Another study showing the seriousness of Covid-19: brain fog

I've been saying here forever, death is not all that has to be feared with Covid-19. Many dismiss the virus because of its 1% kill rate and the fact that it kills preferentially the old and infirm... but we're getting more and more studies showing other consequences of having had the illness. I've mentioned here the heart issues, lung issues, kidney issues... See now the problem with brain damage:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/people-whove-had-covid-19-190550841.html

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/ja...ampaign=ftm_links&utm_term=102221_term=102221

A study, published Friday in medical journal JAMA Network Open, says nearly a quarter of individuals who've been infected with the coronavirus have problems retaining information and focusing months after contracting the disease.

"In this study, we found a relatively high frequency of cognitive impairment several months after patients contracted COVID-19. Impairments in executive functioning, processing speed, category fluency, memory encoding, and recall were predominant among hospitalized patients," Jacqueline Becker and other researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York said, according to the study.

~snip

That includes problems with memory recall and the ability to store new memories, the study says, as well as with making judgment calls and planning.

Some of these patients "cannot function," psychiatry professor Dr. Helen Lavretsky told NBC News. "They can't think; their memory is impaired; they get confused when they drive places, that they don't know how they got there."

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Vaccines while not perfect, are protective enough, but some people still don't want them. Above, is one of the things they are risking.

 

How is this virus able to affect so many things. Heart, lungs, kidney and now brain function? There's got to be some commonality because this is ridiculous. Not even something as terminal as cancer for example is as widespreading(at least, not on an initial phase. It'd have to metasize and grow.) The internal spread of COVID-19, has there been much research or study into it?

 

The Covid brain damage explains much....

Why idiots believe global warming
Why idiots still defend Fauci
Why idiots hate hoax
Why republicans did not mind having a man as First Lady for 8 years
Why anyone believes CNN, fox, MSNBC, or any of the others

 

This is not unique to Covid. Many of the effects like brain fog are more pronounced with Covid, but brain fog is a known effect from influenza infection for example. Especially when there is underlying depression etc. I’d bet the depression and anxiety from this pandemic is affecting this aspect of Covid infection and brain fog.

Pretty much every long term effect from Covid is known to occur with influenza or other respiratory viral infections. Covid just seems to be worse in respect to severity and percentage of people affected. Part of that is probably because we are looking much closer at this disease than we have at others.

 

Yes, the reason for the multiple organ damage is well-known. It's because the SARS-CoV-2, unlike its predecessors SARS-1 and MERS, has a strong predilection for the endothelium. That's the inner layer of the blood vessels which needs to be smooth and intact for blood to circulate well. So the virus circulates throughout the entire body in the blood stream, and gets into the small blood vessels that ensure nutrition to the cells in the heart, lungs, pancreas, kidneys, brain, etc. It causes trouble there and blood starts to clot and have trouble progressing there because the endothelium is wounded and damaged. So the cells in those organs don't get proper nutrition and die out. Given that many of these organs do not have the ability to regenerate, you get the organ damage. Some pathologists are calling COVID-19 an endothelial disease rather than a pulmonary disease, because even the damage to the lungs from viral pneumonia (which is the preferred mechanism for the SARS-1 and the MERS to kill) is amplified by the endothelial damage to the small lung vessels. Also, even the large vessels get the endothelial damage too from the SARS-CoV-2, which causes big clots that then migrate upstream and cause pulmonary embolism and strokes.

I've been telling everybody forever that this is a darn dangerous virus, but people (especially conservatives) tend to dismiss it because they only focus on the death toll; they look at it, 1%, more in the elderly and infirm, and they think "no big deal." Yes, most people survive especially the young and healthy, but yes, A LOT of them come out of it with major organ damage which is something that the public doesn't fully understand.

 

Part of it is definitely because of the virus' striking ability to damage endothelial cells everywhere in the organism. It's more than just depression and anxiety. While depression and anxiety can decrease performance in cognitive tests, it is temporary and performance returns with the underlying cause being lifted. But when cognitive disorders stem from the death of cortical cells due to perfusion problems, then it's irreversible, and a lot more pronounced than the person just being inattentive, uninterested and unfocused due to depression and/or anxiety.

 

With influenza the effects of the viral infection on the brain are exacerbated in those with depression. I’m hypothesizing that may be the case with Covid.

But my main point is the other negative long term symptoms of Covid (including brain fog) are not a surprise. It’s what viral infections do. It looks like it’s worse with Covid, but this plethora of sequelae should not be surprising with such a severe viral disease. It’s what viruses do.

 

Sorry 557 but it is way beyond that. Look at this article, that explains it well. You'll see that the problem did exist with other coronaviruses but is much more pronounced with the SARS-CoV-2.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11906-020-01078-6

"A puzzling question is the neuroinvasive potential of SARS-CoV-2 that has been suggested by the clinical observation of neurological signs in infected patients. Animal models of structurally similar coronavirus infections point to direct nervous system invasion by coronaviruses."

"Potential routes of central nervous system entry, including hematogenic spread, olfactory bulbs, synapse-connected routes, and peripheral nerves, have been suggested."

"It has been proposed that even before neuronal damage occurs, endothelial injury leads to rupture of cerebral capillaries"

"such invasiveness could cause direct neurological tissue damage through endothelial dysfunction"

This is waaaaay worse than depression and anxiety, and yes, it is more severe than in other viral infections.

Depression and anxiety cause functional cognitive impairment. Direct neurological tissue damage causes organic, permanent cognitive impairment.

This is not your run-of-the-mill brain fog. This is serious and permanent stuff.

People who don't see how serious this virus is, are out of their mind, pun intended (present company excluded).

 

@557 and @AmericanNationalist

Here is another one with some neat visual help to understand the process; 557 will like to know how the endothelial dysfunction and the inflammatory cytokine storms walk hands in hands:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-020-00454-7

Another one, with a focus on the cardiovascular system:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32750108/

There are dozens of articles exploring this physiopathology pathway.

Yes, it occurs with other viruses... but it just occurs more and more severely with the SARS-CoV-2, which is precisely why I've been warning people that this is a very scary virus.

 

Clever, but I'm not really in the mood to be joking about this very serious stuff.

I think that in the next few years, people will realize the striking impact of the 2019-20-21 Covid-19 pandemic in the US economy and the global economy. The extensive organ damage in survivors will become a long-standing drag in countries' economies due to the burden of treatment costs, lost productivity, and curtailed life expectancy. This economic impact will be several times bigger than the short-term impact that came from the brief periods when we implemented some limited lockdowns. People who were so eager to open up because of the economy and thus exposed themselves and others to a larger spread of the disease, will then learn that it was the VIRUS itself, not the containment measures, that resulted in a huge blow to the world economy. By then, of course, it will be too late, both for the macro-economy, and for people's quality and duration of life.

I can imagine the people who ridiculed the virus and the few containment measures we partially and inefficiently implemented, having a conversation with their doctors:

Patient - Doctor, how come I feel biologically much older? I used to be fit and strong and now I have this chronic fatigue, trouble concentrating, my kidneys don't work so well and you've said that my heart is kind of weak and my lungs are in trouble, which is why I keep getting short of breath just by walking around. My performance in my job got down thanks to all these symptoms especially the brain fog; my supervisor wasn't happy and when they downsized due to this huge economic crisis we're going through, I was one of the first they laid off.

Doctor - Didn't you decline the Covid-19 vaccine and didn't you have a bout of Covid-19 in 2020?

Patient - That? Pfft... that hoax? Yes, I did, but I felt fine; had a few days of the sniffles; the main stream media and the liberals blew that out of proportion; that virus was ridiculous, it only killed 1% of people and mostly the old and infirm. I didn't need no stinking vaccine.

Doctor - Well, sorry to let you know, but your kidney dysfunction, your cognitive troubles, your lung fibrosis, and your heart insufficiency very likely all stem from that bout of Covid-19 you were so cavalier about.

Patient - Wow, I never realized that I could get these late complications. So that thing was serious after all?

Doctor - Dead serious. We kept warning you all but you wouldn't listen. You thought it was political rather than biological.

Patient - Well, there must be a fix, right?

Doctor - Sorry, there is mitigation but no fix. The damage to your organs won't reverse.

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I'll bet my house that this conversation will be very common in America, a few years down the road.

Of course not everybody will be in as much trouble as this fictional patient especially among those who had milder Covid-19 cases - there is more damage for those who have required hospitalization - but many will (including some who only had mild cases of Covid-19), and many others will have a smaller but still troublesome combination of late consequences. Certainly many will also experience no consequence whatsoever. But yes, there will be a significant number of people in trouble. Mark my words.

 

You are misunderstanding me. Influenza causes temporary and permanent brain/neurological damage. It’s worse when depression is involved. We are as certain as we can be without a time machine that the Spanish flu pandemic caused a temporary doubling of the Parkinson’s rates post pandemic. H1N1 in 2009 increased incidence of narcolepsy. None of this is caused by depression. It’s a direct result of viral infection. All depression has to do with it is brain fog after influenza infection is more pronounced in individuals with depression. It occurs in those without depression as well.

Yes, it looks like Covid has higher rates of and more severe sequelae than virtual diseases like influenza. But it’s a more severe disease so it shouldn’t be surprising. Sequelae just like we see with Covid are well known and documented in other viral diseases. The mechanisms will of course vary—all viral diseases vary. But viral infections always affect various parts of the body and bodily functions. For example adenovirus infection with certain strains has been linked to obesity.

I keep saying yes it looks worse with Covid. What I’m pointing out is this should not be surprising. It’s what viruses do. Always have, always will.

 

OK, with that, I can fully agree. Yes, I did partially misunderstand you but I should know better because you're not one who minimizes the risks of viral infections, unlike many other posters here.

Another clear case is the Epstein-Barr virus. People think of it as the agent of the very benign kissing disease. Sure... until carriers develop one of a number of fatal lymphomas a couple of decades later, which have been unequivocally linked to the presence of latent Epstein-Barr virus, not to forget several other serious diseases of the auto-immune kind that an infection with the EB virus can trigger later in life.

Many viruses are nasty bugs nobody should be cavalier about. You know this. I know this. A lot of people do not. That's why I keep insisting.

 

The above is one reason I can’t figure out why some people still say SARS-CoV-2 couldn’t be a bio weapon because it isn’t an effective weapon. Makes no sense to me. Seems like a perfect weapon depending on the goals of the designer. But that’s just food for thought…

I think if keeping people safe from long Covid and the sequelae we are discussing here is the goal we should also tell people vaccination only cuts the risk of long Covid in half for those with breakthrough infection. And breakthrough infections are becoming more common. If we want to avoid the risk of temporary or permanent damage from Covid, behaviors beyond a couple trips to the pharmacy matter.

Vaccination alone pales in comparison to vaccination plus healthy lifestyle, healthy weight, and avoiding places/situations where infection is likely if an individual is serious about avoiding these problems.

Yes, vaccination is the easiest way to gain protection, but it’s not the only way and it’s not capable of preventing sequelae for everyone.

 

Thanks. That is interesting. I did not know they had traced the dysfunction of endothelial cells back to loss of functional ACE2 because of competition from viral binding. Wow.

Also, I was unaware low nitric oxide was a marker for endothelial dysfunction and that it was so involved in the regulation of the numerous feedback loops necessary for healthy function. I’ve seen it gaining popularity in the supplement market but have never dug into it’s functions in the body.

 

The conspiracy loons will no doubt either deny the long-term effects or blame them on the vaccines, and they will all vote Republican. Tucker Carlson will be asking leading questions accordingly.

 

Well, vaccination without a booster, yes, but the boosters are restoring high titers of neutralizing antibodies which could result in sterilizing immunity, thus effectively preventing any long-term sequelae. Also, sequelae occur more in more severe disease and the vaccines definitely decrease the severity of the illness that results from breakthrough infection.

But yes, vaccines are one tool. Healthy lifestyle, prudence, and hopefully the new antivirals, plus the monoclonal antibodies, all will have a role in minimizing the opportunity to suffer sequelae from this dangerous virus.

 

Good point.

 

The NICEST thing I can say about Tucker Carlson is that he should be taken off air

 

People should know better than to watch him. If we're going to have freedom to a fault, be it freedom of speech or otherwise, we need people to be responsible and self-informed enough to make it work.

 

So, Brian Stelter and Fredo then?

 

Personally I think he, and the network he represents should have their backsides sued off. He and his cohorts have put countless lives at risk

 

Go ahead and sue. You’ll lose because you can’t provide any evidence to prove your case. What you do have is opinion and phony outrage.

 

Nope! Stick to ABC Aust. It is constantly winning awards for journalism

https://www.abc.net.au/news/ or BBC or PBS

you know the ones Murdoch doesn’t have his filthy hands in

But back to topic there seems to be mounting evidence on this being an endothelial injury

 

I wouldn’t bet on that - don’t forget Tucker does not only show in America

 

Yeah, you go with that.