I'd be more skeptical of a claim that it for sure DOESN'T have neurologic involvement.
It's important to note that low O2 doesn't cause a feeling of respiratory distress -- which is why carbon monoxide is so dangerous and why we have carbon monoxide detectors.
What does cause the feeling of respiratory distress, is CO2 buildup. We are used to having low O2 and high CO2 happen together (This correlation is likely why we evolved to detect low O2 through high CO2). Usually respiratory diseases impair both O2 intake and CO2 removal.
What's unusual about SARS-Cov-2 in this regard, is that it impairs O2 intake without harming CO2 removal - and it is unusual when compared to the vast majority of respiratory diseases, but also occurs in e.g. altitude sickness. To the best of my understanding, it has nothing to do with CNS depression in either SARSCov2 or altitude sickness.
Loss of taste and smell are most likely first order effect - a direct result of COVID. You can't avoid this w/o avoiding
My guess (just a guess) for the article is the brain damage is a result of uncontrolled fevers - a second order effect. So if you control the fever, you can avoid the serious brain damage.
To that end, let's not be like OH NO BRAIN DAMAGE COVID screams. That's just not intelligent.
I'm not enough of a biologist to understand it very well, but I believe what they were saying was that once the virus damages the lining of the lungs, it then uses that to get into the bloodstream, where, if you're unlucky, it starts damaging your blood vessels. All of them.
This would then explain both the higher incidence of brain inflammation, strokes, etc, in adults, and the COVID-related inflammatory syndrome in otherwise asymptomatic children. Or so the articles I was reading claimed. (Apologies for lack of sourcing; I didn't think to save links.)
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-make...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-sympto...
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lost-smell-and-ta...
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/loss-of-smell-confus...
https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/not-just-loss-...
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200622-the-long-term-ef...
Your second link is purely speculative and not a report of neurological loss of smell.
Spare your gish gallop for someone else.
> Concerns regarding potential neurological complications of COVID-19 are being increasingly reported, primarily in small series.
That means that there's some non-obstructive issue here going on.
In any case, my point was that you were attacking OP while there were a lot of reports on non obstructive loss of smell.
You said it's the first you heard of it, which made me assume you didn't follow any news. Since without any judgment of the validity of these reports, it's normal to assume this is what a normal person has heard in that time.
Now after your second response I have to assume you're just arguing in bad faith. It's not gish gallop to post a time line of reports from March to June.
Maybe you are not clear on what neurological and obstructive means, but non-obstructive is not the same as neurological.
> It's not gish gallop to post a time line of reports from March to June.
It is gish gallop if you say "reporting neurological loss of smell" and the first two things you cite to support that does not make any mention of a single report of neurological loss of smell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
> During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, and misrepresentations in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate.
> reports on non obstructive loss of smell.
Gish gallop is not enough, have to move the goalposts also.
> You said it's the first you heard of it, which made me assume you didn't follow any news.
I never said this is the first I have heard of non-obstructive loss of smell.
> I have to assume you're just arguing in bad faith.
You gish-gallop and when I call you on it you lie and move the goal posts. Get a mirror.
This is pretty obviously an instance of (a), and aggressively painting it as (b) does, indeed, feel like arguing in bad faith.
"neurological" is not the colloquial phrase for "non-obstructive" and "non-obstructive" is not a clarification on "neurological". They are different things.
So ... I mean are there other options than (a) and (b) here? Because if it those are the only options, and (a) is not an option, then well ... it kinda seems like (b).
In this particular case, the fact that the anosmia is non-obstructive strongly suggests that it is neurological. It is not conclusive proof, but, colloquially, in a discussion where it is not yet clear that the minutiae of that particular point will be nitpicked to death, it is perfectly reasonable to read carlmr's earlier statement as "non-obstructive, thus implying that it is most likely neurological".
What is not reasonable is to insist that carlmr not using the absolute most precise language possible is somehow proof of his bad faith in a little no-stakes argument on a tangent in the comments of a HackerNews article.
Seriously, mate, just chill. He wasn't trying to put one over on you, and the more you insist he was, the more you come off as someone looking to start trouble.