I think many people are uncomfortable with the idea that a chemical or unknown environmental change can cause such marked changes in human behavior.

To be even more accurate the older folks are uncomfortable with provable allegations that they are brain damaged.

This is my favourite part of the theory. The people who were 20/30/40 years old in the 1970/80s are now 60/70/80.

It's a bit difficult to commit violent crime at that age.

Yet it's easy to sit on the internet posting and believing in outright insanity and extremism.

It will take until 2040+ for many of these people to leave the political system.

I also feel like there is a very short jump from the lead crime hypothesis to a lead political dysfunction hypothesis. Meaning older voters and politicians have poor critical thinking ability and poor impulse control. Which causes them to make bad political decisions.

A really well done published study showed gray matter shrinkage in people with COVID-19. I assume, and hope, that they'll do a follow up to see if they recover. I am genuinely curious whether we might see a bump in some kind of problems (depression, suicide, crime, etc.). Seeing how the US 2019-2020's politics has gone ...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258690v...

There’s no real evidence to believe that the difference between COVID-19 and other coronaviruses is anything other than a matter of magnitude/degrees (more infectious, more lethal, more resistant) rather than “super mysterious disease with never-before-seen implications.” There is a huge incentive to try to find and publish studies suggesting otherwise, but take them with considerable skepticism.

This study was very well done, the people on the study very well regarded in the field; I believe the results. That they found the most shrinkage in olfactory regions is consistent with one of the most common symptoms.

As for whether this is a matter of degree rather than kind, there frankly have not been enough studies done of pre-post illness, and there should be. I know that depression is common in cases of severe pneumonia, and maybe there is a loss of gray matter in those cases too.

I was actually saying the same thing. I too read that study and was not trying to knock it. My point though was that if we study any of the other conditions this closely, we might see the same things - so it doesn’t make me believe that we’ll see too much novelty in the fallout from COVID because people succumb to then recover from the cold and flu all the time, they’re just not as heavily scrutinized.

What it is is that 'violent youth is a product of society' has an agenda. People are using crime to push particular agendas.

If it turns out that lead exposure the culprit the throws a big monkey wrench in that.

Random thought as well, what if it turns out that the rise in obesity and type II diabetes is due to something similar?

HN recently discussed an article arguing that obesity in the United States apparently rolls downhill, with little at high altitude and a great deal at sea level. The inference being that water-borne pollutants may be the cause of obesity.