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Thought for the day:
If I was a mad science supervillain designing a bioweapon to exterminate my enemies, I couldn't do better than come up with one that looks a bit like the common cold (to those it doesn't kill), reinfects victims repeatedly, causes more low-level brain damage with each reinfection, and inflicts short-term memory loss so they forget all about it.
Remember, there is no pandemic. MWAHAHAHAHA!
(And this is why Brain Worms Kennedy is taking over public health in the USA.)
@cstross I thought I'd escaped long COVID, until Farah mentioned her memory problems in her speech at Eastercon. Then it dawned on me that the worsening of my memory problems might not be just a flare-up of my chronic migraine symptoms.
I'd also had an increase in "putting the milk away in the mug cupboard" episodes. Pterry wasn't the only person with early onset dementia I've known, so I noticed that. I was a lot better after a year. Some people won't be, and won't notice.
(1/?)
@JulesJones
> the worsening of my memory problems might not be just a flare-up of my chronic migraine symptoms
... or it might.
In the absence of smoking gun evidence of a causal connection, what we have is a correlation. Between increased incidence of impaired memory, and the pandemic. Which was a social phenomenon as much as an epidemiological one, and we know chronic stress and trauma can impair memory.
Data is not the plural of anecdote and all that, but ...
@cstross
(2/?)
My memory was KO'd by pandemic-related stressors. long before I actually got COVID. As were other aspects of my executive function too. I doubt I'm the only one in Aotearoa either. The lockdowns kept infection numbers very low here until late 2021, when Omicron et al emerged.
By early 2023, I was pretty much back to normal. Then two house moves this year - the first unplanned - threw me back into the burnout brainfog. But AFAIK I haven't had COVID since 2021 (definite) or maybe 2022.
@strypey @JulesJones Have you noticed how much more bad driving/road rage there is these days? Remember, unreasonable outbursts of rage/anger are early symptoms of dementia, and there are indications that COVID19 may accelerate brain aging and cause some varieties of dementia …
@cstross
> unreasonable outbursts of rage/anger are early symptoms of dementia
As with impaired memory, these too can be symptoms of chronic stress and trauma. In fact, they're probably the most common. They can be symptoms of irritable depression for that matter.
Until you've got evidence of causation, these correlations are data points, but not really a basis for drawing conclusions.