But as two new studies published in the past week show, severe COVID isn’t the only risk faced by those with the disease. New findings in JAMA Psychiatry find that levels of mental illness such as depression, anxiety and self-harm are elevated after a COVID-19 diagnosis. Additionally, a new study published in Scientific Reports found that patients who lost their sense of smell after a COVID infection saw long-term structural changes to their brains as well as a tendency to more impulsive behaviors.
What! Wow. I didn’t know that, you’re telling me now for the first time.
That is “mild” i’m afraid. Everything about how covid is normalized in our culture now is fucked. If you told someone in 2018 “oh i had a mild cold, it was fine, btw i can’t walk up a flight of stairs without being winded and i can’t taste or smell anything” they’d freak out and tell you to go to a specialist and berate you for not taking your health seriously. Now it’s like “oh yeah no big deal mild case i just have pre-heart-attack symptoms five times a weak lol”