Denial is quite a river these days. Where else are you going to get a brain imaging study with before and after data on thousands of people? If that's not persuasive and concerning to you I don't think anything will be.
Why should a "study" in the abstract automatically be persuasive and concerning? Scientists get paid to publish studies, so the literature is full of nonsensical studies that show correlations between anything and everything. User timr just explained to you why this specific study cannot be used to conclude anything, but you're saying he's the one in denial?
A study in isolation should not be persuasive. There's a pipeline from idea to hypothesis the theory to fact, which includes many studies with many methodologies.
On the other hand, a handful of studies, one correlational with large n, a few causal, a good theoretical basis, etc. do move us up that pipeline quite a bit.
Mild and asymptomatic cases of COVID19 due seem to cause brain damage leading to brain fog.
- Reports of brain fog in isolation? Psychosomatic.
- Correlational studies? Correlation is not causation.
- Case studies? Anecdotal.
- Extrapolation from olfactory symptoms? Theoretical.
And so on.
Put together, though, it's a pretty strong case. It's not airtight, but it's well into the well-supported theory range.
Define "brain fog". Tell me what the diagnostic criteria are, and how one might make an objective measurement of its presence and magnitude.
Bonus question: tell me how your stated criteria differs from the pre-established diagnostic criteria for depression.
One can survey a random sample of the population, ask them if they have ever "felt the presence of God", and find a strong signal confirming this. It does not make God a diagnostic factor in a medical study.
> tell me how your stated criteria differs from the pre-established diagnostic criteria for depression.
If the person lacks dysphoria or anhedonia, would that satisfy the question? I understand your angle (I think), but for comparison, the last time I had a serious flu I found that even after I felt better, it was extremely difficult to focus at work. For about 3 days, gradually improving each. I suspect that is what people refer to as "brain fog", and I could distinguish it from depression by (among other things) a lack of dysphoria / anhedonia (and generally speaking, other depression signs).
I remember in medical school that when we were interviewing patients receiving chemo they would have us do a neuro exam, and very distinctly remember when one guy got angry at me when he couldn't answer some of my questions. He didn't seem to have depression and nobody told me I was doing it wrong when I said he had "chemo brain". So its certainly a real thing in the general sense, and can certainly be caused by a variety of medical conditions.
I guess a more constructive question would be -- assuming a long term cognitive impact, what (practical) research should these researchers be doing instead? Or what if when they asked about brain fog they _also_ asked about depressive symptoms?
> If the person lacks dysphoria or anhedonia, would that satisfy the question?
No. That is certainly more specific than ~all of what you hear in the media surrounding "brain fog", but you can't define something by what it isn't.
Example: I have the wiggles. I'm not itchy though, and my muscles don't hurt.
OK, great. What are the wiggles?
> the last time I had a serious flu I found that even after I felt better, it was extremely difficult to focus at work. For about 3 days, gradually improving each. I suspect that is what people refer to as "brain fog"
Could be! The problem is, until there's a definition (and ideally some kind of objective measure), all of these self-reports are blind people describing different parts of an elephant.
> I guess a more constructive question would be -- assuming a long term cognitive impact, what (practical) research should these researchers be doing instead? Or what if when they asked about brain fog they _also_ asked about depressive symptoms?
We could start by simply using established terminology and testing. What percentage of patients reporting "brain fog" show up as depressed using a standard screen?
It's literally the easiest thing in the world to do...why isn't it done?
> Where else are you going to get a brain imaging study with before and after data on thousands of people?
Why does the size of the study matter so much if the endpoint of the study is absurd, the gathering process was a fishing expedition, and the whole thing is subject to confirmation bias?
Even if you believe that these researchers are finding real signals in these MRI scans (which I don't automatically grant; even they admit that some of the "pathologies" they've identified aren't significant, and they didn't pre-declare the endpoints anyway, so you can't rely on conventional statistical significance thresholds), the fact that they know the outcome for each subject hopelessly poisons the data.
> Denial is quite a river these days.
People have a habit of inventing fictions they believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore a truth they cannot accept.