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?
Damage to the olfactory epithelia. That is what this paper is describing.