It’s probably a problem of non-specificity: if you say “the brain” some folks will consider just the prefrontal cortex, where thought happens. Olfactory nerves, where the smell happens, is a different enough concept that it might not align with the reader’s preconceptions of “the brain.”

If vision were similarly affected, there would be less of this complacency about permanent damage to parts of the brain performing sensory processing.

I just cannot tell if you are serious. If someone cuts themselves a bit deep into the skin, it's probably that a nerve will be affected. Would you describe such an injury as "brain damage"? I am trying to understand your thought process.

Not comparable. The olfactory bulb is literally physically in your brain.

I thought we were talking about olfactory nerves? You're just shifting semantics.

Yes...they are located in your brain.

Nope. The bulb is in the brain. Not the nerves. A nerve in the brain is an oxymoron.

A common position on HN for many months now has been that the worst damages from covid are the economic and social ones caused by lockdowns.

There is going to be a lot of cognitive dissonance around, and resistance to, exploring long-term consequences of the virus itself for this reason.

That was a position before the lockdowns even happened. There's nothing new about that thought.

Some local governments even felt strongly enough about that to go against the majority and have the laxest restrictions they could, or even prevent cities and counties from enforcing stronger measures than the state.

It remains to be seen how that plays out in the end, though. History books in a few decades are going to be very interesting.

I mean we pretty objectively know that they are at this point.

Do we? It is arguable that much of what people are referring to as a 'lockdown' was voluntary and would have happened in any case. Especially early on, there was surprisingly little variation between jurisdictions that formalized it with regulation, and ones that did not.

Schools are the biggest one especially since data seems to indicate it did nothing to improve covid outcomes.

This research on the neurological damaged caused by covid suggests that we objectively don't yet understand the long term impacts of covid infection. Given that something like 40% of the US has contracted covid at least once (per CDC), even a small effect on the age-incidence of heart attacks or strokes could cause major social and economic problems in 20+ years.