Study: COVID-19 lockdowns had same effect on memory as serving jail time; 96% of Americans Have Some COVID-19 Immunity, and other C-Virus related stories

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COVID-19 lockdowns had same effect on memory as serving jail time: study

Your mind isn’t playing tricks on you — the pandemic may have affected your memory.

According to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, COVID-19 lockdowns caused people to lose track of time.

Scottish researchers found people made errors when trying to remember events from 2021, findings that are consistent with memory lapses experienced by people who have served jail time.

“Remembering when past events occurred becomes more difficult as more time passes,” study co-author Arash Sahraie told SWNS. “In addition, people’s activities and emotions can influence their perception of the passage of time.”

Previous studies have linked COVID-19 infection to brain shrinkage, memory loss and “face blindness,” but Sahraie’s team was interested in learning how pandemic lockdowns affected “people’s perception of time.”

“The social isolation resulting from COVID-19 lockdowns significantly impacted people’s activities and emotions, and prior research has shown that the pandemic triggered distortions in people’s perception of time,” the University of Aberdeen professor added.

The study analyzed responses to a 2022 survey in which 277 participants were asked to match events to the years in which they took place, ranging from 2016 to 2022. --->READ MORE HERE

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96% of Americans Have Some COVID-19 Immunity:

More than three years into the pandemic, an overwhelming majority of Americans have some level of COVID-19 antibodies circulating in their bodies, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found in a new report.

With the help of blood-donation centers, CDC scientists analyzed data from blood samples of about 143,000 Americans ages 16 and older from July through September 2022 and found that 96% of them contained antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. Previous data similarly collected between April and June 2021 showed that only 68% of blood samples contained COVID-19 antibodies.

The CDC also found that the percentage of people with hybrid immunity—meaning they’ve gained protective antibodies from both vaccination and infection—has increased over time. Of everyone included in the latest data, 48% possessed hybrid immunity. Hybrid immunity is more protective against infection and severe illness than immunity received exclusively from either infection or vaccination, in part because it generates wider-ranging defenses against the virus, and constantly changing variants have made it difficult to predict exactly how long immunity from either infection or vaccination will last.

Though hybrid immunity is stronger than immunity from vaccination alone, that’s not a reason to go looking for COVID-19, the scientists say. The risks of infection—such as Long COVID—still outweigh the immunity benefits. --->READ MORE HERE

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