I am seeing a lot more dementia around me happening at roughly the same time.
I have said repeatedly that COVID rewired my brain. I was infected with the OG strain the January of '20 and then subsequently twice more about 6 months to a year apart despite being vaxxed. I never mentally felt quite right after, and my memory has definitely taken a dive. My wife even comments that my personality changed somewhat.
After COVID, I forget common words in the middle of speaking now which has been fucking fantastic in work environments.
“Hey can you hand me that…um…uh….that piece of paper for coffee grounds?”
“A filter?”
“Yeah that”
This is why I even noticed it in the first place. Being in sales is fun having this problem. It has gotten better the last couple of years but I’m still not as sharp as I was prior. I have also noticed that it’s harder for me to form new memories.
I have exactly the same problem. I also struggle to concentrate now. Pre COVID I could stay focused on the work infront of me for hours. Now I struggle to focus for more than 30min at a time if I’m lucky.
I also got it back in early 2020 when doctors still said, “it can’t be covid, you haven’t been to china”. Now I have the same thing happen as you describe, but I legit don’t know if it’s covid or just getting older. I remember my dad always used to do the same thing when I was a kid, calling things by approximately, but not quite exactly the right term. We always thought it was funny, how his memory could be so close yet so far like that. Now it happens to me all the time. Names of restaurants, actors, random words.
One up side of LLMs is they’re actually pretty decent at figuring out the word I’m thinking of from the description I can manage. The other day I was trying to remember the word “ambitious”, and searched Google for “word that starts with A that means biting off more than you can chew”. The normal results didn’t have it, so I tried AI assist and it got it immediately. Also, in trying to recall this story, I forgot the word again and had to do the exact same exercise :/
I kinda hope it’s not long term covid and just normal getting older shit…
Many things, specially traumatic ones, rewires your brain
Welcome to why I still mask up in public and at work. I don’t have kids, so that attack vector is absent; I don’t often eat out or hang with friends irl.
To the best of my knowledge, my spouse and I are still COVID virgins and I’ll do anything I can to keep it that way.
I’m glad I’ve managed to avoid getting covid, I don’t have the IQ to spare.
I’m truly impressed you dodged it. I got several variants. Confirmed, I dumb.
I’m pleasantly surprised that me and both my daughters all managed to avoid it somehow. Several people we know were not so lucky, and an ex co-worker lost his wife because of it.
We did take it seriously and masked up, got our shots, washed our hands etc and somehow got through it. Was actually kind of nice because I hadn’t been sick at all for over 6 years.
You might be one of the lucky ones that got it and had zero effects. My kid got it and my other half took a test too to see if she had it. She did, and had absolutely no symptoms other than feeling a little tired. Hard to believe after so many years nobody in your family got it, but I suppose it’s possible.
This is the more likely scenario for people who think they never had COVID. Unfortunately, from my understanding, even if asymptomatic you can still have lasting effects. Lovely, isn’t it.
You haven’t gotten through it yet. It’s still here.
Oh for sure. Wouldn’t surprise me if we do get it eventually, but at least with all we know now about it and with all the medical advancements, it’s not quite as big of a deal as it originally was.
Which is especially good for me, because I have pulmonary fibrosis (scarred lungs from working in dusty environments) so it’s something I’d prefer to avoid as long as I can.
God damn UK…
In a closely monitored human challenge study approved by national ethics bodies, they deliberately infected healthy young adults who had no prior immunity with the original strain of the coronavirus. Most developed only mild illness, and none reported lasting problems, but after a year they performed slightly worse, on average, on memory and decision-making tests they’d taken before being infected. The difference was roughly comparable to six IQ points. Although that experiment followed participants for only 12 months, longer-term population studies suggest that cognitive symptoms are among the slowest to resolve after Covid, with full recovery proving elusive for a significant minority even years after infection.
Invaluable research, but crazy it got approved.
6 points is very significant
Let’s sign up all the idiot antivaxxers. Tell them they can prove how superior their immune system is and how easy the infection is. Best case scenario we get more data like this to help us learn.
Do IQs go into negative numbers?
I’m not sure the world can afford them getting any stupider than they already are!
“with full recovery proving elusive,”
FUN. JUST… FUN. FUN STUFF.
Well that’s just fucking terrifying 😞
I just caught the flu last weekend. It also feels like it’s fucked up my brain. I’m so out of it. In not feeling like myself at all. I wonder if the latest flu doesn’t have something similar.
