datum (n=1)<p>TLDR: Cassandra letting you know to expect lean years ahead, if you live in an information economy.</p><p>I don't know if it's the SARS2. Maybe it's the attention economy; maybe it's accumulated exposure to heavy metals, plastics (equivalent to "an unused crayon" in each brain[1]), PFAS, etc.; maybe it's permanently elevated baseline CO2 levels; maybe it's something else.</p><p>But it's REALLY depressing to talk to people in their 30s and older who, in 2019, were clever.</p><p>Nurses, accountants, business leaders. Folks who were quite sharp!</p><p>Now it's a struggle to convey simple ideas, let alone to analyze. Inference, working memory set size and retention time, linguistic expressivity, even simple math (division by 2 kind of thing) - some of these folks have regressed back into early grade school, in terms of cognitive competence.</p><p>It's gonna be hard as this plays out, as these people will be cognitively disabled in place and won't want to leave jobs they are no longer able to perform. Institutions too perforated will collapse. These folks aren't going to want to do physical labour, and in many cases aren't healthy enough to now (THAT one IS the COVID, though, folks).</p><p>I see some of these institutions failing in real time right now. It burns more resources to slow fail but many of these folks will be unemployable.</p><p>And employment isn't everything! But labour IS how we survive as individuals and as a species, and this drastic reduction in summed output means lean years are ahead.</p><p>That's barring unlikely techno-miracles. Treatment that cures Long COVID cognitive disruption WOULD take a miracle though, because neurons don't really grow back much at all. Treatment that cures Long COVID fatigue and PEM would soften the fall.</p><p>If you're reading this, the info is not likely news, but sometimes it's hard to make out the forest for all the trees. You've heard Cassandra; sorry that you are cursed* to be unable to change it, but maybe you'll be able to suffer less as it happens.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00405-8" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">nature.com/articles/d41586-025</span><span class="invisible">-00405-8</span></a><br>[*] (unless you're a medical researcher, in which case, THANK YOU and may your work bear fruit!!!) </p><p><a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/COVID19" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>COVID19</span></a> <a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/CovidCompetent" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CovidCompetent</span></a> <a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/COVIDIsNotOver" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>COVIDIsNotOver</span></a> <a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/COVID" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>COVID</span></a> <a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/SARSCoV2" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SARSCoV2</span></a> <a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/Cassandra" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Cassandra</span></a> <a href="https://zeroes.ca/tags/decline" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>decline</span></a></p>