Not very hard to find the current, best understanding of the phenomenon:

https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Current-Research/Coronavirus-and-N...

Compare the nih link above to the hysteria from here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27975514

What happened is that we have a better understanding of the kind of brain damage it does, and how it does it.

There was some initial fear that anosmia might be related to brain damage (since basically ruled out I believe).

One of the common long covid symptoms is "brain fog" though. Which I _think_ is probably metabolic or circulatory or something, but definitely affects the brain whatever the actual cause is.

It's not a high percentage of cases. But there are significant number of people reporting long-term issues with brain fog post-covid. Whether that's actually caused by a brain issue I don't know. But it certainly seems to be able to effect your ability to think.