If It Seems Like Everyone Is Getting Dumber, It’s Because They Are

The stunning lower IQ numbers coming out of long-term COVID-19 studies

“Severe COVID-19 that requires hospitalization or intensive care may result in cognitive deficits and other brain damage that are equivalent to 20 years of aging.”¹

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This quote stems from an alarming article² that appeared in The Conversation last year by Ziyad Al-Aly, who is Chief of Research and Development at VA St. Louis Health Care System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

You may remember the term “brain fog” that has been used to describe the long-term effects of COVID. For many of us, it’s been something we relate to, but it’s also an easy thing to dismiss, like drinking’s effect on the old thinking box.

Image licensed from Adobe Stock; duotone applied by author

But now, there’s empirical evidence that COVID-19 has had long-term effects on our wormy-looking thinking machine. Two studies in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine reveal some scary stuff. Check out these results from the Conversation article that the studies have found:

Imaging studies done in people before and after their COVID-19 infections show shrinkage of brain volume and altered brain structure after infection.

A study of people with mild to moderate COVID-19 showed significant prolonged inflammation of the brain and changes that are commensurate with seven years of brain aging.

As I mentioned, there is strong evidence that severe COVID symptoms requiring hospitalization have been affecting the “age” of people by twenty years. Twenty.

There’s more.

Studies indicate that COVID-19 fuses brain cells. Brain cells aren’t supposed to be fused. As the article states:

This effectively short-circuits brain electrical activity and compromises function.

I hate to be that guy, but it gets worse. Autopsies are finding coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 virus cells in the brain, although researchers haven’t been able to determine if that’s the specific cause of all the brain shenanigans.

Furthermore, according to the article:

COVID-19 can also disrupt the blood brain barrier, the shield that protects the nervous system — which is the control and command center of our bodies — making it “leaky.”

I’m no health expert, and my high school biology tests were usually returned to me by the teacher with big red question marks, but I do remember that when I was a rowdy young high school lad hearing that PCP gives you brain lesions, it was enough for me to stay away from the stuff.

So when someone includes “leaky” and “brain” in the same sentence, that gets my attention faster than the phrase “anal leakage,” which is pretty damn fast.

If you’re over 60 like me, COVID has some extra treats for you, according to the story:

A large preliminary analysis pooling together data from 11 studies encompassing almost 1 million people with COVID-19 and more than 6 million uninfected individuals showed that COVID-19 increased the risk of development of new-onset dementia in people older than 60 years of age.

Peer-reviewed articles are also pointing to vascular issues within the brain that researchers believe are tied to COVID-19.

This is of particular interest to me, thanks to the way my brain blew its top in November 2024, just a day before Kamala lost her election (if that’s not proof that some of us are clairvoyant, I don’t know what is).

One of the miracles of modern medicine, besides MRIs that provide neurologists with detailed maps of the brain, is online charting. There, I found that my blood panels showed none of the usual contributors to stroke, such as high cholesterol or obscene sodium counts. Everything was very mid. Nothing in the red zone.

Luckily, my stroke didn’t affect my cognitive thinking (well, maybe it did — you tell me, since I’d be the last to know). It was in the back of my brain. Unluckily, it has turned my vision, which was already pretty lame, into a daily adventure. My experience has had me thinking again about this article, which I read when it first appeared.

If I’ve ever contracted COVID, I didn’t know it. The only possibility was in December 2020, when I had a cold while everyone in my circle was down for the count with COVID. I’m a regular vaxxer, so cold symptoms made sense, even then.

Testing kits weren’t yet available, and the only testing stations available were busy public places that led me to think that if I didn’t have COVID, I would soon after waitiing in line at a testing station swarming with COVID infectees. So I skipped it.

It’s wild conjecture on my part to guess that my cranial whale spout was related to long COVID. And if it was, I’m not sure what kind of preventive measures I could have taken.

But all of this should be a cautionary tale about the importance of taking good care of our bodies at all times, no matter our age.

Here’s the worst part, folks. The IQ stuff:³

Most recently, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine assessed cognitive abilities such as memory, planning and spatial reasoning in nearly 113,000 people who had previously had COVID-19. The researchers found that those who had been infected had significant deficits in memory and executive task performance.

In the same study, those who had mild and resolved COVID-19 showed cognitive decline equivalent to a three-point loss of IQ. In comparison, those with unresolved persistent symptoms, such as people with persistent shortness of breath or fatigue, had a six-point loss in IQ.

Those who had been admitted to the intensive care unit for COVID-19 had a nine-point loss in IQ. Reinfection with the virus contributed an additional two-point loss in IQ, as compared with no reinfection.

Lest you think this is an old guy problem and you’re thinking, “Charles, I feel for ya’ bud, but maybe it’s time to step aside and let the kids run things,” I’ll add this little bit of additional info from this Conversation article from hell:

A recent analysis of the U.S. Current Population Survey showed that after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an additional 1 million working-age Americans reported having “serious difficulty” remembering, concentrating or making decisions than at any time in the preceding 15 years. Most disconcertingly, this was mostly driven by younger adults between the ages of 18 to 44.

Sorry, but octogenarians are going to continue to rule the planet because, by the time y’all are 50, you won’t be able to recite multiplication tables.

I believe this article explains a lot: From the fact that Trump somehow tricked an electorate to vote for him, again, to almost everything the Supreme Court does, to crudely drawn names on last season’s see-through baseball uniforms.⁴

Twitter/ @DreKnott

We’re getting dumber. The science says so.

Can this be fixed?

Researchers are beginning to demonstrate a correlation between physical activity and renewing and rebuilding your neurons.⁵

According to Science:

Many large studies suggest staying active and fit throughout life lowers the risk of memory problems later on. For example, a recent project tracked more than 1000 Swedish women over 4 decades and found that for those judged to have "high" cardiovascular fitness on entering the study—as measured by the maximum workload they could handle on a stationary cycle machine before exhaustion—the onset of dementia was delayed, on average, by 9.5 years compared to those with "medium" fitness.

The article points out that other factors, such as genetics, could contribute to the success of the study participants.

Exercise is good for you, anyway, so it obviously can’t hurt to get that blood flowing.

There is also some evidence, although not much yet, that mind exercises help build neurons.

When you’re my age, you’re doing mental gymnastics, anyway. Maybe younger folks need to start thinking this way, too. For example: I still do software coding. Me, myself, and I may be too small a sample size to qualify as a peer-reviewed study, but I notice a difference in memory when I keep my brain busy.

So make sure you do stuff to keep your brain happy. Think of your brain as a muscle.

Memory-related exercises, like learning a new language, are good, too.

In other words, don’t give up!

The science may not, in the long run, prove an association between mind exercises and neuron development and nurturing. But can it it hurt?

Notes

If you read The Conversation article, you’ll notice that I’ve quoted liberally. Like all Conversation articles, you can repost the entire article if you wish on your own blog, as it is licensed under a Creative Commons license. Just be sure to follow their instructions on how to reproduce if you feel the urge to spread the word.

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Footnotes

1. Michael, Benedict, Greta Wood, Brendan Sargent, Zain-Ul-Abideen Ahmad, Kukatharamini Tharmaratnam, Cordelia Dunai, Franklyn Egbe, et al. 2024. “Post-COVID Cognitive Deficits at One Year Are Global and Associated with Elevated Brain Injury Markers and Grey Matter Volume Reduction: National Prospective Study.” Research Square (Research Square), January. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3818580/v1.

2. Ziyad Al-Aly. 2024. “Mounting Research Shows That COVID-19 Leaves Its Mark on the Brain, Including Significant Drops in IQ Scores.” The Conversation. February 28, 2024. https://theconversation.com/mounting-research-shows-that-covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-including-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-224216.

3. IQ tests are rightly maligned by many social scientists for their ethnic and cultural biases, but this study involved identical population segments, a fact that established a valid baseline.

4. Stopera, Matt. 2024. “The 21 Funniest Reactions to MLB’s See-through Pants.” BuzzFeed. February 23, 2024. https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/people-are-absolutely-roasting-major-league-baseballs-new.

5. Servick, Kelly. 2018. “How Does Exercise Keep Your Brain Young?” Science, September. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav3283.