’t be weird
In that sense, I’m anti-mask.
Look, I know this isn’t exactly the most appropriate community to post a comment like this. I do however need to say as someone that has had debilitating brain fog for a couple of years thanks to covid: “…fuck.”
I mean, I don’t recommend this to everyone, nor am I advocating for everyone to do this, but have you tried taking a dose of psilocybin containing mushrooms?
Not in a long time. Trying to obtain them would be stupidly dangerous for me in a lot of ways. I’d be more than down for it though.
Well depending on your state (if you’re in the US) you could just grow them from spores
It sucks but the recovery is still possible. I imagine gaslighting and not taking it seriously by people is debilitating.
When you suffer a brain injury from a stroke everyone will be supportive and offer help but when it is long covid people will be like “what? you are probably imagining things” both aliments are recoverable but it must suck to be constantly denied and not treated seriously
That makes 2 of us. Been living with brain fog, memory loss, inability to pick out words when speaking, and now I set something down on a countertop, turn around, turn back and look and I literally can’t see the item I set there. I see everything else, even the countertop where the item is sitting. Generally I either panic or I get pissed at myself for being so stupid. And then all of a sudden, the item magically returns to view as a stare at it.
Oh, and just for fun, breathing is still hard. And all medical testing shows my lungs are just fine and there should be problem. My pulmonologist tells me I’m one of the lucky few to be so chosen-- in jest. (I had to search “lung doctor” because I couldn’t remember the word pulmonologist just now)
The inability to see something I’ve literally just dealt with after a short time has been happening to me for 45 years… since I suffered a TBI as a kid. I’ve never heard someone else talk about not just losing things but the madness of being unable to process the sensory input of something I WAS JUST HOLDING.
Thank you for highlighting this!
I’ve had covid twice now, despite original vaccinations, yearly boosters and wearing a mask constantly when around others. The firsf was likely from a careless dentist and second from an anti-vaxx family member. Thankfully no long covid to make my previously smushed brain even worse.
Man, I wish I had a brain injury or something to explain why I can lose something I set down without moving from my chair. I learned long ago to just ask someone else and it’s often right in the open.
not a doctor: mild doses of magic mushrooms. anything that helps promote neurological connections/growth would be worth looking into. you’ll still need to retrain your brain as well but you need the cells to do their thing and you to give them the right stims.
I’m sure they will go well with my other real doctor prescriptions.
like i said Im not your doctor. I dont know what meds or what you do in your free time. but the list of negative reactions is fairly limited and shrooms are alternatives for some. I use shrooms instead of ssri’s for example.
but if your suffering from brain damage, which by definition is damage to your neurons and the connections between them you want something that stimulates neurogenisis to re-establish the network connections. its an active area of research. the 2nd link discusses the areas that psilocybin impacts, basically your entire cerebral cortex. the areas you’re struggling with visual perception/comprehension/language are in the cerebral cortex.
so take what I said in the intention it was given, a path for you to look at and discuss with your doctor for risks/alternatives. a path that your doctor might not be willing to bring up themselves due to legality issues.
Oh, and just for fun, breathing is still hard. And all medical testing shows my lungs are just fine and there should be problem.
autonomic issue?
They don’t really understand the mechanism very well yet according my pulimologist. But data is being collected and studies are being done.
Not the one you responded to but it’s a couple things, generally just lungs feeling inflamed, difficulty taking a full breath, way more sensitive to air quality / air temperature, and a bit of autonomic (I have to use a cpap to fall asleep now because sometimes I just stop breathing as I’m falling asleep)
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You’re fine, it’s anecdotal but perspectives are still nice to see sometimes. Quite a few people around me had the same issue, a few died. (Yes, they had refused the vaccine)
I just found out recently that a friend i kinda stopped talking to as much that went down the right wing rabbit hole and went from Obama supporter to MAGA supporter(and still is today) was antivax and got covid after his father was hospitalized with it, and was also hospitalized with it, and brushed it off as not that bad. And yes the vaccine was available by the time they got it.
hospitalized
not that bad
You do not get hospitalized for something that’s not that bad. The doctors obviously thought it was bad.
But think of the economy, this is making some hospital ceo rich af
:p
And we’re back to
Better not get vaccinated, because the vaccine kills you and covid is just another harmless flu anyway… oh wait.
Seriously though, antivaxxers already have some sort of psychological issues going on, so adding a literal brain injury to the list might not even make a big difference at that point.
I went looking for data, because my knee-jerk was to assume people who get vaccinated are more likely to live, and thus more likely to get long covid.
But here’s what I found. The researchers found that the rate of new Long COVID cases declined with each variant, and that the numbers of cases were significantly lower in the vaccinated cohorts.
I’m just adding to the discourse.
Also just adding to the discorse and highlighting the phrase “Cases seem very rare”.
Indeed! Too bad facts don’t work when talking to conspiracy theorists. Regardless, that’s an interesting observation to the rest of us.
na, vaccines cause the immune response to be better overall. which also lowers the chances of extreme damage from occurring. you can think of death as the most extreme form of damage. but if it reduces death by 60% you’ll see similar reductions for things like brain injury.
COVID makes you dumber, but what happens if you start out dumb?
The current administration awards you a place in office.
Even lower intelligence score? As far as D&D rules are concerned, you would get knocked unconscious if your intelligence drops to zero.
Should probably also limit new max intelligence after you regain consciousness. That seems to be the case IRL.
Sounds like a fun (and terrifying) idea for homebrew rules. I asked Mistral to write suitable rules, and here’s what what I ended up with.
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When a character contracts COVID-19, they must make a Constitution saving throw (DC 15). On a failed save, the character develops Long COVID. The effects of Long COVID are varied and can include fatigue, shortness of breath, and other physical ailments. However, the most feared complication is brain injury.
Brain Injury
Brain injury from Long COVID reduces a character’s Intelligence score. To determine the extent of the damage, the character must make a roll based on their current Intelligence score:
Roll a d20: The result of this roll will determine the severity of the brain injury. Modify the Roll: Subtract the character’s Intelligence modifier from the roll. For example, if the character has an Intelligence score of 14 (modifier +2), subtract 2 from the d20 roll. Determine Intelligence Loss:
- 1-5: Minor brain injury. The character loses 1 point of Intelligence.
- 6-10: Moderate brain injury. The character loses 2 points of Intelligence.
- 11-15: Severe brain injury. The character loses 3 points of Intelligence.
- 16-20: Critical brain injury. The character loses 4 points of Intelligence.
New Hard Maximum
Once the Intelligence loss is determined, the character’s new Intelligence score becomes their hard maximum for the rest of the game. This means that even with magical healing, potions, or other means of restoring Intelligence, the character cannot exceed this new maximum.
Oh, wait. That means that if you do drop to zero, you’ll be in permanent coma for the rest of the game without any hope of recovery. I guess I should add some exception, that allows to you recover back to 1 point, but no higher than that.
You get an overflow error and become a genius.
There is no floor except the for the artificial one built out of privilege.
Things can always be worse.
The majority of people with Long COVID were vaccinated. (Because the majority of people were vaccinated and vaccination only slightly reduces chances of long COVID).
Also, many long COVID cases happened before the vaccines even came out.
So I don’t think your attitude of victim blaming really works here.
What’s your point? Don’t get vaccinated because it doesn’t prevent long covid anyway? Vaccination saves lives. Period. Even your own statistic pointed out a 2% difference between vax/non-vax in getting long covid, and with hundreds of millions of covid infections every year, that 2% is a significant number of people spared long covid by vaccination.
If the mod was so fucking clever, he could post a rebuttal instead of just deleting an empirically true and common sense statement.
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I guess I should have been more specific. People who actively choose not to get vaccinated, and get terribly ill as a direct result of their delusional thinking, can blame themselves.
If you took all the sensible precautions, like getting vaccinated, but ended up with long covid regardless, that’s not your fault. You did what you could, but some times even that isn’t enough.
How do you know that the majority of people with Long COVID were vaccinated. This 2023 study says
Current studies suggest that covid-19 vaccines might have protective and therapeutic effects on long covid. More robust comparative observational studies and trials are needed, however, to clearly determine the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing and treating long covid.
The majority of the NIH’s Recover Cohort (the largest studied cohort of people with Long COVID) was vaccinated.
Recent literature reviews put the risk of getting long COVID at about 10% for vaccinated people and 12% for unvaccinated. So definitely it helps, but it really isn’t a miracle. And the studies showing vaccines had a therapeutic effect on long COVID itself failed replication.
Great. Send the link. Why it’s important, now more than ever, to fact check on the internet
10%/12% compared to what? those are just noise without the reference point. are we talking hospitalized cases? etc? those are already significantly reduced once you get the vaccine vs not vaxed.
if the reference point is after you already have an extremely severe case of covid then no shit it doesnt help by then your body is flooded with the virus. by the time that happens your immune system is already overwhelmed and of course being vaxxed isnt going to help in that scenario the payload in the environment is too high its going to do what its going to do.
Vaccines reduce the chance of a virus from reaching overwhelming loads within the body, if the virus manages to do it anyways then all vaccines do is help speed up the recovery at the point. they don’t prevent the damage that can be caused once you hit high loads. they can reduce the severity of the damage by having the loads drop faster but not prevent, at the point you hit high viral loads your stuck with dumb luck for your outcome.
vaccination only slightly reduces chances of long COVID
Uh huh.
Got some data to back that?
I believe the signs have always pointed to it being a one-two punch of lingering inflammation and actual lasting physical damage to the blood vessels, including in the brain. The fatigue symptoms dissipated for me after about a year, but the inability to focus and the shite memory has not and likely will not go away. Also my muscles got fucked by the rhabdo and my EDS got much worse, but hey…
Every new piece of scholarly evidence is good to have.
my EDS
Omg a wild zebra.
Well yeah, that’s where the chip goes
I prefer consuming chips orally. Potato or paint, I’m easy.
Hmmmm lead based paint…
I need to get my booster
Are they still free in the US?
Actually some pharmacies around me are offering them for free. Not universally though.
No, and it costs upwards of $100 out of pocket. Thankfully my health insurance covered mine, but I’m thankful to have a nice company policy because I work in Healthcare. I wouldn’t be surprised if some insurance companies don’t cover it.
Soon they’ll be illegal!
