https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2024/08/21/innovationrx-covid-may-be-causing-mental-illness-and-rewiring-our-brains/

But as two new studies published in the past week show, severe COVID isn’t the only risk faced by those with the disease. New findings in JAMA Psychiatry find that levels of mental illness such as depression, anxiety and self-harm are elevated after a COVID-19 diagnosis. Additionally, a new study published in Scientific Reports found that patients who lost their sense of smell after a COVID infection saw long-term structural changes to their brains as well as a tendency to more impulsive behaviors.

What! Wow. I didn't know that, you're telling me now for the first time.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    25 days ago

    Oh hey it's the exact reason that I, someone already suffering severe ADHD and bipolar, did not want to contract covid ever no matter what, which few if any people have ever taken seriously or acknowledged as a rational and well founded extrapolation of potential consquences from known circumstances.

    Seriously since the long covid symptoms and brain damage became clear I've been saying "I am taking serious precautions because covid causes symptoms similar to the ones that are already wrecking my quality of life and I do not want to compound those symptoms with further damage" and people just absolutely do not understand this and think I'm overreacting and it's like what the entire fuck what the fuck what the fuck everyone knows how fucked my life is due to bipolar i never shut up about it why don't they understand that even a "mild infection" from "it's just a flu" is a huge fucking threat to my wellbeing why don't they understand why don't they care AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    Either way, on my last day of paxlovid, last dose is tomorrow morning. Gonna start testing and see if I test clear so I can get the three days iwth no positives started.

    If you can get Paxlovid do it. Medicaid still covers it. As soon as you get a positive test call your doctor or a clinic or your pharmacist, tell them you have thirty comorbidities, and get it. It shut down my symptoms within 18 hours. It stops viral replication, and idk for sure but in my amateur opinion less replication means less damage means better outcomes long term.

    • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
      ·
      25 days ago

      Man, I just started testing negative yesterday after having it for almost two weeks. Thought I was in the clear so I tried to do some downed tree cutting and moving, I was gassed immediately. Even after I quit and went inside it took me at least an hour to fully catch my breath, hands were tingly, felt light headed.

      First COVID infection, thought it was pretty mild.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        24 days ago

        That is "mild" i'm afraid. Everything about how covid is normalized in our culture now is fucked. If you told someone in 2018 "oh i had a mild cold, it was fine, btw i can't walk up a flight of stairs without being winded and i can't taste or smell anything" they'd freak out and tell you to go to a specialist and berate you for not taking your health seriously. Now it's like "oh yeah no big deal mild case i just have pre-heart-attack symptoms five times a weak lol"

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          24 days ago

          Yeh. Get one of those pulse oximeter things, it can give you actual hard numbers about how your cardiovascular system is doing and how much oxygen you're getting.

          • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
            hexagon
            ·
            24 days ago

            I'm wary about those nowadays. They're good indicators of blood oxygen levels, but you can still have post-covid cerebral hypoxia that the oximeter isn't gonna tell you about. doomer

            Rest really is best.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      24 days ago

      I send as much energy as I can for your endurance and recovery spirit-bomb

      I can't help but wonder how the rest of your Disco Elysium play went.

      In my first "blind" play where I tried to enter world knowing almost nothing about it, I wound up being a Sorry Cop. dubois-depressed

    • Gucci_Minh [he/him]
      ·
      24 days ago

      Seconding paxlovid, I had awful side effects worse than the disease but it got me better in a week.

      Get well soon.

      • bigboopballs [he/him]
        ·
        24 days ago

        Seconding paxlovid, I had awful side effects worse than the disease but it got me better in a week.

        what side-effects did you get?

        • Gucci_Minh [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          23 days ago

          Everything tasted like iron/copper, heavy nausea, and a seemingly random alternation between diarrhea and constipation. Would not recommend the experience, but it did get rid of the COVID so it's worth

          • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
            hexagon
            ·
            23 days ago

            Any chance you're lactose intolerant? I've heard that's been a thing.

            An alternative to paxlovid I've heard is metformin, but you gotta find a doc willing to prescribe it.

  • Cammy [she/her]
    ·
    25 days ago

    Two weeks of actual quarantining could have prevented this. But we needed to keep Chili's open. Hope it was worth it, America. amerikkka

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      24 days ago

      So much human suffering and death all in the name of "normalcy" grillman

      Said it before, I'll say it again: fuck you very much @RonJeremyCorbyn@hexbear.net for trying to further spread a plague under pretenses of "loving us all" like a fucking Nurgle cultist.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          23 days ago

          He played the part of plague rat one New Year night and called anyone that didn't go out that night and party to his satisfaction ("kiss a stranger" and the like), whether they had concerns about covid or otherwise, "shut-ins" that were "not normal" and were "embarrassing leftism." Some mysterious accounts showed up to bully and harass those "shut-ins" for days afterward long after he vanished in a puff of douchebaggery like the plague rat he was.

    • PurrLure [she/her]
      ·
      24 days ago

      NOOOOO MY FIVE DOLLAR MARGS!

      frothingfash MY GEL-A-PEN-O POPPERS!

      America has truly fallen, unlike these treat prices. stonks-down national-mourning-period

  • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    25 days ago

    as well as a tendency to more impulsive behaviors.

    COVID is genuinely doing to humans what toxoplasmosis does to cats mice. Love that for us.

    Edit: I was sleepy and wrote cats instead of mice

    • The_sleepy_woke_dialectic [he/him]
      ·
      25 days ago

      To mice, it rewires their brains so they spend more time in dangerous places and are more likely to get eaten. It's a good strategy that unironically will make covid spread more. Not that it's had long enough to develop that as a specific "strategy" insofar as evolution "strategizes", it just stumbled upon it.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        24 days ago

        I've read it destroys their natural aversion to the smell of predator urine, too.

    • QuillcrestFalconer [he/him]
      ·
      25 days ago

      Actually I just read an article today talking about toxoplasmosis and it seems, according to more recent research, that it can also cause infected people to act more impulsively

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
      ·
      25 days ago

      It'd be funny if the problem of late-capitalist isolation and alienation was solved by COVID evolving to make people hyper social.

    • QuietCupcake [any, they/them]
      ·
      25 days ago

      what toxoplasmosis does to cats

      Not to be pedantic but it doesn't really effect cats. Cats are the primary host and a major part of its lifecyle, but it really only effects the intermediate hosts like mice and people as far as behavioral changes and pathology.

  • FloridaBoi [he/him]
    ·
    25 days ago

    there was an article a little while ago that looked at driving behavior and how covid may be a cause of bad driving

    • LocalOaf [they/them]
      ·
      25 days ago

      Anecdotally this completely tracks in my area, drivers overall are noticeably more aggressive and impulsive since covid started and more cars are clearly poorly maintained leaking oil or backfiring or have really noisy exhausts

      • SoyViking [he/him]
        ·
        25 days ago

        more cars are clearly poorly maintained

        That could also be the cost of living crisis making people postpone car repairs

      • FloridaBoi [he/him]
        ·
        24 days ago

        If it is Covid or the social fabric fraying, either way people have become super assholes in everyday life

        • LocalOaf [they/them]
          ·
          24 days ago

          yea

          Just saw some asshole driving by in a residential neighborhood that has a 25mph speed limit trying to do 40 laying on his horn at the car in front of him in traffic for no goddamn reason

          I'm kind of surprised road rage shootings aren't more common in the US given how many angry fucking morons and guns there are in a place where going everywhere by car is nearly required in 99% of the country

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            24 days ago

            You know...

            Maybe the relative lack of violence in the us is bc usaians largely view guns as symbols, rather than as actual weapons? Hmm.

            • LocalOaf [they/them]
              ·
              24 days ago

              A lot of it is the kind of performative tough guy disingenuous angry macho bullshit where they want to be belligerent at someone without actually wanting a fight

              As thinky-felix pretty much said before, it's the "BRO, YOU'RE FUCKIN' LUCKY MY KID'S IN THE CAR OR I TOTALLY WOULD'VE KICKED YOUR ASS" kind of guy

              The kind of guy who thinks he could hold his own in the UFC if they pissed him off and got him drunk who has never trained in any martial art and hasn't worked out since highschool ROTC

          • FloridaBoi [he/him]
            ·
            24 days ago

            They happen all the time but I gotta assume that people make at least some calculation that if they’re strapped so is the other person

    • CommunistBear [he/him]
      ·
      25 days ago

      I believe it in a heartbeat. Everyone seems to be so much worse drivers now, it's wild.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]
    ·
    25 days ago

    I wonder if there's some sort of treat toxoplasmosis thing going on where the infected brain is driven to make more infections possible with a droning hum of "treats treats treats" in the background. grillman corona

  • KimJongGoku [comrade/them]
    ·
    25 days ago

    Ugh, covid ruining it for everyone who was mentally ill before it was cool basil-rage-cry Guess I actually have to work on myself now