Ask HN: As COVID can reach the brain and heart, how can this pandemic ever end?

5 points·amichail··5 comments

In other words, who would want no restrictions along with the risk of brain damage and/or a heart attack?

Perhaps this Twitter thread (sorry) may help alleviate some of the fears? The author is a full professor working on computational biology at University College London and had prior to that had a stint working on infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London.

https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/14765074434966364...

"Those results provide no evidence for SARS-CoV-2 being a neurotropic virus, it doesn't inform us on long-covid. SARS-CoV-2 is not expected to be commonly found in the brain of patients except in a subset of extremely severe, often lethal, infections. 3/"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/biosciences/people/francois-balloux

I don't think it's very surprising? The flu can also reach the brain and the heart, but it rarely has severe consequences. If there was a big risk of serious consequences for the heart or the brain from covid we would have heard of it by now.

That depends on what the risk of brain damage or heart disease is. Zero risk is unattainable, even ignoring covid.

Stress also damages the brain and can lead to heart attacks.

You know what else can reach the brain and heart? Love.

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