This sort of thing is one of the more disturbing things to me about COVID-19, and why I wish there was a less exclusive focus on death in talking about the pandemic. Clearly that's important but there's these hugely significant problems not captured by focusing solely on death.
Is there some reason to expect that covid-19 is different in long term effects than a flu? This study is saying it causes substantial brain damage, right? What possible mechanism is there for this?
Lots of diseases result in nerve damage. Polio was famous for this, after all. Different viruses infect different tissues. This is why we don't like getting sick, and push vaccines where we can.
Infectious diseases that don't have long term effects are actually comparatively few in numbers -- those are the ones we tend to "get sick" with, for the simple reason that they aren't worth the effort of trying to control.
This "flu" thing just won't die. No one expert EVER likened covid to "the flu", beyond pointing out that, like Influenza, it presents as an upper respiratory infection. Everyone knew from that first cluster in Wuhan that this was much, much more dangerous. Everyone told you that. Everyone trustworthy, anyway.
So why do you continue to insist, after nineteen months, that this is just "the flu"?
Unlike the flu, SARS-CoV-2 causes micro-clots, which damage tissues that are capillary-heavy.
This doesn't matter so much for, say, your liver, which (given time, and luck, and otherwise decent health) can recover, but matters greatly for your slow-growing brain, or your lungs (dat popcorn scan)
Free-floating spike protein is capable of crossing the blood/brain barrier. It's one of the reasons some people are wary of the long-term side-effects of the vaccines.
Quote from https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-79959...
"Citing new information about the variant’s ability to spread among vaccinated people, the CDC also recommended indoor masks for all teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools nationwide, regardless of vaccination status."
If someone is vaccinated AND still spreading the virus, is it any different from having an asymthomatic case of COVID?
According to the article, even an asymptomatic case carries a risk of brain damage.
As a corollary, the vaccine may save you from the disease, but not from the brain damage. Is this a correct assessment?
Vaccinated people get in contact with the virus as much as the non vaccinated.
The virus invades the bodies and start multiplying in both populations.
The difference is that the vaccinated body is prepared to immediately attack the virus, something that takes weeks for the unvaccinated body to figure out.
So during the short interval when the vaccinated body hasn't yet wiped out the virus, the person is technically infected, will test positive, and can probably transmit some of the few viruses it has.
But that both vaccinated and unvaccinated can transmit the virus does NOT mean the danger levels are anywhere near similar!
This is probably why so many athletes get positive tests. If you get tested every day, you can get a positive test while a minor infection is defeated, even though you don't feel any symptoms.
> Vaccinated people get in contact with the virus as much as the non vaccinated.
Is this known to be true, or is it an assumption you're making in your analysis?
Just curious, because I would have expected people who refuse to be vaccinated to also be more likely to socialize in ways that expose them to the virus.
> If someone is vaccinated AND still spreading the virus, is it any different from having an asymthomatic case of COVID?
It carries about an order of magnitude lower risk of hospitalization or death, so... yes. Yes, it is very different. We don't know about long term effects, those are, y'know, long term and hard to study in this kind of timeframe. Which is why the linked article is notable.
Also note that risk of transmission is about 10x lower (vs. delta, better vs. the older variants) for the vaccinated. So even if they're just as likely to see long term CNS issues from infection they're vastly less likely to be infected in the first place.
I don't think this article changes the vaccine calculus at all. Get your shot. It's your best protection against everything to do with covid.
> We don't know about long term effects, those are, y'know, long term and hard to study in this kind of timeframe. Which is why the linked article is notable.
This is priceless, as, for the same reasons, we do not know the long term effects of any of the vaccines either.
That's a great question.
Another interesting one is whether these vaccines are preventing cases of Long Covid.
I feel World leaders are conveniently being quiet about these questions, and focusing too much on the drop of death counts only. It's an attempt to rush and re-open the economy at any cost.
If you lose smell, then the brain will shift smell-related resources to other functions.
Any large-scale body damage should cause "brain damage," though it's possibly a little misleading to call it that (of course I'm not enough of a neuroscientist to know if that's all that's at play here).
This is concerning, would be interesting to add post vaccination scans (to see if there are any similar effects triggered) and post vaccination post COVID exposure (to see if vaccination is protective)
The part that needs more research is the level of difference between hospitalized and non-hospitalized COVID patients. They only had 15 who were hospitalized.
> Unlike in post hoc disease studies, the availability of pre-infection imaging data helps avoid ...
That depends on why the earlier brain scans were done.
edit - I didn't find discussion on the UK one, but an Australian study found those with some health concerns were more likely to accept the invitation. Not surprising.
> We identified significant effects of COVID-19 in the brain with a loss of grey matter in the left parahippocampal gyrus, the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex and the left insula. When looking over the entire cortical surface, these results extended to the anterior cingulate cortex, supramarginal gyrus and temporal pole. We further compared COVID-19 patients who had been hospitalised (n=15) with those who had not (n=379), and while results were not significant, we found comparatively similar findings to the COVID-19 vs control group comparison [...]
Readit News
Infectious diseases that don't have long term effects are actually comparatively few in numbers -- those are the ones we tend to "get sick" with, for the simple reason that they aren't worth the effort of trying to control.
This "flu" thing just won't die. No one expert EVER likened covid to "the flu", beyond pointing out that, like Influenza, it presents as an upper respiratory infection. Everyone knew from that first cluster in Wuhan that this was much, much more dangerous. Everyone told you that. Everyone trustworthy, anyway.
So why do you continue to insist, after nineteen months, that this is just "the flu"?
This doesn't matter so much for, say, your liver, which (given time, and luck, and otherwise decent health) can recover, but matters greatly for your slow-growing brain, or your lungs (dat popcorn scan)
There's way more molecular mimicry between this virus and our tissues than any flu virus. This is a recipe for long term autoimmune diseases.
Free-floating spike protein is capable of crossing the blood/brain barrier. It's one of the reasons some people are wary of the long-term side-effects of the vaccines.
Deleted Comment
If someone is vaccinated AND still spreading the virus, is it any different from having an asymthomatic case of COVID?
According to the article, even an asymptomatic case carries a risk of brain damage.
As a corollary, the vaccine may save you from the disease, but not from the brain damage. Is this a correct assessment?
The virus invades the bodies and start multiplying in both populations.
The difference is that the vaccinated body is prepared to immediately attack the virus, something that takes weeks for the unvaccinated body to figure out.
So during the short interval when the vaccinated body hasn't yet wiped out the virus, the person is technically infected, will test positive, and can probably transmit some of the few viruses it has.
But that both vaccinated and unvaccinated can transmit the virus does NOT mean the danger levels are anywhere near similar!
This is probably why so many athletes get positive tests. If you get tested every day, you can get a positive test while a minor infection is defeated, even though you don't feel any symptoms.
Is this known to be true, or is it an assumption you're making in your analysis?
Just curious, because I would have expected people who refuse to be vaccinated to also be more likely to socialize in ways that expose them to the virus.
Dead Comment
It carries about an order of magnitude lower risk of hospitalization or death, so... yes. Yes, it is very different. We don't know about long term effects, those are, y'know, long term and hard to study in this kind of timeframe. Which is why the linked article is notable.
Also note that risk of transmission is about 10x lower (vs. delta, better vs. the older variants) for the vaccinated. So even if they're just as likely to see long term CNS issues from infection they're vastly less likely to be infected in the first place.
I don't think this article changes the vaccine calculus at all. Get your shot. It's your best protection against everything to do with covid.
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This is priceless, as, for the same reasons, we do not know the long term effects of any of the vaccines either.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27569772
Related discussion on another study in the same area (covid effects on cognition) using alternative methods:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27939481
Any large-scale body damage should cause "brain damage," though it's possibly a little misleading to call it that (of course I'm not enough of a neuroscientist to know if that's all that's at play here).
related: https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/a-new-theory-of-dreami...
How the vaccine cause a similar lighter effect ?
So what does this mean, need more research?
> Unlike in post hoc disease studies, the availability of pre-infection imaging data helps avoid ...
That depends on why the earlier brain scans were done.
edit - I didn't find discussion on the UK one, but an Australian study found those with some health concerns were more likely to accept the invitation. Not surprising.
From the abstract:
> We identified significant effects of COVID-19 in the brain with a loss of grey matter in the left parahippocampal gyrus, the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex and the left insula. When looking over the entire cortical surface, these results extended to the anterior cingulate cortex, supramarginal gyrus and temporal pole. We further compared COVID-19 patients who had been hospitalised (n=15) with those who had not (n=379), and while results were not significant, we found comparatively similar findings to the COVID-19 vs control group comparison [...]
Dead Comment
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