If the Hampshire et al. thelancet.com/journals/eclin… findings of cognitive deficits in people with long covid hold up they seem to be a strong reason to promote development of cognitive enhancer methods.
Were one to equate the deficits to IQ points and assume a population like this cohort (dodgy, of course) this corresponds to a mean decline of 0.1 IQ points across the population (~0.6 for covid cases). Smaller than typical childhood lead exposure numbers, but still...
While hopefully there is some neat single cause of the cognitive deficits that could be fixed directly, it looks to me more like a melange of bad stuff. Which really suggests a need for general purpose cognitive, energy and neuro-repair enhancers.
Were we to get any of those, I think it is a safe bet they would also be enhancers in healthy people. While it has been hard to motivate enhancer qua enhancer development to many authorities, this looks like a clear case as enhancer qua therapy.
Were these cognitive deficits just due to some uncommon disease I can imagine some people saying people should just learn to live with it or accept whatever therapy is already available. But given the massive populations we are talking about I suspect that is untenable.
About six million covid cases in the UK alone (1 in 11) makes a pretty strong case that there is a large need (and market, and political demand) for treatment. We need to get 6.3 million IQ points back. Worldwide, it is bigger.
It would be ironic if covid-19 helped cognitive enhancement methods to develop more than us pro-enhancement people and our arguments. Still, protecting, repairing, and boosting minds is worth doing regardless.
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