Charlie Stross
Thought for the day:
If I was a mad science supervillain designing a bioweapon to exterminate my enemies, I couldn't do better than come up with one that looks a bit like the common cold (to those it doesn't kill), reinfects victims repeatedly, causes more low-level brain damage with each reinfection, and inflicts short-term memory loss so they forget all about it.
Remember, there is no pandemic. MWAHAHAHAHA!
(And this is why Brain Worms Kennedy is taking over public health in the USA.)
Nemo
@cstross
It doesn't cause low level brain damage on each reinfection.
Only acute (think hospital) has sometimes neurological consequences. It's also unclear how long these (can) last.
But if you get common cold symptoms, you're fine :)
Charlie Stross
@iinavpov Hello? Have you ever had any cognitive impairment from COVID19? That's low-level brain damage at work, right there. (The clinical reports generally only contain data on illness bad enough to hospitalize people and generate symptoms that a clinician stubbed their diagnostic toe on.)
Nemo
@cstross
The first time, yes. The second time perhaps, the third time no. Which is the normal way immunity develops in relatively healthy humans.
Damage implies something cumulative, which it isn't, unless you're immunodepressed (in which case, yes, this is Bad™).
If every time you get COVID it's as bad as the first time, you're in an at risk group. I don't have advice, but be careful.
Charlie Stross
@iinavpov Problem is, this virus mutates like crazy and each strain is different, with different immune evasion mechanisms and symptoms. But at root, it causes inflammation of the vascular epithelial lining, which means ALL blood vessels, including the ones in the brain. We're in the fifth year of this plague and the long COVID cases are still rising …
Charlie Stross
@strypey @JulesJones Have you noticed how much more bad driving/road rage there is these days? Remember, unreasonable outbursts of rage/anger are early symptoms of dementia, and there are indications that COVID19 may accelerate brain aging and cause some varieties of dementia …
Strypey
(1/?)
@JulesJones
> the worsening of my memory problems might not be just a flare-up of my chronic migraine symptoms
... or it might.
In the absence of smoking gun evidence of a causal connection, what we have is a correlation. Between increased incidence of impaired memory, and the pandemic. Which was a social phenomenon as much as an epidemiological one, and we know chronic stress and trauma can impair memory.
Data is not the plural of anecdote and all that, but ...
@cstross
JulesJones
@cstross I thought I'd escaped long COVID, until Farah mentioned her memory problems in her speech at Eastercon. Then it dawned on me that the worsening of my memory problems might not be just a flare-up of my chronic migraine symptoms.
I'd also had an increase in "putting the milk away in the mug cupboard" episodes. Pterry wasn't the only person with early onset dementia I've known, so I noticed that. I was a lot better after a year. Some people won't be, and won't notice.
Charlie Stross
@jonpsp @iinavpov Three vaccinations is definitely not enough—protection wanes after about 3 months. Ideally you need to get a booster every six months using the latest strain, and "ideally" is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence.
Jon PENNYCOOK
@iinavpov @cstross Each time I get Covid-19 (third time was last month, and I have had three vaccinations), it has been worse than the time before.
Charlie Stross
@aspragg *Or* they might be Doctor Impossible, with an IQ of 600 to start with (so he can afford to lose a couple of hundred IQ points, no big deal). *Or* the Martian Overlord (who by definition is immune to human-brain-munching viruses). *Or* they might be HAL9000. Or, or …
aspragg
@cstross Presumably, you'd also design it to *only* target your enemies. Or, at least make it not target your allies.
The only kind of mad science supervillain who would create and release a bioweapon that inflicts brain damage in the least-obvious-to-its-victims way possible, to everyone *including themselves*, would have to be a complete and utter bonehead, or while experimenting in their lab have suffered some kind of brain damage that they weren't really awa.... oohhhhhhh!
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