Covid and Neurodegenerative Disorders - A Non-story

Horrendous, right, aren’t you scared, or what? Out of every 100 people who catch Covid, 350 of them (of the 100, that is) get Alzheimer‘s; now that‘s really something!

What drives the Covid-19 scare? Here‘s an example: I just came upon a Twitter discussion of a story from medicalxpress.com on the increased risk of Alzheimer‘s and similar conditions, caused by Covid. The tweet went like this: „The risk of Alzheimer's after a SarsCov2 infection is 350%. For Parkinson's 260%, stroke 270% and a 480% risk of bleeding in the brain.“

Horrendous, right, aren’t you scared, or what? Out of every 100 people who catch Covid, 350 of them (of the 100, that is) get Alzheimer‘s; now that‘s really something!

I checked the source. The headline: „COVID-19 positive patients at higher risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders, new study shows.“ See the headline below, and by the European Academy of Neurology. So it must be true, right?

But then I did that annoying thing I always do; I checked the study. And what did the study say? „The risk of neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular, but not neuroimmune, disorders was increased among COVID-19 positive outpatients compared to COVID-negative outpatients. However, except for ischemic stroke, most neurological disorders were not more frequent after COVID-19 than after other respiratory infections.„

So, in essence, there‘s nothing newsworthy. Covid is no different from the flu or bad cold when it comes to this. But the tweet has been retweeted almost 400 times, there are over 600 likes, 70 comments. Lots of frightened people masking up and shutting the door now I assume. And getting the fourth shot of course. Over nothing.

In Iceland we have a saying: “Often, a feather turns into five chickens.” This feather surely did.