5 ms·

This is insane again as it was just found that an infection lowers your IQ by 3 points (2 big recent studies)*. The average person now has over 3 infections to

This is insane again as it was just found that an infection lowers your IQ by 3 points (2 big recent studies)*. The average person now has over 3 infections to date. We aren't even far enough in the research to understand the compound effects on the brain (and body). And basically, everyone in society, even the smartest people are losing IQ points at a time when we need people to become more intelligent and aware and able to adapt to an accelerating future... "Extrapolation to Loss of IQ points, compared to uninfected controls: Mild Covid, Resolved Symptoms: 3 points Unresolved Symptoms: 6 points Covid requiring Intensive Care Unit admission: 9 point Reinfection: Additional 2 points " https://erictopol.substack.com/p/long-covid-and-cognitive-deficits https://erictopol.substack.com/p/long-covid-and-cognitive-de... https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2311330 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2311330 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2311200 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2311200 The virus is a massive vascular infection attacking every cell on the lining of the body (blood vessels, endothelial cells) and even organ organs, heart damage etc... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8771611/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8771611/

PM_me_your_math 3y ago
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gnicholas 3y ago
Do IQ tests have a resolution that is good enough to notice a difference of 3 points?
- ender341341 3y ago
  I think when measuring a big enough populations they likely would show that small of a shift, though would be interested in the range of it, like is it a smaller group highly effected vs being pretty consistent.
  - _2d30 3y ago
    I wonder if they account for the noise of the test itself though in their CIs
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Looking at the first study, it's not showing a "shift" at all. It's comparing a group of people who recently had covid to a group of people who haven't had covid. Seems like there's some confounders in there, some of which could correlate to IQ. The second study uses a test with 13 question. I don't think you can ascertain IQ very accurately with a 13 question test (especially if the same test is given to people with a wide range of ages).
loosescrews 3y ago
There is growing evidence that the flu has similar effects, so I'm not sure that this means it shouldn't be treated like the flu. Maybe we should test them both more seriously?
downrightmike 3y ago
"Disability policy experts have long warned that the COVID-19 pandemic would likely be a mass disabling event. New analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) data on the civilian noninstitutional population aged 16 years and over shows that, in 2021, 1.2 million* more people were identified as having a disability than were in 2020. Within the portion of that population participating in the labor force, there were 496,000 more people with a disability." https://www.americanprogress.org/article/covid-19-likely-resulted-in-1-2-million-more-disabled-people-by-the-end-of-2021-workplaces-and-policy-will-need-to-adapt/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/covid-19-likely-res...
shsoapsjsbs 3y ago
> it was just found Don’t you think we should wait a bit before putting credence in these studies? Just a quick glance is enough to see plenty of potential flaws. Jumping at the latest study isn’t much different than “just trust me bro”. These things take years if not decades to understand. We’ve been wrong far, far too often to keep repeating this behavior.
- yazzku 3y ago
  What flaws?
  - gojomo 3y ago
    Unless you specifically infect a treatment group in an RCT, your 'recently had COVID' and 'no recently documented COVID' groups will vary in ways you're unlikely to be able to fully control-for, no matter how hard you try.
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      Given that by now pretty much everyone has had COVID, it would have been possible to design a study that ran long enough to capture a very large swath of the population. That would eliminate some of these confounders, but would be further complicated by the fact that different variants may have different effects. But I agree with your sentiment. The first study doesn't follow people at all, and the second study has a 13-question test. IMO this is very overblown — these studies do not give cause for alarm that would justify shutting down the world again.
jgalt212 3y ago
[flagged]
calibas 3y ago
The first article you linked to seems to agree with what the CDC is saying. The initial variants of COVID-19 were much worse, that's where the "infection lowers your IQ by 3 points" comes from, but the disease has become much more mild. "The adverse cognitive impact was worst with the original (ancestral) virus and the Alpha variant, compared with subsequent Delta and Omicron variants" https://erictopol.substack.com/p/long-covid-and-cognitive-deficits https://erictopol.substack.com/p/long-covid-and-cognitive-de...
abeppu 3y ago
Is there a methodological concern about how the uninfected "controls" are established? (I have not read the papers you linked) It seems like: (a) Obviously they're not intentionally infecting one group and keeping the other in rigid isolation so ... (b) it seems like it would be hard to rule out that there's something else that's characteristic of people who avoided infection which could be related? To be clear, I'm not trying to throw skepticism at the conclusion that infection causes deficits -- but isn't it kinda hard to measure? In the same way that, e.g. it's hard to measure the very long-term effects of forever chemicals or microplastics or other things that are so inescapably pervasive.
ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y ago
> Multiple findings indicated that the association between Covid-19 and cognitive deficits attenuated as the pandemic progressed. We found smaller cognitive deficits among participants who had been infected during recent variant periods than among those who had been infected with the original virus or the alpha variant. We also found a small cognitive advantage among participants who had received two or more vaccinations and a minimal effect of repeat episodes of Covid-19 Also look at Fig. 1 in the first study
colpabar 3y ago
[flagged]
gnicholas 3y ago
from the first study: > participants who had recovered from Covid-19 in whom symptoms had resolved in less than 4 weeks or at least 12 weeks had similar small deficits in global cognition as compared with those in the no–Covid-19 group, who had not been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or had unconfirmed infection So they're not comparing people over time, they're comparing people who've recently had COVID to people who have not ever had COVID. Given that white collar workers like lawyers, consultants, and software devs can stay home and not get COVID more easily than blue collar workers like grocery store clerks and the like, it isn't surprising that there's a very small IQ differential here. This is published in a very prestigious journal, so I'm hesitant to assume my critique is correct. But at first glance I wouldn't take this to mean that you're likely to lose any IQ points from getting COVID, especially now. It also says > Larger deficits were seen in participants who had SARS-CoV-2 infection during periods in which the original virus or the B.1.1.7 variant was predominant than in those infected with later variants and > longer-term persistence of cognitive deficits and any clinical implications remain uncertain.
sleigh-bells 3y ago
I'm really sick of guys like Eric Topol who are basically covid influencers, bc they love to post studies but are completely unable to critically examine any studies. Pre-covid I thought that's what scientists did, but if they're doing that, they're not doing it in the public eye at all.
- amluto 3y ago
  The last chart in the first study section is really quite special. The authors seem to have normalized a bunch of outcome measurements in units of standard deviations and then sorted them by something resembling the average differences, but they couldn’t be bothered to normalize the sign of the measurement? If you’re trying to tell me that 30-ish scores are all Gaussian enough to be worthy of using standard deviation units but that they don’t even all agree as to whether large or small numbers are good, I’m suspicious of the normalization procedure. (If “accuracy” means what I think it does, it’s obvious not even close to Gaussian. 90% might be good, 100% is perfect, and 101% is not “just z standard deviations better.”) There are decent techniques to deal with this (e.g. nonparametric models), but blindly normalizing, sorting, and adding a little caption to indicate that you did in fact notice that a bunch of the tests are backwards is not one of them. I hoped the article would make some mention of how believable the results were, but no. (Also, maybe mention that the pre-Omicron strains are not much of an ongoing risk and that those results, while potentially interesting, are probably unhelpful for informing future policy decisions?) edit: It seems worse than this. Quoting the first paper: > This invited subsample comprised participants who reported positive results on a SARS-CoV-2 test or who suspected that they had had Covid-19 and whose symptoms persisted for at least 12 weeks; participants who, as part of the REACT study, either had a positive result on a polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR) test for SARS-CoV-2 or were unvaccinated and had a positive test for SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies on an at-home lateral flow immunoassay device16; and participants who were randomly selected from the remaining REACT study population. Eric Topol calls this a “prospective” study, although the study, fortunately, does not advertise itself as prospective. This is a retrospective study with an obviously biased study population. And the >12-week-symptoms group contains self-selected participants who may never have even had COVID! Getting sick for 12 weeks sucks. Finding a detectable effect on an intelligence test should not be remotely surprising. Going from that to anything that should print COVID policy seems like quite a leap.

PM_me_your_math 3y ago

[dead]

gnicholas 3y ago

Do IQ tests have a resolution that is good enough to notice a difference of 3 points?

ender341341 3y ago
I think when measuring a big enough populations they likely would show that small of a shift, though would be interested in the range of it, like is it a smaller group highly effected vs being pretty consistent.
- _2d30 3y ago
  I wonder if they account for the noise of the test itself though in their CIs
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Looking at the first study, it's not showing a "shift" at all. It's comparing a group of people who recently had covid to a group of people who haven't had covid. Seems like there's some confounders in there, some of which could correlate to IQ. The second study uses a test with 13 question. I don't think you can ascertain IQ very accurately with a 13 question test (especially if the same test is given to people with a wide range of ages).

loosescrews 3y ago

There is growing evidence that the flu has similar effects, so I'm not sure that this means it shouldn't be treated like the flu. Maybe we should test them both more seriously?

downrightmike 3y ago

"Disability policy experts have long warned that the COVID-19 pandemic would likely be a mass disabling event. New analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) data on the civilian noninstitutional population aged 16 years and over shows that, in 2021, 1.2 million* more people were identified as having a disability than were in 2020. Within the portion of that population participating in the labor force, there were 496,000 more people with a disability." https://www.americanprogress.org/article/covid-19-likely-resulted-in-1-2-million-more-disabled-people-by-the-end-of-2021-workplaces-and-policy-will-need-to-adapt/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/covid-19-likely-res...

shsoapsjsbs 3y ago

> it was just found Don’t you think we should wait a bit before putting credence in these studies? Just a quick glance is enough to see plenty of potential flaws. Jumping at the latest study isn’t much different than “just trust me bro”. These things take years if not decades to understand. We’ve been wrong far, far too often to keep repeating this behavior.

yazzku 3y ago
What flaws?
- gojomo 3y ago
  Unless you specifically infect a treatment group in an RCT, your 'recently had COVID' and 'no recently documented COVID' groups will vary in ways you're unlikely to be able to fully control-for, no matter how hard you try.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Given that by now pretty much everyone has had COVID, it would have been possible to design a study that ran long enough to capture a very large swath of the population. That would eliminate some of these confounders, but would be further complicated by the fact that different variants may have different effects. But I agree with your sentiment. The first study doesn't follow people at all, and the second study has a 13-question test. IMO this is very overblown — these studies do not give cause for alarm that would justify shutting down the world again.

jgalt212 3y ago

[flagged]

calibas 3y ago

The first article you linked to seems to agree with what the CDC is saying. The initial variants of COVID-19 were much worse, that's where the "infection lowers your IQ by 3 points" comes from, but the disease has become much more mild. "The adverse cognitive impact was worst with the original (ancestral) virus and the Alpha variant, compared with subsequent Delta and Omicron variants" https://erictopol.substack.com/p/long-covid-and-cognitive-deficits https://erictopol.substack.com/p/long-covid-and-cognitive-de...

abeppu 3y ago

Is there a methodological concern about how the uninfected "controls" are established? (I have not read the papers you linked) It seems like: (a) Obviously they're not intentionally infecting one group and keeping the other in rigid isolation so ... (b) it seems like it would be hard to rule out that there's something else that's characteristic of people who avoided infection which could be related? To be clear, I'm not trying to throw skepticism at the conclusion that infection causes deficits -- but isn't it kinda hard to measure? In the same way that, e.g. it's hard to measure the very long-term effects of forever chemicals or microplastics or other things that are so inescapably pervasive.

ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y ago

> Multiple findings indicated that the association between Covid-19 and cognitive deficits attenuated as the pandemic progressed. We found smaller cognitive deficits among participants who had been infected during recent variant periods than among those who had been infected with the original virus or the alpha variant. We also found a small cognitive advantage among participants who had received two or more vaccinations and a minimal effect of repeat episodes of Covid-19 Also look at Fig. 1 in the first study

colpabar 3y ago

[flagged]

gnicholas 3y ago

from the first study: > participants who had recovered from Covid-19 in whom symptoms had resolved in less than 4 weeks or at least 12 weeks had similar small deficits in global cognition as compared with those in the no–Covid-19 group, who had not been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or had unconfirmed infection So they're not comparing people over time, they're comparing people who've recently had COVID to people who have not ever had COVID. Given that white collar workers like lawyers, consultants, and software devs can stay home and not get COVID more easily than blue collar workers like grocery store clerks and the like, it isn't surprising that there's a very small IQ differential here. This is published in a very prestigious journal, so I'm hesitant to assume my critique is correct. But at first glance I wouldn't take this to mean that you're likely to lose any IQ points from getting COVID, especially now. It also says > Larger deficits were seen in participants who had SARS-CoV-2 infection during periods in which the original virus or the B.1.1.7 variant was predominant than in those infected with later variants and > longer-term persistence of cognitive deficits and any clinical implications remain uncertain.

sleigh-bells 3y ago

I'm really sick of guys like Eric Topol who are basically covid influencers, bc they love to post studies but are completely unable to critically examine any studies. Pre-covid I thought that's what scientists did, but if they're doing that, they're not doing it in the public eye at all.

amluto 3y ago
The last chart in the first study section is really quite special. The authors seem to have normalized a bunch of outcome measurements in units of standard deviations and then sorted them by something resembling the average differences, but they couldn’t be bothered to normalize the sign of the measurement? If you’re trying to tell me that 30-ish scores are all Gaussian enough to be worthy of using standard deviation units but that they don’t even all agree as to whether large or small numbers are good, I’m suspicious of the normalization procedure. (If “accuracy” means what I think it does, it’s obvious not even close to Gaussian. 90% might be good, 100% is perfect, and 101% is not “just z standard deviations better.”) There are decent techniques to deal with this (e.g. nonparametric models), but blindly normalizing, sorting, and adding a little caption to indicate that you did in fact notice that a bunch of the tests are backwards is not one of them. I hoped the article would make some mention of how believable the results were, but no. (Also, maybe mention that the pre-Omicron strains are not much of an ongoing risk and that those results, while potentially interesting, are probably unhelpful for informing future policy decisions?) edit: It seems worse than this. Quoting the first paper: > This invited subsample comprised participants who reported positive results on a SARS-CoV-2 test or who suspected that they had had Covid-19 and whose symptoms persisted for at least 12 weeks; participants who, as part of the REACT study, either had a positive result on a polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR) test for SARS-CoV-2 or were unvaccinated and had a positive test for SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies on an at-home lateral flow immunoassay device16; and participants who were randomly selected from the remaining REACT study population. Eric Topol calls this a “prospective” study, although the study, fortunately, does not advertise itself as prospective. This is a retrospective study with an obviously biased study population. And the >12-week-symptoms group contains self-selected participants who may never have even had COVID! Getting sick for 12 weeks sucks. Finding a detectable effect on an intelligence test should not be remotely surprising. Going from that to anything that should print COVID policy seems like quite a leap.