2022-03-08 General

Pathology

Yesterday, I posted this preprint which talked about how pre- and post-COVID brain scans showed changes in the brain. Yesterday I saw a Twitter thread talking about that study. The author said that a loss of brain matter is normal when you lose your sense of smell, due to the circuits not being exercised. (Apparently brain matter is use-it-or-lose it.)

Mitigation Measures

This report says that school districts in Arkansas which had mask mandates had 23% lower COVID-19 rates than districts without mandates.

Long COVID

This Twitter thread talked about how there are a huge number of diseases which are actually results of long-term infection. What we commonly think of as “polio” actually is “long polio” — only 0.5% of polio cases end up with paralysis. Viruses and parasites which lead to illnesses which were mentioned in the thread:

  • long polio is paralysis
  • long strep throat (which sometimes becomes scarlet fever) is Rheumatic heart disease and PANS/PANDAs
  • long chicken pox is shingles and Ramsay Hunt Syndrome
  • long HIV is AIDS
  • long HPV is cervical cancer, anal cancer, oropharyngeal cancer, penile cancer, vaginal cancer, and/or vulvar cancer
  • long H. pylori is stomach cancer
  • long Epstein-Barr virus is mono, multiple sclerosis, and certain types of lymphoma
  • long hepatitis B or C is liver cancer
  • long herpes virus 8 is Kaposi sarcoma
  • long schistosomiasis is bladder cancer
  • long onchoceriasis is bile duct cancer, blindness
  • long Chagas disease is chagas cardiomyopathy
  • long trachoma is blindness
  • long prion disease is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
  • long Lyme is many things, including lupus
  • long measles is Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis
  • long syphilis is dementia and infertility
  • long Epstein Barr Virus or long coxsackie or long flu or long dengue they think is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
  • long TB is brain and/or lung damage
  • long sepsis is post-sepsis syndrome
  • long West Nile is um they don’t have a name for it, so um long West Nile
  • long Ebola is um long Ebola
  • long SARS is um long SARS
  • long rubella is blindness, deafness, heart problems, intellectual disability, liver damage, spleen damage
  • long E. coli and/or long noroviris is irritable bowel syndrome
  • long herpes simplex 1 (“cold sores”), herpes simplex 2 (“herpes”), and/or chichen pox (which is also a herpes virus) is Mollaret’s meningitis
  • long histoplasmosis is… many things (I believe my mother’s deafness was long histoplasmosis)
  • long bacterial plaque is gingivitis
  • long Strep mutans and Lactobacilli is dental cavities
  • long red complex bacteria is periodontis
  • long nipah virus is encephalitis
  • long viral hemorrhagic fevers and cytomegalovirus is deafness
  • long enteroviruses is Type 1 diabetes (maybe)
  • long mumps is male infertility
  • long human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 is leukaemia and/or HAM/TSP
  • long rheumatic fever gives heart murmurs
  • long parvovirus P19 is arthritis and hydrops fetalis
  • long Hendra disease is long Hendra disease (aka leprosy)
  • long viral pneumonia gives asthma
  • long Mycobacterium leprae is Hansen’s disease
  • (in cats) long Feline Coronavirus is Feline Infectious Peritonitis

Updated 2022-05-18:

Updated 2022-06-15:

Addendum 2022-06-22: this is an interesting article talking about infectious diseases causing what we think of as non-infectious conditions.

Addendum 2022-06-27: long flu is linked to Alzheimer’s Disease.

Addendum 2022-06-30: long chicken pox can turn into Ramsay Hunt Syndrome.

Addendum 2022-07-27: long melioidosis is chronic melioidosis.

Child Development

Many people (especially anti-maskers) have expressed concern about whether children’s language development. This article says, basically, that it’s not a problem. In particular, they mention that blind kids learn language just fine, and blind kids can’t see any part of anybody’s face at any time. (Also: don’t little kids spend a lot of time at home with their parents, where presumably everybody is unmasked??)


This article says that reading levels (in the USA, but maybe applicable here?) in children are at a 20-year low due to the pandemic.

Recommended Reading

This article talks about the hunt for genetic reasons why some people get infected by COVID-19 and some don’t, despite a lot of exposure.