Hacker News Reader

Comment by ren_engineer | Hacker News Reader

how much of this could be attributed to the world events surrounding Covid and basically correlation vs causation? There have been studies that the majority of people claiming "long covid" when tested have never actually been infected. Most of the symptoms described could be depression due to being locked in your home and your normal lifestyle disrupted for nearly 3 years now. Plus general anxiety from the negativity of the news in general creating constant doom and gloom

even this study is somewhat suspect to me, they injected spike protein directly into the mouse's brain rather than using a natural infection. There's only a single study saying Covid can cross the blood brain barrier, so I'm not sure this methodology translates to real world infection

View on HN

I used to think long covid was total bullshit. Now here I am with tinnitus for 3 months after a pretty mild case. Probably it’s best just to trust people about their own experience, if this pandemic has shown us anything it’s that nobody knows anything. No masks! Wait, wear masks! Surfaces are the problem! Nevermind on surfaces! Close playgrounds! Wait, outdoors is where we should be! — and all this from the professionals.

You can easily estimate precautions from first principles, knowing that the Covid virus is ~100nm in size, a human cell is ~100um in size - so Covid is 1000x smaller. These things are expelled in water vapor from breath (masks), and water as spit (surfaces). They "gum up the works" of other cells, because they are so small.

The first advice to avoid masks was purely to avoid impacting the PPE needs of frontline workers. So you could have ignored that. As for surfaces, it seems dumb to wash your groceries, but it seems smart to, I don't know, not eat from a salad bar that lets all the customers exhale on the food (this is gross pre-covid).

People taking precautions outside was always dumb. The concentration of virus scales as r^3, in general. Plus, UV destroys them.

Playgrounds are a mixed bag, because kids are adorable, but gross. They are constantly touching each other and their own nose, mouth and so on. OTOH they have good resistance AND its really really important to socialize young kids, or they don't get socialized. I respect going either way (I picked "allow").

Its tough to see so much angst about Covid, and the messaging has been terrible. Hardly anyone explains the why of any guideline, so you can't really decide for yourself. So, like any good physicist, I applied first-principles and so far have only caught it once! (It was post Pfizer vaccine, and quite mild).

You are denying lived experience of a person that was injured by the disease? Do you also lecture people in wheelchairs to stop feigning their unproven "illness", until they a 4 volume rebuttal, starting from the Krebs cycle, and finally convinced you their legs actually do not work?

the original covid is conclusively known to impair your sense of smell, sometimes total anosmia. Sometimes total anosmia for life, but luckily that seems rare.

Blood brain barrier? The olfactory bulb in your nose does NOT have the blood brain barrier. But you didn't know that, did you? Remember this next time when you are going swimming.

Never been infected? That would require lymphocyte testing, and none of those tests have been clinically validated, and never will be. no money in that, and original strains no longer circulate.

Do you have any biology training aside from mandatory high school curriculum?

You don't have to deny lived experience to have doubts about the effects of Covid. Anxiety can cause all sorts of issues that are truly debilitating.

If you still have doubts after two years of pathology report after report of lymphocyte infiltration in the brain - you too, may also have lymphocyte infiltration in your own brain.

"43 patients were included in our study. Patients died in hospitals, nursing homes, or at home, and were aged between 51 years and 94 years (median 76 years [IQR 70-86]). We detected fresh territorial ischaemic lesions in six (14%) patients. 37 (86%) patients had astrogliosis in all assessed regions. Activation of microglia and infiltration by cytotoxic T lymphocytes was most pronounced in the brainstem and cerebellum, and meningeal cytotoxic T lymphocyte infiltration was seen in 34 (79%) patients. SARS-CoV-2 could be detected in the brains of 21 (53%) of 40 examined patients, with SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins found in cranial nerves originating from the lower brainstem and in isolated cells of the brainstem."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33031735/

It's astounding how seemingly most people just jump to "oh its in your head, just some anxiety". A fairly nasty virus, that causes severe disease that literally kills people even. Penetrates into the brain, cranial nerves, spinal fluid. Causes peripheral neuropathies, palsies, paralysis.

..but no, let's just ignore all that and jump straight to "it's all in your head"

I used to think the same way as you until I got it pre-vaccine. When you get it and there’s no treatment available, you glue yourself into the current events for hope. Yes all of this begets more anxiety because of all of the misinformation and disinformation out in the world. I had to shut up the world and do my own thing to recover.

For what it’s worth I had antibodies doing a blood test multiple months after suspected infection.

My first thought as well. I never caught covid but social isolation definitely induced anxiety and cognitive deficit in me.

What if it was caused by both?

I'm in your shoes, and pondering this very question.

It is both.

Social isolation does cause depression and anxiety, as social interaction is a very well proven anti-depressant.

Covid is also known to destroy your sense of smell. The olfactory bulb. which is neural tissue in your nose, goes right into your brain, and has no protection from blood brain barrier...because it doesn't have it.

Covid is neurotoxic. Isolation does cause depression. Both are true.

"SARS-CoV-2 attacks olfactory mucosae but spares the olfactory bulb": https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)01282-4.pdf

That doesn't mean the brain is spared. Covid does get into the brain, and CNS positivity is correlated with olfactory mucosa positivity. Something we've known since autopsy report after autopsy report since 2020. Two years now.

Fig 1b, 1c. Fig 5.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-00758-5

"Presence of intact CoV particles together with SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the olfactory mucosa, as well as in neuroanatomical areas receiving olfactory tract projections"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com