Wear a high-quality mask like a KF94 or N95 in public and filter your air.

I have been struggling with similar issues. Although writing this alone was a struggle for me, I hope I can offer some helpful advice and information, and I tried my best so bear with me! Reading this will be a nice workout for your brain at the least.

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The pandemic never ended- it just changed shape. The virus keeps changing, and acute symptoms may fade. But for many, the infection never truly ends.

A major new review from Yale (Moen, Baker, Iwasaki) offers a comprehensive picture into the neuroimmune pathophysiology of long COVID. Common neurological symptoms in Long COVID include new onset cognitive difficulties, dysautonomia, fatigue, and peripheral neuropathy. Neurological difficulties resulting from COVID infection include reductions in attention span and difficulty maintaining focus for extended periods of time.

  The brain gets sick from COVID, even when standard scans appear "normal". PET imaging has shown reduced glucose metabolism in the brainstem, limbic inflammation, microglia digesting synapses. This is well documented at this point, but here's the link to the Yale study in mention: ttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40536011/ SO MASK UP! COVID is an airborne infectious disease that causes systemic organ damage, including in the brain.

According to Dr. Michael Hoerger, Director of Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative of Tulane University, latest data shows the current average number of COVID infections per person is at 3.77 as of last week (6/16/25).

Pair that with the fact that damage from COVID infections are cumulative and each infection increases your chance of noticeable long-term effects, there's a good chance your issues may stem from COVID-related damage. That's why I recommend to mask indoors to protect your brain from further cognitive damage. You want to reduce the amount of times you get infected as much as possible. Masking is an easy step. If you need access to free masks, check here to get connected with a local group: https://maskbloc.org/

Again, wear a mask! Check if you can get into a long-covid clinic (difficult in many places, I realize) for a neurological evaluation. There are brain exercises and a combination of medication treatments that may be able to help.

From another article on a study (I'm so sorry, I'll summarize & put link at bottom), apparently the brain exercise app called BrainHQ (brainhq.com) has shown statically significant cognitive function improvement in long COVID patients. "The UAB study ... showed significant benefits in many secondary measures, including large to very large benefits on depressive, fatigue, and brain fog symptoms, as well as a significant benefit in brain processing speed, and a trend toward large benefits on anxiety symptoms. No significant change was noted in a measure of global cognition."

Essentially, "intensive, repetitive, and progressively challenging activities can drive beneficial changes to the brain." However, you do want to be careful with triggering fatigue and post-exertional malaise if you suffer from that, so pacing can be important.

Sorry again for making so much reading for you, but I hope this helps. Mask up, eat well, and exercise your brain over time, find a specialist if you can, and things hopefully will get better. I've gotten a lot better with help. Feel free to reply if you have any questions!

www.news-medical.net/news/20250505/Breakthrough-brain-training-shows-promise-for-Long-COVID-recovery.aspx

Ask HN: How to regain the ability to read with focus and learn