
Scientists warn of potential wave of Covid-linked brain damage - stevenjgarner
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brains/scientists-warn-of-potential-wave-of-covid-linked-brain-damage-idUSKBN24837S
======
stevenjgarner
I had delirium to the point I could not construct a thought, together with
severe body pain and a dry cough back on January 19, 20 in a hotel room in
Minnesota. Finally was able to get an antibodies test in July, which came back
negative - antibody levels probably dropped too low by then?
[https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-
perspective/2020/06/chinese-...](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-
perspective/2020/06/chinese-study-antibodies-covid-19-patients-fade-quickly)

~~~
jacquesm
(1) you don't always develop antibodies; (2) you don't always develop a lot of
them if you do; (3) you don't necessarily create them in a given time frame,
some people are faster, others slower. Typically it will take at least 3 to 4
weeks post infection before antibodies will show up. (4) tests are never
perfect. (5) you may have had something else entirely.

~~~
koheripbal
>you don't always develop antibodies

I'm not sure this is accurate. Testing negative to a serology test just means
that the test tested different proteins than your body did. If you recover,
you've created antibodies.

~~~
tim333
Recovery can be from T cells too [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-
fitness/body/no-antibodie...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-
fitness/body/no-antibodies-could-still-have-had-covid-fighting-t-cells/)

------
mrfusion
Airplanes can crash sometimes. The result is horrible. Usually all lives lost.

But we still fly. Why?

It all comes down to the numbers. The crashes are rare.

What are the numbers here?

~~~
throwaway5752
What an interesting thing! I can comment in a somewhat informed way about
both.

In flying, you file flight plans. Air traffic controllers make sure they are
followed and orderly. All passengers are highly screened before entering
secure areas and employees/food is similarly screened before making it to a
terminal. Some flight officers need thousands of hours of experience. When
planes are repaired the procedures are exhaustively documented, need to be
done by qualified staff, and the replacement parts need to be traceable.

In the case of neurological side effects of COVID , it's largely an unknown
and it can be reduced immensely by wearing a $0.10 piece of cloth, modified
social interactions, and contact tracing (see most developed nations outside
of the US and Sweden). COVID risk mitigation is much easier.

To quantify it a little: the article indicates a roughly 4x increase in a
particular severe neurological condition (ADEM) over background incidence
rate, and serology indicates < 5% of population exposure in most places. The
4x rate is on adult ADEM cases, and is very likely just [a subset of] cases
that pass a threshold on a distribution. It's reasonable to spitball a 50-100x
increased risk of neurological side effects. It's probably much higher because
of the well documented clotting disregulation and the spectrum of mild to
lethal strokes, and the structural damage strokes cause beyond that.

Ultimately, since the scientists in question are experts, I trust them instead
of thinking I know better. I was wrong about mask efficacy early in the year,
and that was humbling. Most of the scientists have studied this stuff for
decades and the best strategy is to just _listen_.

~~~
koheripbal
There's a lot of unknowns in those numbers - and a 50-100x increase in a
somewhat rare condition isn't particularly helpful.

We need solid number to make informed decisions about risk.

This isn't about whether to wear a mask or not (anyone with a brain wears a
mask) - this is more about whether to shut down schools and the economy.

> the scientists in question are experts, I trust them

Agreed, but they still aren't giving us NUMBERS.

~~~
fzeroracer
> this is more about whether to shut down schools and the economy.

Can you give me any reason why schools should not be shutdown?

What happens when teachers catch the virus? Is the expectation that they
should come to work? If they're supposed to quarantine for 3ish weeks, who
fills in for them? And what do you think happens when large portions of the
school catch the virus, or kids catch it and bring it home to their parents
and family?

~~~
koheripbal
Because kids not going to school means parents can't go to work - which means
they cannot pay their mortgage/rent.

There are a lot of horrible things that happen when the economy shuts down.

~~~
fzeroracer
Okay, but you didn't answer my question.

Kids go to school, the coronavirus rapidly spreads and then the school has to
shut down again. What exactly did opening up the schools in the first place
even do?

~~~
thu2111
You know kids don't get infected at all, right? Or at least that's the latest
"scientific consensus". There's no risk from schools re-opening, but children
trapped at home unable to see their friends or learn things definitely has
risks for them.

~~~
jshaqaw
Plenty of adults work at schools. I understand the frustration. I cry for the
lost year here in my kids’ lives. But I’m also not thrilled to sacrifice
teachers and other educational workers on a bonfire. Will you personally
volunteer to spend days in cramped classrooms with 25 kids?

~~~
thu2111
Where would this "bonfire" come from? Have other professions experienced with
a "bonfire" when they went back to work?

 _Will you personally volunteer to spend days in cramped classrooms with 25
kids?_

Volunteer, no, obviously not. Pay me more than what I get now, sure. I'm not
afraid of children. Nor am I retired or in any risk group. I know the data
about the risks perfectly well - I'm in far more danger from simply getting to
and from the school in the first place. It's other adults that can infect me,
not children:

[https://www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronavirus-
covid-19/children-a...](https://www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronavirus-
covid-19/children-and-covid-19)

 _Worldwide, relatively few children have been reported with COVID-19, the
disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Data from the Netherlands also
confirms the current understanding: that children play a minor role in the
spread of the novel coronavirus. The virus is mainly spread between adults and
from adult family members to children. The spread of COVID-19 among children
or from children to adults is less common._

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aftbit
I had never heard of encephalitis lethargica before. Fascinating and a bit
frightening.

>Although there were neuropathological differences in the brains of patients
who died of encephalitis lethargica compared with those who died of influenza
encephalitis, von Economo could not deny that there seemed to be an
epidemiological connection between influenza and encephalitis lethargica.
Based on experimental studies using brain tissue from deceased patients, von
Economo concluded that encephalitis lethargica was caused by an infectious
virus. He, and other clinicians at the time, proposed that influenza might
predispose a person to infection with encephalitis lethargica, possibly by
increasing the permeability of the nasal mucous membranes allowing the
encephalitic virus to enter more easily.

[https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/2246/3970828](https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/2246/3970828)

------
AnthonBerg
This is the paper in question: _The emerging spectrum of COVID-19 neurology:
clinical, radiological and laboratory findings_ , published in _Brain_ ,
[https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awaa240](https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awaa240)

~~~
HarryHirsch
It's worrying: _The high incidence of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis,
particularly with haemorrhagic change, is striking._

------
jjcon
More sensationalism - this is possible anytime an illness causes fever, COVID
isn’t special in this regard at all

~~~
Frost1x
I guess COVID is special in the fact that COVID is widespread and causes high
fever in a significant number of symptomatic individuals. The flu also
commonly causes high fevers, however, it isn't spreading at the rate COVID is,
so ultimately, due to the widespread nature of COVID, it seems reasonable to
link these two concerns. An underlying recent theme has been to consider long
term consequences this disease may have on societies across the world due to
its scale, as well as those individuals health. We're going to have a lot more
people seriously ill than we typically do with previously known infections and
diseases and that will have notable impacts.

From the article:

>“My worry is that we have millions of people with COVID-19 now. And if in a
year’s time we have 10 million recovered people, and those people have
cognitive deficits ... then that’s going to affect their ability to work and
their ability to go about activities of daily living,” Adrian Owen, a
neuroscientist at Western University in Canada, told Reuters in an interview.

We see what the short term consequences are, now we should also consider
potential long term consequences of this very widespread disease.

~~~
voisin
We can’t even agree to take the steps to solve the problem in the short term
that is staring us in the face. What are the odds that talking about
probabilities of long term issues will suddenly motivate people (or, more
importantly, the levels of government) to make the right decisions?

~~~
Frost1x
Fully agree however the fundamental science shouldn't be concerned with the
fact many are ignoring science.

It's science's job to do the best it can to discover the facts which provide
the fundamental information needed for useful actionable changes. Someone
still needs to develop actionable policy based on that information, and then
we have to decide as a society which actions we want to take.

Various scientists have provided short term control solutions and are working
on even more of them. We've seen those solutions around the world effectively
curbing the spread.

Different socieities and their governments have chosen what to do or not do
with that information, and now you see the results across the world, depending
on what people chose to do with that information.

If we understand long term implications as well as short term, this provides
even more information to make useful actionable policy decisions.

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gdubs
I posted this a little late last night, and it didn’t get a lot of attention —
but this interview with Larry Brilliant is really good. In particular how
quickly our knowledge of Covid is changing:

“The unexpected things that it’s doing are not epidemiological—they are
virological. In March, we were just beginning to see these horrific CT scans
or x-rays of people with ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome, where they
had these big circles of holes in their lungs, and we were thinking this is
pretty much a respiratory disease. Since then we have learned that this virus
attacks almost every organ in the body. The joke is that it’s from nose to
toes, because you lose your sense of smell and you can get "Covid toes," the
swelling of your toes and your fingers that look like frostbite”

[https://www.wired.com/story/larry-brilliant-on-how-well-
are-...](https://www.wired.com/story/larry-brilliant-on-how-well-are-we-
fighting-covid-19/)

------
mrfusion
Just to keep things in perspective. More than 25% of New Yorkers have had
COVID. As far as I know the recovered are mostly doing fine. I mean we don’t
see hundreds of thousands going on disability.

[https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04/27/coronavirus-
antibodi...](https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04/27/coronavirus-antibodies-
present-in-nearly-25-of-all-nyc-residents/)

~~~
hvac
>More than 25% of New Yorkers have had COVID This doesn't follow, though. You
can test positive for SARS2 antibodies and - either through asymptomatic
infection or false positive - not have had COVID-19. The UCL study focused on
the disease, not the virus.

"The virus causing Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, was not detected in the cerebrospinal
brain fluid of any of the patients tested, suggesting the virus did not
directly attack the brain to cause the neurological illness."

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chiefalchemist
The majority of severe Covid 19 cases involve one or more pre-existing
conditions. The article makes no mention of this.

I'm not questioning the scourge of Covid-19. I'm not questioning if it leads
to side effects. These things are real. But it's important to understand if
Covid-19,is acting alone or not. For deaths, it rarely acts alone. Covid-19
does well to exploit weakness - diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, COPD,
and so on. Perhaps the same is true for neurological side-effects?

