COVID-19 Could Mess With Survivors’ Brains for Years to Come
Recent studies indicate SARS-CoV-2’s impacts on the brain—from memory lapses and depression to strokes and seizures—could plague survivors for years, decades, even generations.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty
As right-wing coronavirus truthers tirelessly crusade in spreading verifiably false ideas that wearing a CDC-recommended face mask or even getting a COVID-19 nasal swab test can cause brain damage, study after study detailing SARS-CoV-2’s neurological and psychiatric effects is making it clear: The only way masks can cause brain damage is if you refuse to wear them.
Of those hospitalized with COVID-19, a third or more display some sort of neuropsychiatric symptom: temporary sensory impairment (yes, loss of smell is terrifyingly brain-related); headaches; dizziness or weakness; behavioral or mood changes like depression, anxiety, insomnia, PTSD; and, toward the more life-threatening end of the scale, brain inflammation, seizures, days- or weeks-long comas, even paralysis. Among those not hospitalized—including young people who were “barely sick” and children who were never sick at all—doctors have observed strokes, which can cause speech, memory, and other psychological problems, as well as MIS-C, a bizarre new syndrome linked to the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies with serious neurological symptoms.
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