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Comment by fasteo | Hacker News Reader

A quick Google search reveals that cognitive deficit seems to be a common consequence in any critically ill patient, not just Covid-19

This study[1] of just one example:

Cognitive dysfunction is an important long-term complication of critical illness associated with reduced quality of life, increase in healthcare costs, and institutionalization

And the numbers are certainly high:

Cognitive impairment was identified in 206 (49.9%) patients, 120 (29.1%) patients had mild or moderate cognitive impairment, and 86 (20%) patients had severe cognitive dysfunction.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5316231/

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Sure as you say critical illness with long term medical effects is known to have this impact. The difference is that, as the abstract points out, substantial cognitive impairment in Covid patients was found even in people who displayed mild symptoms and were never critically ill.

Fair point. I missed that part. Thanks.

Now we should also research if viral infections in general have an association to cognitive deficit. I guess this will be the case.

I haven't heard of it with the flu.

You have never had a bad flu and had cognitive trouble during recovery?

I had a flu once and lost 6kgs in less than 10 days and I was physically and mentally wrecked for some time.

I had a nasty flu-like something a few years back and lost weight like that too. I didn't notice any lingering issues after maybe 2 1/2 or 3 weeks. The flu had me in bed for a week and weak for ten days or so and yes, it took a while longer to fully recover. But I did fully recover.

And apparently the effect is real and exists. I just never heard anyone say about the flu, "get your flu shot or else face a real possibility of lingering mental impairment."

The single biggest thing I've learned about viruses from this pandemic isn't that Covid19 is bad, it's that people (myself included) conflate the flu with the common cold and end up underestimating it.

I have a suspicion the "it's just a flu" crowd are aware of this and the different understanding of the severity of seasonal flu viruses is where the misunderstanding is, that what they're really saying is more like "this other thing is just as bad and we don't stop the world for it".

ANY virus infection can do this. I've had a human Parvovirus B19 infection last year - infection which is mild to zero symptoms in most adults, but in fewer than 5% it causes serious complications, some of them life long. Well, unfortunately it looks like I'm in this second group as I'm still struggling with some issues over a year later(reactive arthritis for which I'm getting steroid injections) - and the best the doctors could tell me "yep, it can happen with any virus infection, sorry".

I'm sorry to hear that. It's not typically part of the warning about the flu that you can face lingering cognitive impairment even if you never thought you got the flu.

I would be quite surprised if a cold or mild flu caused a cognitive deficit equivalent to ten years of aging, persisting after recovery.

The impact on non critical patients wasn’t as bad as that, but more than half as severe. Even so, if that were the case for mild viral infections I’d be a vegetable by now.

Influenza has been shown to cause transient (3 months) cognitive deficit in some patients.

I am not implying that Covid-19 is like a flu - it is not - but I think it is not so different from other viruses to induce never before seen symptoms.

Many viral infections including relatively mild ones can potentially cause post viral syndrome, which includes cognitive problems.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chronic-fatig...

Based on what I understand about COVID, I suspect it would be more informative to research if inflammatory diseases in general have such an association.

The fact that your comment is still the most up voted should be part of a future psychology study where people become extremely biased towards good news when scared

Flip it around and I might say that some people are more attracted to bad news and hope for the worst and are disappointed that the situation isn't truly that bad?

I'd say most of the world is wired towards the drama of bad news, which is why there is so much demand for it.

I'm describing something that happened in the thread and you flip it around with something that didn't?

People do hope for bad things to happen, there are pessimists and optimists.

You've interpreted this data is bad and you feel others should feel bad about it. Maybe that's not a conclusion most feel they need to agree too?

Don't forget this study isn't completely proven other factors might be at play.

I did not interpret anything. We are. Discussing about an article and a comment that is factual wrong according to the article. Don't fight facts and don't confuse them with opinions.

Yes and the severity and the true cause of the symptoms is still not set in stone, so you're confused because correlation does not imply causation.

It's a study and more needs to be done.

I agree with you but still I am commenting on the factual sentences that exist in the article and not their correctness. I'm sure you understood already.

So why then do you say that the top comment is wrong to be the top comment ?

My friend is an epidemiologist working for a leading international health organisation and told me the same thing yesterday.

And when you look at the data (Figures 2,3), you’ll see that “substantial” is a subjective term.

For patients who had minor illness and recovered at home, the measured impacts were a fraction of those who spent time in the hospital. In some cases, the data shows a small benefit to having Covid in the minor cases.

Moreover, of the ~84,000 participants, only 361 had a confirmed positive test result.

This seems like a large sample size, with the administration being a test. With the pure psychological and fear impacts of this on the world, not the mention the vast majority of people with severe cases being over 55 (people older than 65 have the potential for complications from ANY infection, viral or bacterial) ... I don't think there's a way to accurately account for the placebo/nocebo/mass-hysteria effects of this.

None of these studies seem to be taking into account the psychological contagion that's spreading on an international scale. I really think 10 years from now, we'll be looking at 2020 as the first example of global moral panic and mass hysteria.

While opinions differ on appropriate action, with some arguing for strong policy responses, there’s very little evidence of anything that merits the word “hysteria”

Really? A woman being choked in Melbourne for not wearing a mask? A man getting pepper sprayed by police at a Tim Horton's in Canada for not wearing a mask? A man getting shot in Canada, after he left the store, by police, for not wearing a mask?

The Premier of Victoria locking down the entire state with tiny measures of case numbers? Continually changing news stories and narratives? The demonetization of any challenge to the State narrative as conspiracy theory. Doctors like the ones in Bakersfield or the silence of Scott Atlas's social media.

Sweden, and everything that entails (what you think, what the media tells us, what's actually true).

We have never seen this type of response to a virus before in all of human history. The culmination of both fast travel technology with media technology is causing a massive diaspora of conflicting facts and information with media and corporate giants attempting to control every aspect of what's true and what is not.

This is absolutely mass hysteria.

There are over 6 billion people on earth. This sounds like extremely isolated hysteria.

This is nonsense. More people get hurt in the US (and elsewhere) after a sports team loses a championship game than have been hurt because of Covid hysteria. This is like month 8 and you have one shooting.

On the other hand, more than 1/4 million dead in the US by year end from Covid.

I don't even know what mass hysteria is supposed to mean. It conjures visions of people running screaming in the street tearing their clothes off. I suppose the nearest we've had so far were panics such as mass buying of toilet paper and cleaning products.

We've had serious problems with mass delusions such as ant-vax, chem trails and pizza-gate propagating through social media since long before Covid. Of course now there are similar memetic contagions that are Covid related such as the 5G conspiracy theories, but crazies have got to crazy. If they weren't crazying about this they'd be crazying about something else.

You don't think there is any merit to what the parent is saying though?

It's the first time in history we've had unregulated, largely uncensored social media involved with a _real pandemic_. People can make up anything about this situation and spread it to whoever at light speed.

Maybe it's you who are delusional if you think there hasn't been any hysteria lately, especially around Covid19?

Perhaps this classic book would be of interest:

https://books.google.com/books/about/Memoirs_of_Extraordinar...

Please note that according to this study people who weren't critically ill still had cognitive deficits.

Otherwise: Yes, other illnesses can have similar effects. Now we have another illness that piles more people on top of that. It adds to the number of people who get critically ill. It's not that Covid is worse than some other health problems, it's that Covid's impact is in addition to the ones that existed.

So COVID-19 is a special “brain wrecking” virus ?

From what I've read (mostly from articles linked here on HN), the problem with COVID-19 is that it is highly inflammatory (in the medical sense, not just the conversational one!).

The brain really doesn't do well with inflammation.

That's an extreme way to phrase it, but possibly yes.

"Infectability of human BrainSphere neurons suggests neurotropism of SARS-CoV-2"

https://www.altex.org/index.php/altex/article/view/1924

That sounds like an extreme interpretation that would put the issue forward as a straw-man to be knocked down. Instead, I would just say that COVID is a virus that causes cognitive deficits even in people with little/no other symptoms.

If you read the article, you will see that the cognitive effects of covid-19 are not only for critically ill cases. Figure 3B, specifically, shows cognitive effects of milder covid-19 cases.

According to another study, covid-19 can infect brain tissue specifically: https://www.altex.org/index.php/altex/article/view/1924

That may be why it is particularly dangerous to brains, more so than other viruses.

The article specifically says that it include people that were not critically ill.

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