Fascinating stuff - particularly your hypothesis on 'Persistent Brainstem Dysfunction in Long-COVID" — and congratulations on getting journal-published.

Given that then 'blood brain barrier' (BBB) is primarily endothelial cells, which are targeted by that famous Covid-19 spike, I can't help but wonder if there's also an associated long term risk of neurodegenerative disease stemming from an issue in these endothelial cells, similar to the one associated with the ApoEɛ4 genotype (reduced DHA and glycerol transport inbound, increased reliance on the glymphatic system for waste disposal, associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer's).

Completely unrelated: Medium has taken away the "turn this response into an article" functionality, but has completely neglected to put any of the article-specific editing into responses (mark quotes, italics, bold, underline, readable links, attach photos).

I’ve been frustrated with this lack of functionality but have recently noticed a ‘back door’ that allows article-edit mode in a response (no idea how long before they shut this down, too) Start a top-level response. Click respond. Then open it, click the top ellipsis (3 dots), pick ‘Edit’, and you’re in edit-article mode. The downside is that it’s an actual article now, so anyone reading your response needs to click into it to read it (same issue as with the now-missing “turn this response into an article”). So, if you don’t need anything more than plain text in your response, it’s more reader-friendly to just stay in non-article mode. And apologies to anyone who had to click into this response — this was my test.