THREAD: I’ve been trying to maintain some separation between COVID and my thesis, which focuses on an early 20c disease called Encephalitis Lethargica. But this morning I saw this headline from the Guardian:
(1/17)

I was struck by the emerging similarities between COVID and EL: specifically, their shared evolution from acute, ‘physical’ diseases to their association with long-term after-effects, which involved the brain and produced ‘mental’ symptoms.
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Although there are important contextual and conceptual differences between these links, analysing how and why they were forged in relation to EL offers some insight and potential routes forward in understanding their emergence, and implications, in relation to COVID.
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As part of an international epidemic, EL was first identified in England during March/April 1918. By the end of that year, EL had become the subject of discussion and anxiety, and therefore, of government-funded research and investigation.
(4/17)

EL was associated with a virus understood to leave lesions on the brain, and which could therefore lead to mental and physical symptoms such as unusual eye movements, fever, lethargy and delirium. In 1918, people largely recovered from EL.
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Nonetheless, by 1921 these ideas were becoming increasingly unstable, with medical professionals across the country instead emphasising the threat of long term ‘mental after-effects’, particularly on children.
(6/17)

EL was therefore linked to changes in behaviour, which occurred despite an apparent recovery from physical symptoms. Some children became mischievous, impulsive, violent, suicidal or homicidal, and viewed as a disruption in the family home but also in mainstream schooling.
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Links between EL and changes in behaviour nonetheless rested on and were validated by particular contextual medical, psychological, scientific and political circumstances, which spanned the late 19c and early 20c.
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During the interwar period, then, the mental after-effects associated with EL emerged in relationship with broader concerns regarding the problem of maladjustment, and through the ideas and initiatives of the mental hygiene movement.
(9/17)

Whilst doctors acknowledged that mental after-effects were, in part, a product of lesions in the brain, they were also understood as a product of the ongoing inability of the individual concerned to interact with and adjust to their social environment.
(10/17)

These cases of EL became recognised as one example of 'maladjustment', which was broadly associated with a range of psychological, biological and social factors, understood to cause antisocial behaviour, and moreover had political, economic and diplomatic implications.
(11/17)

Tied to an epidemic disease which had been tracked and recorded since 1918, EL cases experiencing behaviour changes offered a quantifiable and scientific anchor for these broader concerns...
(12/17)

... and thus for the development of new and effective ways of addressing the broad problem of maladjustment. In the early 1920s, the emerging ‘mental after-effects’ associated with EL can be viewed as a product and reflection of particular contextual circumstances...
(13/17)

... unique to the interwar period, and rooted in medical and psychological ideas which dated back to 19c. This theoretical premise can also be used to begin to analyse the links between COVID and 'brain disease'...
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... which might, e.g., pay attention to the roles and interactions between 21c neuroscientific ideas, technologies ('brain scanners'), approaches ('brain rehabilitation'), and political anxieties regarding the economic impact of ongoing after-effects in the population.
(15/17)

Contextualising the mental after-effects associated with EL demonstrates the need to acknowledge the uses of associations between COVID and ‘brain disease’ which are likely to become clearer over the coming months...
(16/17)

... and which can be used as a way into analysing the interactions which connect 21c British medicine, neurology, psychiatry and politics more broadly, and their shared role in shaping the evolving problems and symptoms associated with COVID.
(17/17)

If anyone wants to read the original Guardian article, which I've quoted in places, here it is: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/08/warning-of-serious-brain-disorders-in-people-with-mild-covid-symptoms?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR05_a_a-fDYKvEwssm2u9vqps7KFidHolMr_x395SZC7n1l1bPBRZ8QO6E#Echobox=1594188304