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Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

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Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#201

Post by freehorse »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #189
freehorse wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think IQ tests are meant or designed to measure effects from illness. We do not say that IQ drops when you are sick with the flu and have high fever that makes it hard to think. IQ does not drop when you wake up groggy in the morning up until you drink coffee. I am not sure why people use IQ here instead of referring specifically to brain fog and other symptoms of post-COVID infection. IQ does not drop when…

Who says there’s even anything stable to measure? If “intelligence” is just the degree/quality of someone’s brain function then your intelligence does drop when your brain function is impaired, and you would expect that to be picked up in an intelligence test. Culturally we may want to imagine intelligence as something constant and innate to somebody’s soul, but in reality it’s innate to a fragile and fickle organ in…

> Culturally we may want to imagine intelligence as something constant and innate to somebody’s soul, but in reality it’s innate to a fragile and fickle organ inside your skull.

Which is also my issue with IQ tests and the relationship of the tests and what they measure. But that changes nothing: IQ tests are not supposed to measure _that_ variability of when you get sick. Or you wake up. Or you are drunk. It makes no sense to use a psychometric test completely out of the context of which it was validated and meant to be used, because then the results are not interpretable. People with that kind of post-covid syndrom have an illness and experience cognitive deficits because of that, but using IQ to measure intelligence in that case when what you actually (want to) measure is brain fog is absurd. That should require a brain fog screening, not an IQ test.

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#202

Post by prmoustache »

fragmede wrote: post #145
prmoustache wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you working in the cellar at home? Why would you have less vitamin D working from home than say, an office?

Even just 15 mins in the sun helps vitamin D levels so walking from the house to the car into the office and back again is enough to make a difference compared to not going out at all, no?

I am working from home and the first thing I want to do when I stop working is going outside. I also, and as do many of my coworker, go for a walk at least once a day.

WFH doesn't mean you are chained to your desk from 8am to 5pm

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#203

Post by k__ »

freehorse wrote: post #161
dathinab wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less misleading then you might think. There are cases (enough to not be treated as just some random coincidence; with and without vaccination) where people after Covid had a sever reduction of cognitive abilities that they have problems filling out relatively simple forms. So we can clearly speak of a reduction of IQ. And while there is a lot of research needed and a lot of open questions and already half a year…

I do not think IQ tests are meant or designed to measure effects from illness. We do not say that IQ drops when you are sick with the flu and have high fever that makes it hard to think. IQ does not drop when you wake up groggy in the morning up until you drink coffee. I am not sure why people use IQ here instead of referring specifically to brain fog and other symptoms of post-COVID infection. IQ does not drop when…

The tests themselves are misleading.

If I do one sober, I have an IQ of 110, if I do it with my ADHD meds, it goes up to 120.

Is that because the meds make me smarter? No, it's because I don't lose attention after 10 minutes of test and can concentrate until the end. However, the numbers imply otherwise.

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#204

Post by jug »

negamax wrote: post #144

The cognitive decline can also be attributed to extreme isolation that everyone was subjected to. My super enriched, flow like heavenly water life came to a complete standstill. All future plans and timelines thrown in disarray. Covid has ended but my life trajectory has completely changed

Yes, I mean it's been shown how people with a loss of hearing have an increased risk of dementia and it's natural that this would apply here as well. It's just another form of lost stimuli. But there might also be medical reasons behind this and this serves to show how complex this is to research.

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#205

Post by prmoustache »

dukeyukey wrote: post #170
orwin wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean some people only go out to work? If true, OK, I was wrong about WFH/hybrid being superior to RTO, I guess different people mean different habits.

I live in the UK, it was only a few weeks ago it stopped being dark when I finish work. Climate is a bitch.

That is offtopic no? people driving/walking/cycling to work face the same climate and hours with sunlight.

One of the nice things that usually comes from WFH is a bit more flexibility in work time schedule. I usually go for a walk at least once during the day, usually to get groceries, and every other week I have to pickup my smallest daughter in primary school. And when the weather is nice and the days short in winter I would often do a 2 to 3h pause during the day to go for a cycling ride.

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#206

Post by sampo »

logicchains wrote: post #94
defrost wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has a population of 26 million, longer life expectancy than the USofA, and comprehensive medical records going back many decades. With ~98% of the population COVID vaccinated multiple times any vaccine effects would stick out like dogs balls. If anyone wants to posit "vaccines cause { stupid | strokes | etc }" Then such correlations should be readily apparent in the before | after records of 26 million test…

Australia's excess death rate is still higher than pre-covid: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-20/mortality-rates-austr... . If the Australian government released the data it'd be trivial to identify whether these deaths were concentrated in the vaccinated or the unvaccinated, but so far it hasn't released such data (if it even possesses such data in aggregate format).

> whether these deaths were concentrated in the vaccinated or the unvaccinated

Sweden let Covid go through their population in 2020. New Zealand allowed Covid to spread only in 2022. Both countries vaccinated their population during 2021. Sweden had a wave of excess deaths in 2020. In New Zealand, excess mortality started to increase in 2022. Excess deaths are correlated with the times of Covid waves, not with vaccinations.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-mortali...

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#207

Post by newsclues »

sorwin wrote: post #106
nirui wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd. I also felt that my memory is not as good as it was used to, and I experiences Doorway effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doorway_effect ) more frequently in recent years compare to before. But I'm not really sure it was due to COVID or just simply being old (or due to been forced to live in a confined space for long period of time).

This seems to be the issue - we're trying to study COVID, which affected literally the whole population of earth at this point, and we have no control group of people who have not been affected. People have gotten older, have gone through mass societal change, and any other number of things in between.

And some people might be faking it.

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#208

Post by prmoustache »

danparsonson wrote: post #136
prmoustache wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you working in the cellar at home? Why would you have less vitamin D working from home than say, an office?

Unless you're teleporting or living there, getting from home to the office normally involves at least some exposure to sunlight.

Working from home doesn't mean you are forced or even have any incentive to stay at home all day long.

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#209

Post by croes »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #175
croes wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be a strange coincidence that people have a Zinc deficiency just at the time the are infected with Corona? Why only the infected?

The infection causes zinc deficiency.

Deficiency symptoms are slow, loss of smell was an early infection symptom.

How could Corona cause a body wide deficiency if it was still early on?

And where did the Zinc go?

Re: Covid infections are causing IQ drops and years of brain aging, studies suggest

#210

Post by croes »

maxbond wrote: post #61
croes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Milllions of people worldwide suddenly have Zinc deficiency in the same year and now it's gone?

I think the suggestion is, maybe there is a shared mechanism of action, like perhaps Covid damages your ability to uptake zinc. (I have no idea if that's the case, I only claim it's a more accurate reading of GP.)

But loss of smell was an early symptom of a corona infection.

Sudden deficiency symptoms would mean the virus removed all the Zinc from the body before even reaching the inner organ.

And normally deficiency symptoms need time to emerge.

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