1. The anecdotal reports of Long Covid often suggest periodic bouts of low performance rather than a permanent decline. So doing a short intelligence test is not great for measuring this. (It might still be the best thing we have).
2. We might expect smaller impact on cognition and better recovery in younger, healthier people. Do they break down further by age? Looks like <20% of the symptomatic Covid sample is under 30 and so a null result for under 25s is consistent.
3. Other surveys have found extremely high rates of people erroneously inferring they had Covid.
4. The mildest Covid is associated with a 0.5 point IQ difference. What does this mean in concrete terms? (In terms of SAT, I’d guess getting a single question wrong?). How does this compare to (a) doing the test in the morning vs the evening, (b) doing the test in the months after a bad cold, (c) doing the test after being on vacation for 4 weeks? Why does this matter? People who believe they had mild Covid in 2020 were probably quite scared on average (surveys show people view Covid as much more dangerous to younger people than it is and mild symptoms may precede severe symptoms) and they had to self-isolate for weeks. Many people were also not working or had some reduced work schedule.
Re: the Long Covid study.
1. The anecdotal reports of Long Covid often suggest periodic bouts of low performance rather than a permanent decline. So doing a short intelligence test is not great for measuring this. (It might still be the best thing we have).
2. We might expect smaller impact on cognition and better recovery in younger, healthier people. Do they break down further by age? Looks like <20% of the symptomatic Covid sample is under 30 and so a null result for under 25s is consistent.
3. Other surveys have found extremely high rates of people erroneously inferring they had Covid.
4. The mildest Covid is associated with a 0.5 point IQ difference. What does this mean in concrete terms? (In terms of SAT, I’d guess getting a single question wrong?). How does this compare to (a) doing the test in the morning vs the evening, (b) doing the test in the months after a bad cold, (c) doing the test after being on vacation for 4 weeks? Why does this matter? People who believe they had mild Covid in 2020 were probably quite scared on average (surveys show people view Covid as much more dangerous to younger people than it is and mild symptoms may precede severe symptoms) and they had to self-isolate for weeks. Many people were also not working or had some reduced work schedule.