Scientists warn of potential wave of Covid-linked brain damage
reuters.com
reuters.com
I'm not sure this is accurate. Testing negative to a serology test just means that the test tested different proteins than your body did. If you recover, you've created antibodies.
I'm pretty sure it is, and the CDC seems to agree with me:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-o...
"Some people may take even longer to develop antibodies, and some people who are infected may not ever develop antibodies."
This is a well known phenomenon in other diseases as well, why should COVID-19 be the exception here?
> If you recover, you've created antibodies.
No, that is not a valid line of reasoning. There is a high likelihood that you did, but not a 1:1 correspondence.
"Our results indicate that roughly twice as many people have developed T-cell immunity compared with those who we can detect antibodies in."
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-immunity-covid-higher...
But we still fly. Why?
It all comes down to the numbers. The crashes are rare.
What are the numbers here?
I for one would like to know if brain damage is a 5% risk or a .0005% risk. You wouldn’t?
Getting on a plane involves accepting risk for yourself; taking covid risks involves risk to yourself and also imposing risks on others.
I think people with especially high risk need to be looking out for themselves at this point. It’s not reasonable to ask the entire world to put their lives on hold.
(I know this is an unpopular opinion but it’s something we all have to address at some point)
Elon is the most puzzling to me. He was one of the PayPal crew. I'm sure their initial numbers were small. I recall Thiel talking about how in the beginning they didn't understand what a rocket ship PayPal was.
Well... this thing spreads quite exponentially too if distancing measures and masks are not used, and lethality is at least 1% (higher among older people) not to mention potential lung and brain damage. You exponential curve junkies need to do some math.
Personally I think it will take a million deaths for Americans to notice what an exponential curve is. We are at about 140k right now. Given that its exponential that could be by October.
"But we can't afford to close any more!"
Other countries with competent leaders and a population that doesn't live entirely in a social media bubble fantasy world have slowed the virus to the point that they can now reopen cautiously. Canada recently had a huge hiring boom. China is back in business. We can't reopen because we failed the first time. We are incompetent from the top all the way down to the street level.
You see this all the way up to the top: nobody pushing for schools to have normal in-person classes has children or grandchildren who need to go to public school rather than being tutored but their business interests need you to have a place to send your kids so you can go to work.
Maybe he realizes that America is too dysfunctional to stop the virus so the whole thing is futile. But he's not saying that, and his Twitter history doesn't suggest someone who is afraid to say whatever he thinks. He's publicly blunt to a fault.
To me it appears he's drunk some bad kool aid. The fact that he's a brilliant engineer and a great businessman doesn't make him immune to being irrational in other contexts.
Another possibility is that he's trying to win a big SpaceX contract and must publicly echo the Trump line to do so. Trump is quite well known to personally go after anyone who does not echo his party line and feed his ego. Also possible that he does not want to risk Trump interference via the FCC with the Starlink launch.
It has to be one of the two things I listed. It's just too irrational and he's too smart.
The first half of that claim is contradicted by most of the recent data I’ve seen, particularly among the young and otherwise reasonably healthy.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
Now, that page says the best estimate is 0.65% IFR.
(Infection Fatality Ratio, Overall in table 1)
That said, do you now agree that your earlier statement that "the lethality is at least 1%" is contradicted by the CDC's current best estimate? If so, it would be considered good etiquette to say so, and to thank the other posters for providing you with better information.
Or if you still believe your statement is correct, you should explain why the CDC is wrong (or being misinterpreted) and point to an authority you feel is more trustworthy. As it stands, it feels like you are galloping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop.
I would be less cynical on the US response were it not for the fact that so many other countries have handled this so much better.
Stanford University Epidemiology Study: The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data (the SF Gate article originally covering this study was taken down):
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v...
People are still repeating that it's just a flu?
States that the case fatality rate for those under 50 is substantially under 1% (under 0.5% in fact). The infection fatality rate would of course be even lower.
In flying, you file flight plans. Air traffic controllers make sure they are followed and orderly. All passengers are highly screened before entering secure areas and employees/food is similarly screened before making it to a terminal. Some flight officers need thousands of hours of experience. When planes are repaired the procedures are exhaustively documented, need to be done by qualified staff, and the replacement parts need to be traceable.
In the case of neurological side effects of COVID , it's largely an unknown and it can be reduced immensely by wearing a $0.10 piece of cloth, modified social interactions, and contact tracing (see most developed nations outside of the US and Sweden). COVID risk mitigation is much easier.
To quantify it a little: the article indicates a roughly 4x increase in a particular severe neurological condition (ADEM) over background incidence rate, and serology indicates < 5% of population exposure in most places. The 4x rate is on adult ADEM cases, and is very likely just [a subset of] cases that pass a threshold on a distribution. It's reasonable to spitball a 50-100x increased risk of neurological side effects. It's probably much higher because of the well documented clotting disregulation and the spectrum of mild to lethal strokes, and the structural damage strokes cause beyond that.
Ultimately, since the scientists in question are experts, I trust them instead of thinking I know better. I was wrong about mask efficacy early in the year, and that was humbling. Most of the scientists have studied this stuff for decades and the best strategy is to just listen.
We need solid number to make informed decisions about risk.
This isn't about whether to wear a mask or not (anyone with a brain wears a mask) - this is more about whether to shut down schools and the economy.
> the scientists in question are experts, I trust them
Agreed, but they still aren't giving us NUMBERS.
Also, this is from the journal "Brain". It's not in a epidemiology journal. They are just neurologists describing a possible tie between a new virus and a constellation of neurological symptoms. https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/doi/10.1093/brain/awa...
They call for further study in their abstract. This is a new discovery and you want population statistics? They want population statistics, too. The NUMBERS don't exist yet, because they published this on THURSDAY.
Warning about a "potential wave of Covid-linked brain damage" when it's likely to be a rare complication is not responsible journalism.
And over here modmans is accusing me of thinking Covid19 is over blown, while you accuse me of cognitive dissonance. It seems to me that you simply dislike any suggestion that Covid19 is less serious than you think, while other people dislike any suggestion that Covid19 is more serious than they think.
Here's what I think: I think honest, factual discussion of this topic is important, and that includes considering all facets of the evidence. I think describing a rare complication as a "potential wave" is overblown. And I think the level of discussion of this topic, even here on HN, is among the worst I've ever seen.
Can you give me any reason why schools should not be shutdown?
What happens when teachers catch the virus? Is the expectation that they should come to work? If they're supposed to quarantine for 3ish weeks, who fills in for them? And what do you think happens when large portions of the school catch the virus, or kids catch it and bring it home to their parents and family?
The risk for kids 11-18 is lower than the risk to survive the traffic to school. The risk to transmit from those older kids to their parents or grandparents are higher, esp. with comorbidity factors. So parents need to decide by their own. Note that parents need to decide that for every years flu season. This year's flu season is pretty soft on kids, and higher risks on normal age groups - in the US only, everywhere else the risk is lower. Most countries are below the normal morbidity rates this flu season. next year's flu season will be H1N1, which has a much higher morbity, but vaccines.
There was a recent case locally where an infected child spread it to her entire daycare, infecting all the kids, and in turn infecting all the parents - one of whom died.
There are a lot of horrible things that happen when the economy shuts down.
Kids go to school, the coronavirus rapidly spreads and then the school has to shut down again. What exactly did opening up the schools in the first place even do?
Will you personally volunteer to spend days in cramped classrooms with 25 kids?
Volunteer, no, obviously not. Pay me more than what I get now, sure. I'm not afraid of children. Nor am I retired or in any risk group. I know the data about the risks perfectly well - I'm in far more danger from simply getting to and from the school in the first place. It's other adults that can infect me, not children:
https://www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronavirus-covid-19/children-a...
Worldwide, relatively few children have been reported with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Data from the Netherlands also confirms the current understanding: that children play a minor role in the spread of the novel coronavirus. The virus is mainly spread between adults and from adult family members to children. The spread of COVID-19 among children or from children to adults is less common.
They're still a vector of infection which means they're going to spread it to their family or teachers who can and will get sick and suffer adverse effects. Saying that there's no risk is wrong and harmful to spread.
https://www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronavirus-covid-19/children-a...
Here's the public health arm of the Dutch government summarising the evidence:
Worldwide, relatively few children have been reported with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Data from the Netherlands also confirms the current understanding: that children play a minor role in the spread of the novel coronavirus. The virus is mainly spread between adults and from adult family members to children. The spread of COVID-19 among children or from children to adults is less common.
No lie - current best understanding.
"You know kids don't get infected at all"
"relatively few children have been reported with COVID-19,"
So, do get kids infected (at all) or not?
...but the degree to which that is true is the exact data we're asking for here.
If a teacher or a student catches the coronavirus, is the school supposed to stay open? If a teacher gets sick and has to stay home, who replaces the teacher? Who will risk themselves also getting sick to come in and substitute when there are confirmed coronavirus cases?
They're just saying:
- Normally, one in 5.5 million UK residents tests positive for ADEM each year
- Since COVID-19, those odds are looking more like one in 1.4 million
Until we have more hard numbers, this is really bad and it would be smart to react conservatively.
>> Normally, one in 5.5 million UK residents tests positive for ADEM each year
If those statements are accurate, the new spitballed risk of ADEM would only be 1 in 55,000.
That's not going to lead to measurable population level cognitive deficit.
Nor should it change our perception of how dangerous COVID is, compared to a roughly 1 in 200 risk of death.
>>> It's probably much higher because of the well documented clotting disregulation and the spectrum of mild to lethal strokes, and the structural damage strokes cause beyond that.
Perhaps, but that's just speculation. Where is the evidence?
And what about Spain, Italy, Belgium and France? All have worse rates than those two.
Here are the US and Sweden https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
Here are Belgium, France, Spain, and Italy https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/belgium/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/
You can actually look at that within the US, which has NY/New England type curves (including Seattle, Michigan, Chicago, and San Francisco) and the Texas, Florida, Arizona, Louisiana, et al. type spread.
All of the examples you noted had large, uncontrolled spread in mid-March that was gradually brought under control in lockdowns, and kept low via social policy (mask wearing, distancing, testing/contact tracing).
To answer your question indirectly: Spain, France, Italy, and Belgium all together are currently having fewer new daily cases than just Arizona on its own. And Arizona has less cases daily than Georgia, California, Texas, and Florida.
The US would be the laughingstock of the world if it weren't so sad. The US response is too tragic to laugh at.
>Although there were neuropathological differences in the brains of patients who died of encephalitis lethargica compared with those who died of influenza encephalitis, von Economo could not deny that there seemed to be an epidemiological connection between influenza and encephalitis lethargica. Based on experimental studies using brain tissue from deceased patients, von Economo concluded that encephalitis lethargica was caused by an infectious virus. He, and other clinicians at the time, proposed that influenza might predispose a person to infection with encephalitis lethargica, possibly by increasing the permeability of the nasal mucous membranes allowing the encephalitic virus to enter more easily.
From the article:
>“My worry is that we have millions of people with COVID-19 now. And if in a year’s time we have 10 million recovered people, and those people have cognitive deficits ... then that’s going to affect their ability to work and their ability to go about activities of daily living,” Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at Western University in Canada, told Reuters in an interview.
We see what the short term consequences are, now we should also consider potential long term consequences of this very widespread disease.
It's science's job to do the best it can to discover the facts which provide the fundamental information needed for useful actionable changes. Someone still needs to develop actionable policy based on that information, and then we have to decide as a society which actions we want to take.
Various scientists have provided short term control solutions and are working on even more of them. We've seen those solutions around the world effectively curbing the spread.
Different socieities and their governments have chosen what to do or not do with that information, and now you see the results across the world, depending on what people chose to do with that information.
If we understand long term implications as well as short term, this provides even more information to make useful actionable policy decisions.
Why is Reuters interviewing a neuroscientist from Western University in Canada about a study done at University College London? It's telling that the part you picked out comes from someone completely unrelated to the research.
The subject is neurology, the interviewee is a neuroscientist, and so is probably more qualified to opine than you or I or the Reuters journalist who submitted copy.
Further, the interviewee is a neuroscientist, but we have no idea why they were picked to comment, how deeply he's analyzed the research, what the context was that led to that quote, or how long Reuters spent talking to neuroscientists to get that quote.
Brain damage isn't possible 'anytime an illness causes fever'. You have to have an incredibly high fever which is very, very rare even in cases of the flu.
What exactly is your goal here spreading objective falsehoods?
Here’s the paper the article refers to: https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awaa240
There are numerous other findings in scientific literature that indicate that COVID-19 impacts the nervous system. As one example, the loss of the sense of smell is likely neurogenic.
The paper makes no attempt to draw a causative link between covid and the cited illnesses, nor could it, with a sample of less than 50.
Rare illnesses happen. Sometimes, they will happen in people with covid. Jumping to the conclusion that Y happened after X, therefore X caused Y, is the post hoc fallacy.
This is the paper being discussed by the article, and underscores the degree to which reporting on this subject has left rationality and science behind.
A group of doctors said they saw patients with X and Y, and that Y is somewhat rare. At best, this is suggestive that a proper study is required — which is exactly what they say when quoted in the reuters story.
The flu can attack the heart like many other viruses. Measles can cause immune system amnesia. RSV can cause inflammation in the middle ear. Chicken pox multiplies in the lung but hides in your nervous system until it comes out as shingles decades later. Pick any virus and you’ll learn of some crazy potential complications.
“The unexpected things that it’s doing are not epidemiological—they are virological. In March, we were just beginning to see these horrific CT scans or x-rays of people with ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome, where they had these big circles of holes in their lungs, and we were thinking this is pretty much a respiratory disease. Since then we have learned that this virus attacks almost every organ in the body. The joke is that it’s from nose to toes, because you lose your sense of smell and you can get "Covid toes," the swelling of your toes and your fingers that look like frostbite”
https://www.wired.com/story/larry-brilliant-on-how-well-are-...
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04/27/coronavirus-antibodi...
"The virus causing Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, was not detected in the cerebrospinal brain fluid of any of the patients tested, suggesting the virus did not directly attack the brain to cause the neurological illness."
I'm not questioning the scourge of Covid-19. I'm not questioning if it leads to side effects. These things are real. But it's important to understand if Covid-19,is acting alone or not. For deaths, it rarely acts alone. Covid-19 does well to exploit weakness - diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, COPD, and so on. Perhaps the same is true for neurological side-effects?