remember SARS-CoV-2?

I haven't written much about SARS-CoV-2 this year. It's still out there, despite the television news not really mentioning much of anything any more. Today, I wanted to share some tidbits that are interesting or worrying, while simultaneously avoiding my Doom Bingo 2025 topics. I'm also avoiding a lot of old 2022 studies that showed persistent infection in the brain and various kinds of physical damage in the brain after infection. I tried to keep these links a lot more "fresh" and recent.

Click to see a little of the bad news in no particular order...

• Long Covid is, of course, very real.
  "1 in 5 COVID survivors still have symptoms 3 years after severe infection, analysis estimates" (UMN CIDRAP)


• A monoclonal antibody trial (double-blinded, placebo-controlled, and randomized) is expected to complete in a few more weeks. Early word on Reddit is that it produced no significant difference in any outcomes or biomarkers. That's disappointing. I hope to catch official results soon, though, since the researchers will be more accurate in their summary than armchair observers on the internet... like me.
  https://clinicaltrials.ucsf.edu/trial/NCT05877508 (UCSF)


• The New York Times published this article about long-lasting effects of infection on the lungs, gut, brain, heart, and circulatory system. It doesn't mention viral persistence or damage to the immune system. The Wall Street Journal published this article about cognitive decline due to Covid. It's good that news sources this widely read are still writing about it.
  "A Clearer Picture of Covid’s Lasting Effects on the Body" (NYT, free archive copy)
  "Is Covid Rewriting the Rules of Aging? Brain Decline Alarms Doctors" (WSJ, free archive copy)


• And children? Yeah, they're humans too, so they're subject to consequences, just like the rest of us.
  "First-Of-Its-Kind Study Reveals How Long COVID Looks Different In Young Children" (IFLScience)
  "Why Are So Many Children Getting Long COVID?" (Newsweek)
  "Long COVID is Now the Number One Chronic Illness in Children" (The Gauntlet)


• Researchers let the virus mutate repeatedly in a lab to see what would happen. What they found contradicts popular theory that it's just like a flu and will become commonplace and mild. Nope. " 'We gave the virus optimal conditions to keep developing and wanted to see whether it would eventually attenuate—basically weaken—over time. It didn’t,' Dr Foster said."
  "The virus that won’t quit: new research reveals how SARS-CoV-2 evolves" (UNSW)

The good news? There is some.

Click to read the proverbial silver lining...

• This pre-print makes some interesting claims. Researchers found damage to the brainstem and cerebellum that might explain a variety of Long Covid symptoms. Notably, "While viral genetic material was detectable, infected neurons were not observed." This observation gives hope that we can become infected and sometimes not develop persistence within the brain. It might be imported from other areas of the body instead, maybe tissue without immune privilege, so the ongoing infection could eventually be cured. Within the downloaded PDF of the full article, they suggest that the virus damages the immune system, resulting in auto-immune problems that affect these outcomes in the brain, although these details are well above my level of understanding.
  "Brainstem Reduction and Deformation in the 4th Ventricle Cerebellar Peduncles in Long COVID Patients: Insights into Neuroinflammatory Sequelae and “Broken Bridge Syndrome”


• This study offers another kind of hope. "Here we demonstrate extensive endothelial cell (EC) death in the microvasculature of COVID-19 organs. Notably, EC death was not associated with fibrin formation or platelet deposition, but was linked to microvascular red blood cell (RBC) haemolysis." As I interpret it, red blood cells are "jumping on a live grenade" to save you from circulatory system damage, and these kinds of clots might respond to new drugs that current blood thinning drugs don't help. That's good news too, despite the macabre horror of it.
  "Ischaemic endothelial necroptosis induces haemolysis and COVID-19 angiopathy"


• This study notes that "SARS-CoV-2 infection is known to cause changes in the T cell compartment, including differences in expression of receptors associated with exhaustion. While immune responses to infection and vaccination are not equivalent, in the eyes of the public, this concern of immune exhaustion after infection can carry over to vaccination." They found that repeat vaccination does not lead to T-cell exhaustion. That finding is good news. I've mentioned before that spike protein (whether virus or vaccine) carries its own dangers, but at least immune system reduction doesn't seem to result from vaccination, just infection.
  "No evidence of immune exhaustion after repeated SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in vulnerable and healthy populations"

Sorry, that's a lot of information, even after I deleted half a dozen articles that I included on the first draft. :(

I still mask around other people. No matter how many times you've had COVID, it's better not to get it even one more time. Stay safe out there.