The coming storm, part 2
Charlie Stross’s state-of-the-world overview, linked to for the following bit.
c. We’re surrounded by the signs of pervasive low-level brain damage on every side. Having come through an acute pandemic wave of COVID19 in 2020, governments everywhere now seem to be in denial that the pandemic is ongoing—and we have vaccines that diminish the acute impact of the virus from life-threatening to merely “a bad cold”. But it’s not a bad cold! It causes widespread inflammation throughout the lining of the blood vessels, including the brain’s circulatory system. Cognitive damage is apparent and is one of the symptoms of long COVID: it causes symptoms ranging from stroke and Parkinsonism to dyscalcula and even dementia. If you’ve noticed poor, erratic, or angry driving in the past couple of years, road manners are one of the more evident signs of what’s going on. Cars are a proxy for bodies in public space and elderly drivers are notoriously bad; we’re now seeing a lot of aggressive, oblivious, and inexplicably bad driving behaviour routinely, and an uptick in accident rates. There may be other less obvious side-effects: I suspect the angry political discourse is to some extent inflamed by the brain inflammation of the folks who think COVID19 is over.
My bout of Covid last month seems to have made my Long-Covid worse, particularly cognitively. Hopefully it will pass but the last few weeks have been notably harder than I was getting used to.