One of the symptoms of long Covid is "brain fog". This doesn't really define very precisely what is wrong with a patient's brain. Many studies have documented specific anatomical abnormalities of people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 including damage to the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex. Since this is the part of the brain responsible for planning and emotional control, damage to it would be expected to result in a diminished ability to act rationally and to complete tasks requiring sequencing of events over time. In short, we would expect such a person to become less productive and more prone to emotional outbursts.
Contrary to expectations, the move to remote work early in the pandemic resulted in increased productivity. More recently, productivity in the US has declined. This has stimulated a call for return-to-the-office as working from home was blamed for this decrease in productivity. The result? Perhaps the worst decline in worker morale ever seen in the American economy. The best employees quit and took the few fully remote jobs still available. People who can, retire early. This leaves the least experienced, least productive employees who sit in their cubicles bitterly punching away at a keyboard that they could just as easily be using in their homes - with their spouses, children and pets close by instead of their also bitter co-workers and the managers they blame for their plight.
Consider this hypothesis: productivity increases when people work from home because most are happier, haven't had to fight an unpleasant commute and are better able to focus on their tasks. We saw this expected gain in productivity early in the pandemic. However, as more and more people became infected with SARS-CoV-2, not in the office, but in restaurants, bars and stores, the frontal lobes of their brains were attacked resulting in the signs described above. This has resulted in a huge increase in the number of people being prescribed drugs for ADHD. These drugs help people to focus better, but don't cure the other symptoms of frontal lobe damage.
What will be the expected result of forcing people back in the office without masks and without vaccination? Most offices have poor ventilation and crowd workers together in cubicles. This is the perfect environment for spreading high concentrations of SARS-CoV-2. There is evidence that repeated exposures to SARS-CoV-2 increase the odds of long Covid. So, workers who haven't yet suffered damage to their brains will now be at increased risk of productivity-killing pathology.
Prediction: return-to-the-office will not solve the productivity problem; it will make it worse. People who work from home will also be vulnerable to the brain effects of SARS-CoV-2 if they don't keep up with their vaccinations and mask in public. However, the latter group may be expected to decline at a slower rate since they will not be exposed to high levels of virus while they work. Unless there is a change in policy and behavior, we can expect cognition in large numbers of people to decline, perhaps to dangerous levels. Imagine executive dysfunction in someone who writes programs for nuclear power plants, or nuclear weapons, for that matter. We will see increasing signs of societal breakdown as people lose control over their emotions. The neurological "brakes" on dangerous behavior will have failed.
I mean the term "executive dysfunction" in two ways. One relates to brain function. I also mean it in terms of the decision-making of executives, in business and politics. Most executives are not following "the science". The science is very clear. SARS-CoV-2 has caused brain damage in some people exposed to the virus. The extent of this damage is not known and is probably changing over time. We do know that the more times you are infected, the more likely you are to get long Covid. The current return-to-office policies ignore biological reality. Executives who disregard the science and expect everything to return to normal once workers are back in their cubicles are whistling past the graveyard. And perhaps suffering from brain-related executive dysfunction, themselves.
References
Changes in cognitive functioning after COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Crivelli et al. Alzheimers Dement 2022. 18:1047-1066.
Even Mild COVID-19 May Change the Brain. Abbasi. March 23, 2022. JAMA Network.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2790595
Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection. Bowe et al. November 10, 2022. Nature Medicine. 28: 2398–2405.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02051-3
Why Return-To-Office Mandates Will Backfire. Castrillon. May 14, 2023. Forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2023/05/14/why-return-to-office-mandates-will-backfire
The Forced Return to Office is the Definition of Insanity. Dr. Gleb Tsipursky.Data Driven Investor. September 16, 2023.
https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/the-forced-return-to-office-is-the-definition-of-insanity-e580c33a95db
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