"Don’t be stupid: Skipping your COVID booster could reduce your IQ"

Damned if you do, damned if you don't?

Just in time for the fall booster campaign for the smart ones! “Opinion: Don’t be stupid: Skipping your COVID booster could reduce your IQ” (LA Times, 2024.10.14):

Much has been made of COVID’s consequences for overall health, productivity and the economy. But recent research suggests a compelling new basis for vaccine advocacy: COVID’s capacity to reduce intelligence.

Using data from more than 100,000 people who completed online tests in England, the authors of a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine found that those recovering from COVID, including those with only mild symptoms, had measurable cognitive deficits. Even participants who had “mild COVID-19 with resolved symptoms” exhibited deficits “commensurate with a 3-point loss in IQ” compared with uninfected participants.

That’s the sequel to the old adage used a year ago for the 2023 fall booster campaign, shaming the unvaccinated stupid:

Without further ado, let’s peek into the not-so-recent study itself and see how this sausage was made. “Cognition and Memory after Covid-19 in a Large Community Sample” (Published February 28, 2024, N Engl J Med):

We estimated a global cognitive score across eight tasks. We hypothesized that participants with persistent symptoms (lasting ≥12 weeks) after infection onset would have objectively measurable global cognitive deficits and that impairments in executive functioning and memory would be observed in such participants, especially in those who reported recent poor memory or difficulty thinking or concentrating (“brain fog”).

In our study cohort, we tracked the prevalence of infection with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus causing Covid-19, in England from May 1, 2020, to March 31, 2022,^12-15 using data from a randomly selected community sample of 3,099,386 adults (≥18 years of age). Between August 1 and December 30, 2022, we invited a subsample of 800,000 adults (32.1%) to complete a follow-up survey⁷ and cognitive assessment (Table S1 and Fig. S1 in the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org).

We considered the participants to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 if they had received the vaccine at least 14 days before infection.

And there you have it! As we all know by now, the act of “vaccinating” was a major factor in becoming SARS-CoV-2 positive back in the day:

And all these jab-induced infections were categorized as happening to the unvaccinated in the “recent” study. So, whatever conclusions the esteemed study authors draw after making this categorization is complete garbage at best.

I have personally noticed the increase in mask wearing in recent weeks. I bet these are same smart people that don’t skip any booster coming their way. And their wild eyes peeking above the surgical masks tell it all: determined to slug it out to the bitter end.