We Just Got More Evidence That Long COVID Is a Brain Injury
The exact nature of long COVID is still coming to light, but we just got some of the best evidence yet that this debilitating condition stems from a brain injury.
Using high-resolution scanners, researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford have shown microscopic, structural abnormalities in the brainstems of those recovering from COVID-19.
Signs of brain inflammation were present up to 18 months after first contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
"We show that the brainstem is a site of vulnerability to long-term effects of COVID-19, with persistent changes evident in the months after hospitalization," the authors of the study conclude.
https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awae215
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I think it’s important for people to realize:
A very bad cold or flu can totally damage your body and is how lots of older folks go unfortunately.
Covid without a vaccine would have been a terrible sickness.
What bugs me the most is so many people who don’t understand logical fallacies kept saying just wait a year or two and you’ll see mass deaths and weakened immunity… and they are conveniently silent now, probably blaming fires on DEI or something stupid like that.
That was my view of COVID at the early stages of the pandemic. A lot of people were saying that it's just a bad flu. I thought it being a bad flu is terrifying.
An even so, having caught the damn thing three times now even through vaccines, I think my view back then was overly optimistic.
I got it before the pandemic shut down. in February of 2020. I was working in a high contact environment with high risk. I ended up sick, then sicker, then my whole team was sick, and out of work. we were told to do training as wfh and we'd be back when we felt better. it felt like that wasn't coming. I got sicker and bedridden, my dr prescribed a steroid inhaler and wasn't sure what it was. then sent out some labs and said 'inconclusive'. i stayed sick. moving from the bed into the attached bathroom and back was a 4 steo with breaks sitting on the floor process. i lost my job. i went on unemployment. it was another half of a month before I went back to the doctor. Covid. and they had no options for me but to wait it out. it wasnt bad enough.
I got walking pneumonia last year. Took some antibiotics and got rid of it, but it basically brought back my childhood asthma. I’ve been stuck with it for about 10 months now. Really eye opening to me how long it has lasted.
They are seeing all these mass deaths. According to the antivaxx crowd almost every single person who gets sick or dies could have prevented this by not getting vaxxed. They don't care, that this is absolute bullshit.
These people are addicted to this feeling that they have discovered some secret that destroys conventional wisdom and sheds a whole new light on everything. They are addicted to this feeling that they’ve found a big lie everyone’s swallowed and they’re going to spit it out.
Every part of their worldview has to have that quality or they can’t hold onto it with their brains. There’s a great deal of straightforward, plain-as-day information that’s totally missing from their worldview because it doesn’t contain the drug their brain is addicted to.
My theory is that the type of person who falls for conspiracy nonsense is the same type of person who also succumbs to solipsism. They have a core belief that they are the protagonist of their own story, and their story can't be plain, humdrum, or boring like their daily lives had been up until the moment they "uncovered" the grand plot to deceive the world. Acknowledgement of the fact that they are not special or somehow inherently different from any other individual is psychic death, so they retreat into safe spaces and echo chambers that validate them, which make them easy targets for pseudoscience and quasi-religious beliefs.
Conspiracy allows them to indulge in the fantasy of grandiosity, while also introducing them to a community of like-minded people who will welcome them and their beliefs, and never challenge them. That makes it all the more difficult for them to break out of the spell, even when presented evidence that runs contrary to what they believe.
Yep, agree. What makes this more complex is that movie culture has relentlessly programmed all of us to think this way for decades. I don’t think it’s just a case of genetic predisposition toward solipsism, though that is surely in there as well.
Virtually all blockbuster movies and many smaller ones are about some kind of chosen hero who shatters a corrupt system, often with a single act of redemptive violence (killing the bad guy, destroying the evil machine, etc).
From Star Wars: A New Hope to The Matrix to The Hunger Games this formula has been virtually the same. It’s so relentless and consistent, and people grow up on it from an early age. Is it any surprise, with this kind of programming, that people grow up lacking the will to dedicate themselves to making a small contribution toward incremental change? No. They need shattering upheaval that saves the world, and everything less is complicity in the evil of the system.
As Zizek said: you never get to see what the hero does the day after shattering the machine. How do they rebuild a better society? Okay, redemptive violence, then what? Popular culture has no answer to this. In real life it’s about compromise, hard work, incremental improvement. But we have generations of people who’ve been fed compelling narratives about everything but that.
I wonder if you're on to something there. What if they do get a hit of dopamine every time they think they're being clever even though they're completely wrong, and so they deliberately lean towards all the crazy that makes them think they're being clever just for the dopamine? That would explain a lot about the MAGA crowd, as they are actually physically addicted to the crazy in that case,
"The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room." — Frank Lucas Many dumb people I've met simply get off by hearing themselves talk. They 100% get a dopamine hit every time the make a "point".
Yes and there is one other aspect. When they get into this conspiracy shit, there is a whole community of people ready to welcome them. They are congratulated for seeing the light and joining the movement. This fulfills a social need for a lot of these people, who are lonely or in some cases estranged from family.
This process of feeling like you’ve drawn back the curtain on life, and, in the same stroke found “your people” is incredibly exhilarating to them. It’s like a whole new day in their lives. And THAT’S why they’ll defend their crap beliefs to the death. Because giving them up means going back to the humdrum world where they are just a nobody again.
The kind of person that latches onto one detail in an argument and doesn't let go. Especially when it has nothing to do with the disagreement. You know the type.
Always. When the previous conspiracy theory / rapture date / return of JFK / illuminati plot doesn't turn out to be true, there's no talking about it or self reflection, it's just right onto the next conspiracy theory / rapture date / return of JFK / illuminati plot.
This should go both ways. What about :-
Wuhan Lab leak possibility
US sponsoring foreign GoF research
Assange assassination plans
Phones and tvs listening on conversations (Weeping Angel)
NSA recording all internet traffic
Remote car jacking
McDonald's ice cream breaking on purpose
Etc.
The only one of those that was seriously surprising was Prism. We didn't expect the tech to be able to exist yet. It was one of those "if you put enough money into it you can do it" buckets.
OP's examples are literally impossible.
It's not that any are surprising. It's that initially they were all conspiracy theories.
Definition: a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators
also : a theory asserting that a secret of great importance is being kept from the public
Those aren't all conspiracy theories. Those aren't all even true
The Wuhan findings led by a Republican Inquisition team with an agenda and is hotly contested.
Remote car hacking was never a conspiracy theory. It's a vulnerability, it's not there on purpose or put there by a super secret plot. It wouldn't even make sense as a conspiracy theory.
McDonald's doesn't break their ice cream machines on purpose. J.M. Taylor just refused to give them access to reset system errors related to real problems and operation.
Four agencies still lean toward the natural origin source, while the FBI and DOE still lean toward a lab leak. Two others, including the Central Intelligence Agency, have not made assessments.. The point here is that a lab leak is no longer a debunked conspiracy theory.
This is what people always say when a conspiracy theory turns out to be correct
However McDonald's does force their franchises to buy a particular piece of equipment that breaks easily and head office have an exclusive contract with.
Definition 1: a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators
Definition 2: a theory asserting that a secret of great importance is being kept from the public
You want a conspiracy theory? Republicans have a narrative to drive and they're in all the committees and are still running several of those agencies. There's a disagreement at best that it did or didn't happen while the people investigating have a stated agenda. That is not, by definition. Debunked or Debunking.
See definition 1 and 2
See definition 1 and 2
Daszak effectively silenced debate over the possibility of a lab leak with a February 2020 statement in the Lancet. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that covid-19 does not have a natural origin,”
Peter Daszak is a British Zoologist. Not a Republican politician.
yup, he's anti-conspiracy which is correct.
it wasn't a conspiracy that was proved to be a conspiracy
Finally we agree. Like everything else in the above list, this is a theory that was claimed to be false that later turns out to be correct.
The lab leak conspiracy hypothesis was initally denied by the lead investigator, Peter Daszak, and now turns out to be highly probable (almost certain given the lack of zoonotic spillover evidence).
Ofc it goes both ways. To them, everything you listed is basically truth. Something so obvious everybody knows (ok maybe not the ice cream machine). They need a bigger conspiracy. Something most people would never believe.
Do you have a source for claiming it’d be worse without the vaccine? I haven’t seen any studies show it lessens the severity of brain damage caused by infections.
What I’ve seen is claims that even the asymptomatic infections are causing brain damage.
From what most of the vaccines seem to be is a marker (protein used for such) on am entity they want destroyed. Tells your immune system if you see guys with a red x on their shirt, start taking them out. If you don't have the vaccine they enter and no one knows the red x is bad. They start to run rampant and doing bad things until something done bad enough is recognized and they say, hey shoot the ones with the red x. In both scenarios the red X's infiltrated your body, in 1, your body is able to start defending itself sooner and it lessens the damages caused vs what may have occurred if it didn't know to start attacking sooner. (That does not mean someone's immune system couldn't be worse than someone else's and still react slower.. just faster than it would have otherwise)
That was my old boss. You described them to a T in Re: to the mass deaths in 2 years. She was an absolute idiot, and I have no doubt would put her political party over her own personal safety again if she knew Democrats were already doing the same as she needed to. She is incapable of thinking rationally.
And yet here in Denmark you can't get the booster if you're not old or very sick.
Estonian, haven't had a booster in what, 3 years? Maybe 2, idk. We can't even get them anymore.
What I DO know is that last year, I got what was most likely covid (my second bout at that) and there are things I used to love eating and drinking that I find disgusting now, 11 months later. Not like "ew that tastes funny". No, "Ew that's not edible, how am I eating analog TV static noise and image"
So yeah, I suspect I have brain damage and it probably could've been reduced if I'd been able to keep up with my boosters.
I image that’s because of the cost. In the US it costs $207 of you don’t have insurance when it was free for everyone until last summer.
Yeah pharmacies can offer the shot but since there is no demand it is not actually available , I believe it was around 100 USD