10 ms·

I'll admit - I'm skeptical and think we should take this headline with a grain of salt. There's plenty of reasons to fear COVID but is brain damage really any

I'll admit - I'm skeptical and think we should take this headline with a grain of salt. There's plenty of reasons to fear COVID but is brain damage really any more reason to fear it than the standard fever? i.e. are people getting brain damage from COVID itself or as a result of uncontrolled fever? 43 cases and the lack of wider spread makes me want to see more data before trying to sound any alarm bells.

oillio 6y ago
There has been reports of blood related complications with COVID infections; inflammation and blood clots. Anecdotal, but here is one case: https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3091949/coronavirus-broadway-actor-nick-cordero-who-had-leg-amputated https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3091949/coron... And a Nature article with more information: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01403-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01403-8 Obviously it is too soon to tell, but this may be more of the same. It is concerning because we expect a large number of people to be exposed to this virus. Even a small chance of long term damage ends up with a lot of cases with the numbers we are expecting. Additionally, it may change the calculus of so called herd immunity strategies. Though it is a little late for that.
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  FWIW, blood clotting, strokes, etc are known complications of pathological cytokine release syndrome, and we see these same symptoms occurring in other diseases like Influenza. Unfortunately there is a huge faction of people who seek to selectively represent facts to promulgate the narrative that SARS-CoV-2 is unusually dangerous, which as far as I can tell is just completely false. SARS-2 is a great spreader and a very poor killer. Those interested in learning about hoe it spreads might find some of the research findings around interferon-mediated early course immunosuppression interesting. IMO it is a plausible mechanism for why SARS-2 exhibits PRE-symptomatic spread (not asymptomatic). BTW the above (great spreader, with outcomes overwhelmingly positive) is precisely why I think SARS-2 was the worst possible candidate to respond to with a “lockdown”. It really saddens me to see destructive and unethical measures paraded as “common sense”, when they’re anything but. [/rant]
  - emersonrsantos 6y ago
    Is this why they say nicotine may be a protective drug? Cigarette smoking products suppress anti-viral effects of Type I interferon via phosphorylation-dependent downregulation of its receptor - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567056/
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      It might be the smoke and not the nicotine. Lots of non-smoking methods of getting nicotine that may not help. And lots of ways of breathing in smoke that don’t involve nicotine.
  - emersonrsantos 6y ago
    Also, hidrohychloroquine downregulates interferon activation... too good to be true? https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/59/1/107/5523045 https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/59/1/107/55230...
  - Fjolsvith 6y ago
    "It is tempting to surmise that the complicated pandemic definitions used by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States of America involved severity in a deliberate attempt to garner political attention and financial support for pandemic preparedness." [1] 1. https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/ https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/
  - jquery 6y ago
    I’m getting a little exhausted with doom and gloom that fails to contextualize exactly how much worse things are than an abnormally bad flu season + pneumonia season. If you tell people that they will have lingering effects from a flu or cold, they are much more likely to report lingering effects. People are quite suggestible and medicine is complex.
    - Godel_unicode 6y ago
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
I feel like there’s a weird god of the gaps element to covid harm. Instead of recognizing that seemingly an overwhelming majority of people are fine and don’t suffer much adverse effects if any, there’s this automatic dwelling on extremely low probability extreme “invisible damage”. I’m increasingly convinced people are unsettled by the possibility that this could be anything other than civilization ending and the mask averse amongst us aren’t murderers. The desire for moral condemnation is too strong.
- badRNG 6y ago
  > I’m increasingly convinced people are unsettled by the possibility that this could be anything other than civilization ending and the mask averse amongst us aren’t murderers. In just the past couple of months, COVID-19 has racked up a body count of 130,000 dead Americans. For perspective, that's forty-five 9/11s worth of dead people. Asking people to wear a mask in public to curtail the spread saves lives. This has nothing to do with "desiring moral condemnation." The "mask adverse" can likely bear the burden of at least 1/45 of the deaths America has had compared to it's less "mask adverse" peers. I absolutely hate wearing a mask, I'm "mask adverse" like yourself, but I wear one since this is a trolley problem where pulling the lever means I have to be uncomfortable for a few hours.
  - jakeogh 6y ago
    So, roughly twice as bad as a normal year flu/pneumonia count? https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pneumonia-deaths-2008-2015.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pn... CDC #'s 2015-2016 Flu: 7,961 Pneumonia: 131,858 All: 1,769,940 And, the death stats are inflated, it's official: http://v6y.net/1541e03e6cfd1442590bc7b5476f88c30a29a0d881bdb943bb48c3cfb6cdf527.mp4 http://v6y.net/1541e03e6cfd1442590bc7b5476f88c30a29a0d881bdb... The only real measure is excess deaths.
    - Fjolsvith 6y ago
      "The state of Florida has had 82,397 people 34 & under test positive for the coronavirus. Of that number, 28 have died. That’s a coronavirus death rate of .00034. They’ve had 144,210 54 and under test positive. That’s a .0016 death rate." [1] 1. https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1280250042603929604 https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1280250042603929604
nradov 6y ago
I doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is unique in this regard. A lot of people have neurological problems with no clear root cause. My hypothesis is that many of those cases were caused by viral infections. But we've never really looked.
- zzleeper 6y ago
  I recall reading about similar things in papers on the 1918 pandemic as well as SARS and other respiratory diseases. So it's not that far fetched off
Enginerrrd 6y ago
Well there are definitely hints of some level of neurologic involvement: loss of taste and smell, very strange presentation where people with low O2 sats aren't in respiratory distress (CNS depression?), and occasional reports of confirmed encephalopathy. SARS and MERS also have shown an ability to be neuroinvasive. I'd be more skeptical of a claim that it for sure DOESN'T have neurologic involvement.
- jaekash 6y ago
  > loss of taste and smell Not necessarily neurological and this is the first I heard that the loss of smell is neurological as opposed to physical[1]. But I guess everybody is a doctor now so go right ahead and say anything you like without any evidence. I mean what is the worse that could happen by spreading misinformation as long as it makes people more afraid? [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-covid-19-makes-people-lose-their-sense-of-smell1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-covid-19-make...
  - carlmr 6y ago
    I'm not sure why you're attacking OP. They have been reporting neurological loss of smell since March in almost every news source. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-symptoms-smell-taste.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-sympto... https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lost-smell-and-taste-hint-covid-19-can-target-the-nervous-system-67312 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lost-smell-and-ta... https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/loss-of-smell-confusion-strokes-does-covid-19-target-the-nervous-system https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/loss-of-smell-confus... https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/not-just-loss-of-taste-dizziness-covid-19-may-pose-a-threat-to-entire-nervous-system-shows-study/articleshow/76340314.cms https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/not-just-loss-... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200622-the-long-term-effects-of-covid-19-infection https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200622-the-long-term-ef...
    - jaekash 6y ago
      Your first link, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-symptoms-smell-taste.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-sympto... - makes no indication that the loss of smell is neurological. Your second link is purely speculative and not a report of neurological loss of smell. Spare your gish gallop for someone else.
Animats 6y ago
This tells doctors what to look for. ADEM is treatable, so if someone has this complication, it's important to detect it.
Alex3917 6y ago
> i.e. are people getting brain damage from COVID itself or as a result of uncontrolled fever? Covid kills lung and blood vessel cells by depleting their ACE2 receptors. So if you develop a fever as one of your Covid symptoms, whatever inflammation is caused by that may well be only a small fraction of the total inflammation caused by the disease.

oillio 6y ago

There has been reports of blood related complications with COVID infections; inflammation and blood clots. Anecdotal, but here is one case: https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3091949/coronavirus-broadway-actor-nick-cordero-who-had-leg-amputated https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3091949/coron... And a Nature article with more information: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01403-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01403-8 Obviously it is too soon to tell, but this may be more of the same. It is concerning because we expect a large number of people to be exposed to this virus. Even a small chance of long term damage ends up with a lot of cases with the numbers we are expecting. Additionally, it may change the calculus of so called herd immunity strategies. Though it is a little late for that.

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
FWIW, blood clotting, strokes, etc are known complications of pathological cytokine release syndrome, and we see these same symptoms occurring in other diseases like Influenza. Unfortunately there is a huge faction of people who seek to selectively represent facts to promulgate the narrative that SARS-CoV-2 is unusually dangerous, which as far as I can tell is just completely false. SARS-2 is a great spreader and a very poor killer. Those interested in learning about hoe it spreads might find some of the research findings around interferon-mediated early course immunosuppression interesting. IMO it is a plausible mechanism for why SARS-2 exhibits PRE-symptomatic spread (not asymptomatic). BTW the above (great spreader, with outcomes overwhelmingly positive) is precisely why I think SARS-2 was the worst possible candidate to respond to with a “lockdown”. It really saddens me to see destructive and unethical measures paraded as “common sense”, when they’re anything but. [/rant]
- emersonrsantos 6y ago
  Is this why they say nicotine may be a protective drug? Cigarette smoking products suppress anti-viral effects of Type I interferon via phosphorylation-dependent downregulation of its receptor - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567056/
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    It might be the smoke and not the nicotine. Lots of non-smoking methods of getting nicotine that may not help. And lots of ways of breathing in smoke that don’t involve nicotine.
- emersonrsantos 6y ago
  Also, hidrohychloroquine downregulates interferon activation... too good to be true? https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/59/1/107/5523045 https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/59/1/107/55230...
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  "It is tempting to surmise that the complicated pandemic definitions used by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States of America involved severity in a deliberate attempt to garner political attention and financial support for pandemic preparedness." [1] 1. https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/ https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/
- jquery 6y ago
  I’m getting a little exhausted with doom and gloom that fails to contextualize exactly how much worse things are than an abnormally bad flu season + pneumonia season. If you tell people that they will have lingering effects from a flu or cold, they are much more likely to report lingering effects. People are quite suggestible and medicine is complex.
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago

I feel like there’s a weird god of the gaps element to covid harm. Instead of recognizing that seemingly an overwhelming majority of people are fine and don’t suffer much adverse effects if any, there’s this automatic dwelling on extremely low probability extreme “invisible damage”. I’m increasingly convinced people are unsettled by the possibility that this could be anything other than civilization ending and the mask averse amongst us aren’t murderers. The desire for moral condemnation is too strong.

badRNG 6y ago
> I’m increasingly convinced people are unsettled by the possibility that this could be anything other than civilization ending and the mask averse amongst us aren’t murderers. In just the past couple of months, COVID-19 has racked up a body count of 130,000 dead Americans. For perspective, that's forty-five 9/11s worth of dead people. Asking people to wear a mask in public to curtail the spread saves lives. This has nothing to do with "desiring moral condemnation." The "mask adverse" can likely bear the burden of at least 1/45 of the deaths America has had compared to it's less "mask adverse" peers. I absolutely hate wearing a mask, I'm "mask adverse" like yourself, but I wear one since this is a trolley problem where pulling the lever means I have to be uncomfortable for a few hours.
- jakeogh 6y ago
  So, roughly twice as bad as a normal year flu/pneumonia count? https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pneumonia-deaths-2008-2015.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pn... CDC #'s 2015-2016 Flu: 7,961 Pneumonia: 131,858 All: 1,769,940 And, the death stats are inflated, it's official: http://v6y.net/1541e03e6cfd1442590bc7b5476f88c30a29a0d881bdb943bb48c3cfb6cdf527.mp4 http://v6y.net/1541e03e6cfd1442590bc7b5476f88c30a29a0d881bdb... The only real measure is excess deaths.
  - Fjolsvith 6y ago
    "The state of Florida has had 82,397 people 34 & under test positive for the coronavirus. Of that number, 28 have died. That’s a coronavirus death rate of .00034. They’ve had 144,210 54 and under test positive. That’s a .0016 death rate." [1] 1. https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1280250042603929604 https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1280250042603929604

nradov 6y ago

I doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is unique in this regard. A lot of people have neurological problems with no clear root cause. My hypothesis is that many of those cases were caused by viral infections. But we've never really looked.

zzleeper 6y ago
I recall reading about similar things in papers on the 1918 pandemic as well as SARS and other respiratory diseases. So it's not that far fetched off

Enginerrrd 6y ago

Well there are definitely hints of some level of neurologic involvement: loss of taste and smell, very strange presentation where people with low O2 sats aren't in respiratory distress (CNS depression?), and occasional reports of confirmed encephalopathy. SARS and MERS also have shown an ability to be neuroinvasive. I'd be more skeptical of a claim that it for sure DOESN'T have neurologic involvement.

jaekash 6y ago
> loss of taste and smell Not necessarily neurological and this is the first I heard that the loss of smell is neurological as opposed to physical[1]. But I guess everybody is a doctor now so go right ahead and say anything you like without any evidence. I mean what is the worse that could happen by spreading misinformation as long as it makes people more afraid? [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-covid-19-makes-people-lose-their-sense-of-smell1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-covid-19-make...
- carlmr 6y ago
  I'm not sure why you're attacking OP. They have been reporting neurological loss of smell since March in almost every news source. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-symptoms-smell-taste.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-sympto... https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lost-smell-and-taste-hint-covid-19-can-target-the-nervous-system-67312 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lost-smell-and-ta... https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/loss-of-smell-confusion-strokes-does-covid-19-target-the-nervous-system https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/loss-of-smell-confus... https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/not-just-loss-of-taste-dizziness-covid-19-may-pose-a-threat-to-entire-nervous-system-shows-study/articleshow/76340314.cms https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/not-just-loss-... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200622-the-long-term-effects-of-covid-19-infection https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200622-the-long-term-ef...
  - jaekash 6y ago
    Your first link, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-symptoms-smell-taste.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-sympto... - makes no indication that the loss of smell is neurological. Your second link is purely speculative and not a report of neurological loss of smell. Spare your gish gallop for someone else.

Animats 6y ago

This tells doctors what to look for. ADEM is treatable, so if someone has this complication, it's important to detect it.

Alex3917 6y ago

> i.e. are people getting brain damage from COVID itself or as a result of uncontrolled fever? Covid kills lung and blood vessel cells by depleting their ACE2 receptors. So if you develop a fever as one of your Covid symptoms, whatever inflammation is caused by that may well be only a small fraction of the total inflammation caused by the disease.