Covid-19 has not only changed our daily lives but may also have changed defense approaches for personal injury cases. It can be that symptoms that plaintiffs experience may be caused by Long Covid and not necessarily by a concussion. Many defense attorneys may pursue this path of defense when the plaintiff attorney wants to link, for instance, a concussion suffered during an MVA to fatigue, headaches, brain fog and inability to work.
Persons who have recovered from COVID have shown fibromyalgia and post-concussion syndrome (PCS) like symptoms including anosmia or hyposmia (loss or diminished smell), ageusia or dysgeusia (taste), headache, dizziness, disorientation, memory loss, brain fog, delirium, stroke, seizures, anxiety, and depression. Persons indicate that these symptoms are so significant that it limits their ability to work and suffer economic damages.
Peter J. Soja, Ph.D., Professor of Pharmacology & Neuroscience at The University of British Columbia presented in March 2022, what he currently knows about how the Covid virus works in affecting the brain:
• Covid enters the brain via the olfactory mucosa, the lining of the nasal cavity, which borders the brain.
• Covid can also cross through a weakened blood brain barrier
• Covid, in the brain, can adversely affect astrocytes, which normally provide nutritive and structural
support to brain cells (neurons).
• Covid in the brain blocks blood flow, killing neurons
• Adverse consequences occur: Stroke, encephalitis spinal cord affecting myelin sheath‐MS
Long‐COVID Symptoms has overlap with Fibromyalgia which is disabling people. Symptoms that are similar include:
• Headaches and body aches
• Fever
• Chills
• Shortness of breath
• Nausea
• Sore throat
• Chest and abdominal pain
• Immune‐system dysfunction
• Neuroinflammation, other nervous system abnormalities
• Cognitive dysfunction (brain fog)
• Depression
• Insomnia
There is neurological overlap between Long COVID & Post-Concussion Syndrome (PCS). Symptoms include:
- Headache (migraine, tension, post‐traumatic and cervicogenic)
- Nausea/vomiting
- Dizziness/Vertigo
- Vision problems (e.g., blurring, double or shaky vision)
- Light sensitivity (including difficulty looking at computer / TV screens)
- Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
- Difficulty sleeping
- Fatigue
- Neck pain and movement stiffness
- Difficulty concentrating (brain fog)
- Memory loss
- Slow or inaccurate speech
- Problems with multi‐tasking
- Difficulty reading
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Irritable and irrational moods
Many of these symptoms will be confusing until scientists can get a better grip on what causes them. This will play out in the courts in many ways. It will affect whether or not medical evidence can be presented with a reasonable degree of certainty. As a result, the dates and causes that are relied on and the cause why jobs can no longer be performed and how high resulting economic damages can be.
We don’t know yet how Covid will affect these issues in the future and it will need ongoing study and attention.