I wonder how many people just fell into alcohol, isolation induced depression, sedentary lifestyle, weight gain, etc... and that their health decline had nothing to do with COVID.

That's the issue with these anecdotes

OP did not claim their comment wasn’t an anecdote…

For me personally, I've been working from home for years. While the world around me changed, my life stayed the same.

When the pandemic hit I went the opposite. Focused on a healthy mind and body, was able to study a bunch and finally broken through a few mental plateaus.

But then I _got_ COVID and I can tell you COVID brain is real. Even after I had recovered physically there were a few weeks of obvious cognitive degradation. One of my first days testing negative I was trying to implement some pretty basic pagination logic but when it came time to writing the algos for it, it was like my body flipped a switch and I would get impossibly drowsy and have to go lie down.

I've had covid twice since then without the same problem but it is very real and wild.

exactly! The slighted mental effort made me want to go to sleep too :(

Long COVID is real.

there wasn't really much of a lockdown where I live, so I sincerely doubt that. Also I got COVID after the entire lockdown was over everywhere (2021), sooo no

Please forgive me for turning your words back on you: The issue with these statements such as yours is that they assume the non-existence of evidence that confirms that people’s experience is real.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.10.006

SARS-CoV-2 is known to cause brain damage, endocrine problems, and circulatory issues which impede oxygenation. Of the brain.

I assure you that there is literature on it. Here’s an almost random sample of papers.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.10.006

https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10238-022-00871-8

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nerep.2022.100154

https://doi.org/10.1042/BCJ20220016

I would like to point to this kind of statement that doctors often make, that there is “no literature” or that “nothing is known”. This is very often flat out wrong. Consider the size of the statement: Nothing is known and there exists no literature. The domain of knowledge required for the statement is omniscience. Having read all papers. It’s not an acceptable statement for anyone to make.

your earliest link here was August of last year. I have heard people taking about long COVID as early as early 2021. Properly researched literature takes time to be written and much longer to be peer reviewed and disseminated into the circle of the academic conscious.

I don't think there's much value taking the word that literally. I simply assume the acedemic conscious when I hear "there is no literature on X". I certainly wouldn't want a neurologist to tell me "oh yea I read some news on this last week and X" and treat that as gospel for an ongoing issue.

Yes, the earliest publication of those three is from almost a year ago. Random sample of papers. There exist studies / results / observations with actionable information older than that. (There’s probably something in the references sections of those papers, for instance.)

I of course accept the fact that information takes time to propagate, but the fact remains that I have been to specialist doctors for serious issues which have stated flat out that “nothing is known” – where they literally meant ”nothing is known”, which was completely contradicted by papers. Ten year old papers. Twenty year old papers. Fifty year old papers.

Again and again.

Certainly not all doctors are part of this culture. More than one time I have been present when a doctor who reads academic papers makes a decision based on that information which effectively saved a life.

Nonetheless, this hazard is a very real part of medical practicioner culture.

I certainly wouldn’t want a neurologist to treat last week’s news as gospel either. Absolutely not.

I just don’t know yet how to tell people how big this gulf can be between existing knowledge – established, proven, actionable knowledge – and what a given doctor acknowledges and/or doesn’t flat out deny the existence of.

Maybe this:

Anyone can read academic papers. In biology and medicine. Anyone. Really. And it is the minority of doctors who actually do so. I suggest that people verify doctors’ statements about the complete non-existence of knowledge about any given thing, should they make such statements. Read. Read as if lives were at stake.

—

Part of the reason doctors don’t read is that they are often overworked. They really, really are. (It’s not the only reason though.)

And: Of course!, reading science papers online IS NOT a substitute for medical training.

What I suggest people do is this: Help your doctors to help you.

With the utmost humility. As if lives were at stake.

I remember sitting trying to solve a problem to do with parent/child codes and modifiers, and I'd never had nothing come out, that was absolutely scary. 8 months later and I looked at it again and solved it so easily.

The big problem was that I'd always been able to hide my adhd symptoms, or at least 'clever' my way around them, and long covid / covid brain just laid them all bare.

Over 3 years after my first covid infection - still can't really taste or smell - I'm medicated for adhd, and I feel almost like how I was in March 2020.