Now I understand why I’m stupid. Thanks COVID!

News of an interesting piece of research on the cognitive ability of people, such as me, who have had COVID. Depending on the variant of the virus that infected us, it seems that our cognitive ability might have declined by between 4 and 9 points on whichever IQ scale the researchers used.

This explains a few things. Even though I was only marginally ill for a couple of days, I’ve noticed a marked decline in brainpower since I got the bug. For example, I couldn’t tell you the identity of 80% of current British cabinet ministers. There is an alternative explanation for that, of course. Given that the shelf-life of most ministers is about three months or less, how is one expected to have an up-to-date knowledge of who the this week’s incumbents might be?

Another explanation for my incipient stupidity is that when you get older there are a whole bunch of things you might remember if you were minded to do so, but that you can no longer be bothered with. These days, if you have an urgent need to know the dates of King Richard II’s reign or the life expectancy of a garden snail, the internet will tell you, thus freeing up a bit of your brain for random mush.

And in my case, I have an additional extenuating factor not shared by everyone. A couple of years ago we moved house. Our new place is quite old, which means that the doorways were designed for people considerably shorter than me. I didn’t see this as a problem until about 48 hours of moving in, at which point the top of my head looked as if it had been attacked by a mad axeman. Blood everywhere. Since then – which was around the same time as my one and only bout of COVID – I must have lost at least as many brain cells as the virus destroyed simply through failing to duck through doorways, usually while in the middle of a conversation with my wife (something about not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, I suspect).

The upside of a COVID decline is that it can be a useful excuse for forgetting someone’s name or temporarily losing vocabulary. No longer a senior moment. Not even dementia. A COVID lapse. Which conveniently turns one into a victim, rather than a fat slob who’s had too many doughnuts and not enough exercise in their life.

Speaking of fat slobs, but on a less facetious level, Donald Trump was pretty wacky before his COVID episode, but far more so since then. His decline appears to be becoming ever more steep with every cheeseburger he snaffles down. Could this be Fauci’s revenge?

There must be a conspiracy theory lurking behind all this. Unfortunately in my virus-raddled state I can’t figure one out.

Have the lizards figured out we’re getting too smart for our own good and decided to slow us down a little? Has Xi Jinping decided that turning half his own population into gibbering dullards is a price worth paying to deliver the newly-minted dullards in the US into the hands of the arch-dullard? Or is this Putin’s little scheme?

To be honest, I don’t know and I don’t care.

And besides, I’m more interested in discovering what the actual effect might be of losing 9 points on an IQ scale, assuming we can all agree a common scale in the first place. Could it be a benefit in disguise, by rendering all those people who are “too clever by half” as dull as the rest of us? Or is it simply a matter of taking a few seconds longer than everyone around you to get a joke (in which case I probably never had the missing 9% in the first place)?

What we don’t know at this stage is whether the little grey cells will return, or whether they’re lost forever. If they do return, perhaps we face the horrifying prospect of Trump regaining his marbles, in which case he becomes not only malevolent but clear-thinking. As for me, I have no desire to recover my missing cognition. I’m quite happy with my current stupidity, thank you very much. And so is my wife, on the basis that having spent 40 years living with a smart-arse, she no longer has to deal with that less than attractive side of my personality. After all, it’s hard playing the smart-arse when you forget the subject of your smart-arsery half way through the act of talking about it.

And what if 9 points is merely a marker on a path of further decline? If so thank you COVID, for giving me reason not to finish 50% of the books I read, not being able to understand Tenet and Inflection, forgetting every password I’ve ever known, including where I hid the backup paper list and wondering why Xbook or FaceX don’t come up on a Google search. Before long, for five minutes I’ll be at the same intellectual level as my grandson, who at the age of six will soon be capable of reading Harry Potter, after which he’ll pass me on my way to Peppa Pig.

At which point I hope I have the cognitive ability to reflect that it was good while it lasted, and to mumble thanks and farewell.