Yeah, HSV viruses in addition to the SARS viruses are well known ME/CFS triggers. It also appears with toxic mold syndrome and heavy metal stuff.

I suppose it’s theoretically possible for someone to get a IQ bump from HSV I think the correlation is more from selection criteria biased on severity.

There does seem to be a non-zero optimal for brain inflammations effect on IQ which could explain why smart kids have are likely to burn out when an existing predisposition to brain inflammation is made worse with age.