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Learning another language may be one of the best ways to keep your brain healthy

140 points · 120 comments · nativeit

  1. comrade1234 · · focus · HN ↗
    Before Covid I got my German B1 certificate. I was diligently going to German-speaking meetup twice a week.

    One of the meetups had a bunch of googlers in it regularly. One of them was a loud gregarious Italian from the north. He was telling me a story about cleaning fish and chopping their heads off with a machete and how he cut the end of his finger off and had it reattached. He seemed nice but a little inept and lacking caution.

    Covid was starting. In the newspapers it was reported that Zurich had its first case of Covid. They were cautious to not say who it was - no clues at all in the paper. But a friend at Google forwarded me an internal email that said no one at Google had it yet other than someone in the Zurich office who had just been in northern Italy.

    I stopped going to the meetups. I really should start again but not sure what's going to happen next.

    1. timr · · focus · HN ↗
      Well, now that everyone has had it several times, including you, it's probably safe to go to a language meetup.
      1. LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
        That's not how viruses work. You're not magically immune to flu season just because you've gotten the flu (or flu vaccines) in past years. It's ALWAYS important to keep up to date on your booster vaccines for covid. Even getting one or multiple strains at home won't necessarily help when you travel either.
        1. timr · · focus · HN ↗
          It actually is how the human immune system works, and in particular, there’s a huge amount of evidence that humoral immunity is protective and long lasting for Covid. Worrying about this is roughly the same degree of reasonable as worrying about getting any of the other common coronaviruses that circulate.

          I know you’re not going to accept this, but there is quite literally no good evidence that boosters for Covid do anything for otherwise healthy people who have already been infected.

          Regardless, the point is, if you won’t go to a language meetup because you’re worried about this, you’re likely doing far more damage to yourself from social isolation and anxiety than the virus would ever do to you. It’s time to live your life.

          1. LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
            I think vaccinations and boosters reduced duration of illness when I got covid for the first time last year. I have no way to know though.

            I think it's weird to advocate skipping shots (not explicitly, but implied) because "everyone's already been infected several times". Best to just get them even if you've been infected and then you don't have to care if they help or not. As opposed to not having gotten them if it comes out that they do help in any way.

            Also that was the only time I've ever gotten sick from covid. I guess that according to you, I must've been asymptomatic several more times.

            1. timr · · focus · HN ↗
              This is wildly off topic, but again, since you didn’t read it: there is no good evidence that the shots help you if you’ve already been infected. Not mortality, not symptoms, not transmission, nothing.

              Get the shot if it makes you feel less anxious. It’s probably not helping you, but it’s not hurting you either.

              1. LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
                > since you didn’t read it

                I read your entire comment. I finished my reply before you made a couple of your latest edits, but I read those too and they don't change my answers. I feel like the assumption of bad faith here makes further debate fruitless.

                In fact my second paragraph was directly addressing the claim that they don't help, so it's surprising you would so confidently assert I didn't read that part at all.

                1. timr · · focus · HN ↗
                  There’s nothing in bad faith here. I’m telling you the truth as I know it, based on a wide reading of the literature.

                  Your second paragraph did not “directly address the claim” - you just restated an opinion that you should do something whether it helps or not.

                  That’s not how science works, but sure, if you feel that way, it probably doesn’t matter one way oe the other.

                  My original point was one about social isolation, so I’m really done talking about this now.

                  1. tenuousemphasis · · focus · HN ↗
                    Link your sources then, because I think you're full of shit.
                  2. n4r9 · · focus · HN ↗
                    It's bad faith to assume someone didn't read your message.
                    1. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

                      [deleted]

          2. n8henrie · · focus · HN ↗
            > there is quite literally no good evidence that boosters for Covid do anything for otherwise healthy people who have already been infected

            Before I dive back into the literature, as you claim to be stating this in good faith... is the "good" load-bearing here? Relentlessly attacking methodology is an easy way to make this kind of general claim.

            Also, are you talking narrowly about a group of people that has had COVID but never had a prior COVID vaccination? (In which case is it still a "booster"?) Or is a proper steelman of your position that anyone that has had COVID, regardless of prior vaccinations exposure, does not benefit from additional vaccination in any meaningful sense?

            1. oniony · · focus · HN ↗
              Is it load-bearing, or is it the seam?
    2. timr · · focus · HN ↗
      Well, now that everyone has had it several times, including you, it’s probably safe to go to a language meetup.
      1. litmus-pit-git · · focus · HN ↗
        There's something that happened to some people with this virus and around this virus. It's not even the DNA/internal changes. It's how to world suddenly shifted around all of us and some people just changed in a way that later they couldn't make any sense of it. Some people's age band shifted drastically and it felt like, and yeah it sounds silly, that I should be refunded those years. I didn't spend them, they just stayed where they were but everything else and everyone else changed. I am not sure PC is going through that but it's not merely the fear of the virus (at least in my case that's zero). No wonder a lot of introverts thrived in the pandemic and a whole lot of them turned their lives around for the better :)
    3. litmus-pit-git · · focus · HN ↗
      (this is not a comment on you, or anyone, rather rant, or a comment on myself)

      > but not sure what's going to happen next.

      You don't know that.

      I'd suggest start doing it ASAP. I lost so many previous years of my 30s due to COVID and the avalanche of fear and anxiety and isolation that came with it. A breakup that happened literally days before the first lockdown didn't help. But then I put myself in a shell and kept increasing the size of that shell. Not just personally, but professionally as well. Today it feels like I just transitioned into my very late 30s from my early 30s. Everything in between - these 5-6 years - almost completely lost.

      You know, what will be the worst thing? That nothing happened and you stayed closed - like I have been so far. I am myself trying struggling, often I don't see any point in all this effort, but still…

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