The weird idea that captured my brain at some strange hour last night: are we actually living in the zombie apocalypse? Hear me out… we assume, based on The Walking Dead and George Romero, that some sort of killer virus will turn most of our friends and neighbors into a ravening horde of deteriorating animate carcasses. But what if it’s more subtle than that and proceeds more slowly?
One of the ideas I have been playing with in regards to new book essay subjects is that we all have long covid. Over the last five years, the vast majority of us have had at least one infection and many of us have had two or three. Personally, I have had two of which I am aware. It’s possible I had a third one in there that was subclinical but I really don’t know. As the disease is so new, we still have only the vaguest ideas regarding long term effects of infection. It’s a vascular disease. It infiltrates any tissue with high amounts of capillary blood flow. Lungs, of course, have a huge amount, so this is why it tended to cause pulmonary problems and why we think of it, erroneously, as a respiratory disease, but cardiac, renal and central nervous system issues are also well documented.
There are rare cases of serious brain issues such as demyelination following covid infection. Most of the brain issues described are of the ‘brain fog’ variety. Memory not working quite as well as it should along with feelings of mild confusion or somnolence. But there are some other interesting things that are coming to light. Population studies have shown small, but measurable declines in cognitive function post covid. We aren’t thinking quite as well as a species as we were. The objective declines aren’t huge, but even small changes in an organ as complex as the human brain may have significant effect in aggregate. I’ve seen studies showing that traffic accident rates are up, people are more likely to be irritable and have explosive anger outbursts, and there is a decline in empathic social skills after covid infection.
If you look at the areas of the brain most affected by Covid, there are two that stand out. The first is the hippocampus, which is basically a memory control/switching center. It is one of the areas of the brain most damaged by Alzheimer’s disease leading to the characteristic memory loss displayed by those who have it. The feelings of brain fog may be coming by mild dysfunction here. The second is a portion of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex. This portion of the brain has multiple higher functions in regards to integration of memory and behavior including decision making, recognition of error, and emotional regulation. Perhaps most of our brains have been infected with a virus which has subtly changed them so that we are more likely to feel like we are in the right (even when we are not), that our beliefs are the true ones, that others are to be discounted (decreasing empathy), and that anger is the appropriate emotional response to challenge and conflict. Perhaps the politics of the moment are being driven by biology and we can no longer hang together as a species as well as we once did due to brand new physiologic change. The things I think about in the wee hours…
Covid continues to spread. I’ve had a number of patients and friends with it. There’s an estimated 500,000 new infections a day in the US according to some sources so you’re likely to run into it. I’m not worried about covid these days. I’m well vaccinated and relatively healthy and should recover quickly. I’m worried about long covid and losing health and function. The rough chances for long covid per infection are about 10% if unvaccinated and about 2-3% if vaccinated. This is why I get my boosters. With so much of the public health infrastructure down while the new administration rips out the fake crisis of DEI root and stem (and how we’re supposed to be able to tailor public health programs to various populations without being able to parse them, I don’t know), I can’t find the information on covid as easily as I once did. But I still look. It’s even harder to find decent information on H5N1 bird flu which is apparently undergoing a certain amount of mutation as it spreads through dairy herds. (Price of milk skyrocketing in 3…2…1… and I wouldn’t dream of indulging in the current fashion for raw milk). Will it become our next pandemic? Who knows. If it does, I guess the Accidental Plague Diaries will crank up again.
On the Accidental Political Diary front, the big bombshell of the last twenty-four hours or so was the president and the prime minister of Israel lobbing out the idea of the USA taking over the Gaza strip and redeveloping it into some sort of Dubai on the Mediterranean. I’m paying little attention to this, coming out of the mouth of a man who bankrupted a casino in Atlantic City. His ability to develop twenty five miles of coastline half a world away is minimal at best. It’s simply the latest outrage distraction to keep press and people focused away from the fact that his administration has repeatedly flouted the constitution and the rule of law since installation and that neither congress, the opposition, or the courts, seems terribly interested in bringing it to heel. I have to assume that Elon Musk now has compromised pretty much every governmental data system in DC allowing who knows what malicious actors entry, and has installed back door code everywhere which will allow him and his minions to continue fiddling about even if they are given the bums rush. If you’ve ever paid taxes, gotten a direct deposit from the government, received social security or Medicare benefits, figure all your personal and banking data has been exposed. I’m hoping that in a pool of 340 million, mine won’t float to the surface when a bunch of Belarusian hackers start siphoning all of our assets away.
I’m supposed to be writing reflections on events of five years ago tonight. I’m not. I’m trying to work up the courage to try and figure out where Edward the polter-cat peed on the floor (likely as a message to me of some sort) as I can smell it and I better clean it up before it soaks into carpet or flooring. Bad kitty.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 