Live data from Hacker News

Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

medrxiv.org

31–40 of 103 posts

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#31

If you lose smell, then the brain will shift smell-related resources to other functions. Any large-scale body damage should cause "brain damage," though it's possibly a little misleading to call it that (of course I'm not enough of a neuroscientist to know if that's all that's at play here). related: https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/a-new-theory-of-dreami...

...except that it's not nasal equipment that's damaged by SARS-CoV-2, it's the 'smell-related resources' themselves (in the brain) that go missing: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2...

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#32
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone knew from that first cluster in Wuhan that this was much, much more dangerous. Everyone told you that. Everyone trustworthy, anyway. I hope you find the CDC to be trustworthy because the CDC says on their website that the flu is more dangerous than covid for young people. "For young children, especially children younger than 5 years old, the risk of serious complications is higher for flu compared with COV…

> I agree with you that there are people who cavalierly dismiss the dangers of covid. Don't call it the flu. It's not the flu. It's killed 20x more people than the flu even in the fact of pervasive society-changing mitigation strategies (all while the flu itself has all but gone extinct, remember! All that masking and distance learning actually worked!). It's not the flu. Beyond that, nitpick with my phrasing all you…

Not disagreeing that Covid19 is a much more lethal disease, can you point to some reference that compares covid death to flu related death (prior to covid).

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#33
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of diseases result in nerve damage. Polio was famous for this, after all. Different viruses infect different tissues. This is why we don't like getting sick, and push vaccines where we can. Infectious diseases that don't have long term effects are actually comparatively few in numbers -- those are the ones we tend to "get sick" with, for the simple reason that they aren't worth the effort of trying to control. T…

> Everyone knew from that first cluster in Wuhan that this was much, much more dangerous. Everyone told you that. Everyone trustworthy, anyway. I hope you find the CDC to be trustworthy because the CDC says on their website that the flu is more dangerous than covid for young people. "For young children, especially children younger than 5 years old, the risk of serious complications is higher for flu compared with COV…

This seems like an overly pedantic approach. How many children younger than 5 are around posting on HN?

Granted, people here may have children of that age. But we're also talking about the expected value of vaccines as well. While I haven't kept on current information, last I heard vaccines also weren't approved for such young kids either.

Could they have been more exactingly accurate with their language? Sure. But the issue was small and basically entirely irrelevant given both the venue and topic at hand. Yet you basically tried to present this as an all-round smashing of their entire point.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone knew from that first cluster in Wuhan that this was much, much more dangerous. Everyone told you that. Everyone trustworthy, anyway. I hope you find the CDC to be trustworthy because the CDC says on their website that the flu is more dangerous than covid for young people. "For young children, especially children younger than 5 years old, the risk of serious complications is higher for flu compared with COV…

> I agree with you that there are people who cavalierly dismiss the dangers of covid. Don't call it the flu. It's not the flu. It's killed 20x more people than the flu even in the fact of pervasive society-changing mitigation strategies (all while the flu itself has all but gone extinct, remember! All that masking and distance learning actually worked!). It's not the flu. Beyond that, nitpick with my phrasing all you…

> Don't call it the flu. It's not the flu.

The original commenter didn't call it the flu as far as I can tell. He wrote: "Is there some reason to expect that covid-19 is different in long term effects than a flu? This study is saying it causes substantial brain damage, right? What possible mechanism is there for this?".

Nowhere did he call it the flu.

> It's killed 20x more people than the flu even in the fact of pervasive society-changing mitigation strategies (all while the flu itself has all but gone extinct, remember! All that masking and distance learning actually worked!).

No. It killed 20x more people than the flu in 2020 to now. But the flu has killed far more people overall. The flu epidemic of 1918 killed 50 million people, far more than covid.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/reconstruction-19...

> Beyond that, nitpick with my phrasing all you like. This is HN, after all.

It's not the phrasing, you know that. You outright contradicted the CDC which makes your comment misinformation.

> It's not the flu.

In your zeal, you falsely attributed a statement/argument to a person and argued against it. In one of my philosophy classes, I learned that it was called building a straw man. It's a logical fallacy.

Your heart may be in the right place, but you aren't helping. Though I'm starting to believe the fanatics on both sides deep down want covid to ravage the world and that neither side has their heart in the right place.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#35
post #29

Quote from https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-79959... "Citing new information about the variant’s ability to spread among vaccinated people , the CDC also recommended indoor masks for all teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools nationwide, regardless of vaccination status." If someone is vaccinated AND still spreading the virus, is it any different from having an asymthomatic case of CO…

> If someone is vaccinated AND still spreading the virus, is it any different from having an asymthomatic case of COVID? It carries about an order of magnitude lower risk of hospitalization or death, so... yes. Yes, it is very different. We don't know about long term effects, those are, y'know, long term and hard to study in this kind of timeframe. Which is why the linked article is notable. Also note that risk of tr…

It's hard for some of us, myself included. I'm a hospital physician in a suburban American hospital. I don't know a single physician who was even hospitalized with COVID-19. I know two physicians who died from the vaccine, one who bled to death with DIC in my care. I know of another in our area who is permanently disabled with transverse myelitis after the vaccine. I'm not alone, despite what you've heard generally about physicians, when I say I have some very controversial and unpopular opinions about vaccination of low-risk individuals, regardless of how that impacts the at-risk population. Selfish, yes, but in my opinion the reaction to this virus has been far more damaging than the virus itself. Throwaway for obvious reasons, as I would be fired for even sharing my opinions.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#37
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone is vaccinated AND still spreading the virus, is it any different from having an asymthomatic case of COVID? It carries about an order of magnitude lower risk of hospitalization or death, so... yes. Yes, it is very different. We don't know about long term effects, those are, y'know, long term and hard to study in this kind of timeframe. Which is why the linked article is notable. Also note that risk of tr…

It's hard for some of us, myself included. I'm a hospital physician in a suburban American hospital. I don't know a single physician who was even hospitalized with COVID-19. I know two physicians who died from the vaccine, one who bled to death with DIC in my care. I know of another in our area who is permanently disabled with transverse myelitis after the vaccine. I'm not alone, despite what you've heard generally a…

I'm sorry, but that seems to be an impossible claim. In fact there are zero cases (edit: two people have come by to cite statistics on all-cause death numbers, which aren't responsive here. PLEASE be careful with your numbers, people, those values include folks who died of car accidents and heroin overdoses, etc...) where the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines are generally believed to have caused death, and 3 (three) deaths in the US from clotting associated with the J&J vaccine. It strains credulity that two of those three were associates of yours, sorry.

In fact IIRC the overall death rate (i.e. just counting how many people died of all causes following vaccine administration) has, in fact (this is hardly surprising given the general pandemic environment) been shown to be significantly lower for the vaccinated.

I don't know what you're citing, but it doesn't track with existing science, sorry.

> I would be fired for even sharing my opinions.

My guess is it would be your factual assertions and not your "opinions" that would get you in trouble.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#38
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree with you that there are people who cavalierly dismiss the dangers of covid. Don't call it the flu. It's not the flu. It's killed 20x more people than the flu even in the fact of pervasive society-changing mitigation strategies (all while the flu itself has all but gone extinct, remember! All that masking and distance learning actually worked!). It's not the flu. Beyond that, nitpick with my phrasing all you…

> Don't call it the flu. It's not the flu. The original commenter didn't call it the flu as far as I can tell. He wrote: "Is there some reason to expect that covid-19 is different in long term effects than a flu? This study is saying it causes substantial brain damage, right? What possible mechanism is there for this?". Nowhere did he call it the flu. > It's killed 20x more people than the flu even in the fact of per…

Look, nitpick. Claim I'm making a straw man argument, anything you want. All that is fine, and totally on brand for this web site.

Do. Not. Liken. Covid. To. The. Flu.

If you didn't, good! Don't.

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#39
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree with you that there are people who cavalierly dismiss the dangers of covid. Don't call it the flu. It's not the flu. It's killed 20x more people than the flu even in the fact of pervasive society-changing mitigation strategies (all while the flu itself has all but gone extinct, remember! All that masking and distance learning actually worked!). It's not the flu. Beyond that, nitpick with my phrasing all you…

Not disagreeing that Covid19 is a much more lethal disease, can you point to some reference that compares covid death to flu related death (prior to covid).

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

Worst season in recent memory was 61k deaths among influenza patients. Last year saw 600k americans die of covid.

Meanwhile flu fatalities cratered due to the pandemic response. Full data isn't available yet, but this site has some details (e.g. pediatric flu deaths dropped between 37x and 199x -- there was ONE child who died of the flu last year):

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm

Re: Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 in UK Biobank

#40
post #3

This sort of thing is one of the more disturbing things to me about COVID-19, and why I wish there was a less exclusive focus on death in talking about the pandemic. Clearly that's important but there's these hugely significant problems not captured by focusing solely on death.

Is there some reason to expect that covid-19 is different in long term effects than a flu? This study is saying it causes substantial brain damage, right? What possible mechanism is there for this?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN