Damage to the olfactory epithelia. That is what this paper is describing.
No. From the paper:
> Consistent with findings reported by other groups,16,19 this study also did not find evidence of viral infection in olfactory bulb from most patients with COVID-19. Therefore, the axon and microvascular pathology in olfactory bulb and olfactory tract were most likely not caused by direct viral injury.
Moreover:
> this study did not find a strong association between olfactory endothelial injury and disease severity, suggesting that local inflammation in the upper respiratory tract may be sufficient to cause endothelial and axonal damage in the olfactory pathway.
I'm not an expert in the microanatomy of the olfactory pathway so I'm not going to debate the location of the samples, but the authors are explicit that your interpretation is incorrect. It's not the neurons themselves, it's some inflammatory process external to the neurons that is causing damage.
This has clear implications for the level of panic people are bringing to this conversation. A virus that can infect neurons (e.g. rabies, herpes) can cause damage by moving within the nerves themselves. This virus does not appear to do that, and instead causes local inflammation that indirectly influences the neurons.
Debating whether or not this is "brain damage" is academic; most people in this conversation are leaping to wild conclusions about the virus "infecting the brain". This is not supported.
I never claimed that infection of the neurons caused the damage. That is a strawman you created.
What I said is that there was damage to axons in the olfactory bulb, which is part of the brain.
If there are people leaping to wild conclusions, why not respond to them rather than trying to foist their views off on me?
https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
Most any serious viral infection can cause post-viral fatigue syndrome. We've known that for decades and this virus is no different.
I gravitate towards those that say something can be done; that we have both the science and the ability to do it, though I'd say we do have a lot of people with a lot of power that want to tell us to give up on the precautionary principle.
Instead of trying to avoid infection and most likely failing, a more productive approach is to focus on reducing the risks of a bad outcome when you inevitably do get infected. For most people that means getting vaccinated plus resolving any major risk factor conditions such as obesity, type-2 diabetes, and hypovitaminosis D.
And you didn't answer the question. Which specific "experts" claim it will be possible to avoid infection?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/03/people...
And the so-called "People's CDC" isn't even a serious scientific or medical group. Unlike the real CDC, they're not doing any original research or useful analysis. It's merely a political advocacy group. There's nothing wrong with political advocacy but don't confuse it with actual science.
How different, and what this means in terms of individual and public health, is what we are currently finding out.
Notably, Long Covid effects have a considerably higher prevalence than 'Long Flu'.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2FS0262-4079(20)30862-9
We don't actually know the prevalence of "long flu".
In 2020 my sister lost her sense of smell t Covid, and it seems to have permanently altered her sense of taste. What else but damage to the brain could do that?
To this day food she used to love have been corrupted. She can't describe it, but the closest she has articulated to me is that certain things things "taste the way cigarettes smell." As a result, she has had trouble eating and has lost a lot of weight (not in the way you want to lose weight).
I get really upset when people dismiss long covid as some sort of hysteria. Even if that were true, the impacts are real, and it's not a joke or something to be minimized and dismissed.