Covid-19 is a scary disease. There are a number of unhappy possible outcomes of an infection.

• Severe cases can lead to a lengthy hospital stay, if you are lucky enough to live in a place where hospitals are not overwhelmed with large numbers of Covid-19 patients.
• You might require intubation in order to breathe. This is no picnic, but it could save your life.
• You could suffer  painful inflammation of your lungs
• You could suffer the persistence of symptoms, the dreaded “long Covid”.
• You could die.

Those are all bad outcomes, but they are not the worst.

For me, the worst outcome would be to survive a Covid-19 infection, but to have permanently lost a major chunk of my cognitive powers—the ability to think. In a research paper recently published in the online journal EClinicalMedicine titled “Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from COVID-19” researchers describe the cognitive powers that people lost after recovering from a Covid-19 infection.

After recovering from their infection, survivors reported:

• Low energy
• Problems concentrating
• Disorientation
• Difficulty finding the right words

In addition, they can exhibit neurological symptoms including:

• Those arising from stroke
• Encephalopathies
• Inflammatory syndrome
• Micro-bleeds
• Autoimmune responses

Additional neurological consequences can include:

• Sepsis
• Hypoxia
• Immune hyper-stimulation
• Changes to the white matter in the brain
• Other psychological and  psychiatric consequences

Researchers analyzed data from 81,337 individuals who took the Great British Intelligence Test. There were nine tests, each one of which tested a different aspect of thinking. People who had recovered from Covid-19 showed deficits in tests of attention, working memory, problem solving, and emotional processing. The extent of the deficit related to the severity of the respiratory symptoms that the patients had exhibited. The sicker recovered patients had been, the more severe the cognitive deficit they suffered.

What can we conclude from this?

Covid-19 is different from most of the other diseases with which we are familiar. For those other diseases, in most cases, if we survive, we are returned to a state of health similar to what we had before being infected. There are a few exceptions to this, such as with polio, which causes permanent damage that remains after the infection is gone. However, for the most part, viral diseases such as colds or the flu leave us none the worse after they have run their course. This is not the case for Covid-19. “Long Covid” can persist for months and perhaps for years. It is still unknown how long the cognitive deficits described in the cited study persist. Perhaps the lowering of IQ is permanent. Further research is required to answer that question.

This research tells me that I should do everything I can to avoid a Covid-19 infection. I am already fully vaccinated, but that is not enough. Vaccinated people are still subject to contracting a “breakthrough infection.” The vaccine should protect me from severe disease and death if I am infected, but a light or asymptomatic case is still possible. I don’t want any part of that, so on those few occasions when I go out in public, I will be maintaining a social distance of at least six feet, and wearing a mask.

When it comes to cognition, I want to hold on to as many of my “marbles” as I can. I lose enough of them already due to normal aging. There is no need to add to that “brain drain” by contracting an avoidable disease.

BIO:

Allen G. Taylor is a 40-year veteran of the computer industry and the author of over 40 books, including Develop Microsoft HoloLens Apps Now, Get Fit with Apple Watch, Cruise for Free, SQL For Dummies, 9th Edition, Crystal Reports 2008 For Dummies, Database Development For Dummies, Access Power Programming with VBA, and SQL All-In-One For Dummies, Third Edition. He lectures internationally on astronomy, databases, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He also teaches database development and Crystal Reports through a leading online education provider. For the latest news on Allen’s activities, check out his blog at wwwallengtaylor.com or contact him at allen.taylor@ieee.org.