This Week in COVID: Covid Brain Wreck, Mask-Optional DEI Initiatives and more

With COVID-19 pandemic seemingly fading from public consciousness, I thought I’d inaugurate a new series of posts that try and highlight some important readings from the previous week or so around the idea that COVID is still out there and still an active threat to the health and wellbeing of the population. Some of the topics will be Long COVID, health effects, masks and vaccine mandates, and general interest.

My aim is to highlight five to ten posts, every week or so. Some could be media articles or blog posts and some could be peer-reviewed research articles.

My COVID Information Series

• Around the Web: Women in Science May Suffer Lasting Career Damage from COVID-19
• Around the Web: Scholarly Communications in the Age of the Coronavirus
• COVID-19 Resources for Canada & Ontario: Advocacy, Data, Visualizations, Health & Safety Standards, News
• Around the Web: COVID is airborne so enough with the bullshit hygiene theatre
• Around the Web: COVID-19 is airborne and hygiene theatre is the wrong response
• Around the Web: Using CO2 monitors to indirectly measure air quality and help reduce COVID-19 transmission 
• The COVID Information Series: Keep mask mandates!  Masks are vital to stop the spread of COVID-19! Read the research!
• The COVID Information Series: The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Not Over!
• The COVID Information Series: Long COVID and the very real risks of long term health problems arising from COVID-19 infection
• The COVID Information Series: Scientific evidence supporting continued COVID protections such as mask and vaccine mandates at universities 
• The COVID Information Series: Dear Joe Biden, The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Not Over!

• The Coming COVID Brain Wreck? | The Tyee 
  • “Their conclusion, as summed up in a press release: “Those who have been infected with the virus are at increased risk of developing a range of neurological conditions in the first year after the infection. The conditions are not trivial. They include strokes. Cognitive and memory problems. Migraine headaches. Epileptic seizures. Involuntary muscle contractions. Hearing and vision abnormalities. Balance and co-ordination difficulties. Depression and anxiety. And symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease.”

• The Mask-Optional DEI Initiative | Bill of Health 
  • “The rejection of masking during an ongoing pandemic by institutions of higher education and their leaders is clear evidence of how disabled people are regularly and purposefully excluded from full participation in colleges and universities. It follows, then, that necessary conversations about access — access in an ever-evolving sense, which anticipates and responds to the complex, changing, conflicting needs of disabled students, faculty, and staff — are not formally occurring and are unlikely to occur at these institutions. Instead, colleges and universities are explicitly communicating a rejection of the ethical obligation to protect disabled, at-risk, and chronically-ill students, staff, and faculty, as well as disabled, at-risk, and chronically-ill family members and people in the larger community.”

• “The Pool of People Who are Susceptible is Different Now”: An Open Letter to My Friends 
  • “And, when you, reader, friends, eat in restaurants, attend concerts and fairs and movies and stage shows and sports events, travel via air, take transit, all without a mask or a care in the world – yes, we are bombarded with all of your selfies, every single day -, send your kids to school without masks? What you are saying is that you believe that “other” people don’t matter as much as the things you want to do, or don’t want to do in the case of masking. That their deaths would be acceptable. That the death of any susceptible person is a worthy price to pay for you to get to do those things. You are actively endorsing and contributing to ‘a little bit of spread’ and ‘a little bit of dead’.”

• Dementia May Lead To Greater Risk Of Covid Death Than Previously Thought, Study Suggests 
  • “Patients with dementia and degenerative neurological diseases were more likely to die from Covid than those suffering from several other pre-existing conditions, according to a study in Biology Methods and Protocols that followed 300,000 Veterans Affairs patients with coronavirus infections.”

• Big COVID-19 waves may be coming, new Omicron strains suggest | Science | AAAS 
  • “Nearly 3 years into the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 faces a formidable challenge: finding new ways around the immunity humans have built up through vaccines and countless infections. Worrisome new data show it is up to the challenge. Several new and highly immune-evasive strains of the virus have caught scientists’ attention in recent weeks; one or more may well cause big, new COVID-19 waves this fall and winter.”

• Lingering cardiac involvement in previously well people after mild COVID-19 | Nature Medicine
  • “Serial heart MRI scans conducted in previously well people with mild initial COVID-19 illness suggest that lingering cardiac symptoms may be explained, at least in part, by ongoing mild cardiac inflammation.”