Long covid is a very real concern, but cognitive deficits due to covid, whether mild or severe, is a much bigger concern and is only just beginning to be defined.
“The scale of the observed deficit was not insubstantial; the 0.47 SD global composite score reduction for the hospitalized with ventilator sub-group was greater than the average 10-year decline in global performance between the ages of 20 to 70 within this dataset. It was larger than the mean deficit of 480 people who indicated they had previously suffered a stroke (−0.24SDs) and the 998 who reported learning disabilities (−0.38SDs). For comparison, in a classic intelligence test, 0.47 SDs equates to a 7-point difference in IQ.”
Given that the virulence of Delta has made covid endemic what does this mean for the future?
Note that the scary big figure there is for people who were hospitalized and needed ventilation. The figures for “just getting COVID-19” are much smaller.
Hospital, ventilator: 0.47 SD (7 IQ points)
Hospital, no ventilator: 0.26 SD (4 IQ points)
Stayed at home, needed medical assistance for breathing difficulties: 0.13 SD (2 IQ points)
Stayed at home, breathing difficulties, no medical assistance: 0.07 SD (1 IQ point)
Stayed at home, ill, no breathing difficulties: 0.04 SD (0.5 IQ points)
I find it slightly suspicious how close each figure is to being half its predecessor :-).
I would absolutely not want to lose an IQ point, but I am quite certain that my effective IQ varies by much larger figures depending on how I’ve slept, how stressed I am, ambient temperature, time of day, etc. And while the authors of the study do seem to have taken some trouble to try to disentangle the effects they’re looking for from things like pre-existing conditions or ongoing COVID-19 symptoms, these effects seem small enough that I wouldn’t be super-confident of any such study’s ability to disentangle those things adequately.
To be clear, I’m not claiming that the effects aren’t real. (Especially the dramatic ones for people who had to be hospitalized.) But this study doesn’t make me very confident that mild cases of COVID-19 are likely to do much harm to the brain.
Long covid is a very real concern, but cognitive deficits due to covid, whether mild or severe, is a much bigger concern and is only just beginning to be defined.
Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from COVID-19
“The scale of the observed deficit was not insubstantial; the 0.47 SD global composite score reduction for the hospitalized with ventilator sub-group was greater than the average 10-year decline in global performance between the ages of 20 to 70 within this dataset. It was larger than the mean deficit of 480 people who indicated they had previously suffered a stroke (−0.24SDs) and the 998 who reported learning disabilities (−0.38SDs). For comparison, in a classic intelligence test, 0.47 SDs equates to a 7-point difference in IQ.”
Given that the virulence of Delta has made covid endemic what does this mean for the future?
Note that the scary big figure there is for people who were hospitalized and needed ventilation. The figures for “just getting COVID-19” are much smaller.
Hospital, ventilator: 0.47 SD (7 IQ points)
Hospital, no ventilator: 0.26 SD (4 IQ points)
Stayed at home, needed medical assistance for breathing difficulties: 0.13 SD (2 IQ points)
Stayed at home, breathing difficulties, no medical assistance: 0.07 SD (1 IQ point)
Stayed at home, ill, no breathing difficulties: 0.04 SD (0.5 IQ points)
I find it slightly suspicious how close each figure is to being half its predecessor :-).
I would absolutely not want to lose an IQ point, but I am quite certain that my effective IQ varies by much larger figures depending on how I’ve slept, how stressed I am, ambient temperature, time of day, etc. And while the authors of the study do seem to have taken some trouble to try to disentangle the effects they’re looking for from things like pre-existing conditions or ongoing COVID-19 symptoms, these effects seem small enough that I wouldn’t be super-confident of any such study’s ability to disentangle those things adequately.
To be clear, I’m not claiming that the effects aren’t real. (Especially the dramatic ones for people who had to be hospitalized.) But this study doesn’t make me very confident that mild cases of COVID-19 are likely to do much harm to the brain.