could be a bit more nuance here, severity of neurological problems does seem to correlate with hospitalization in some studies
In May 2020, Koralnik and his team opened the Neuro COVID-19 Clinic at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. One of the first of its kind in the nation, it not only treats patients but also collects data on demographics, quality of life, and cognitive test results. “We thought that we were going to see mostly patients who were hospitalized, who survived and now needed some ongoing care for neurology as an outpatient,” Koralnik says. “But what we saw is the opposite. The main population of the clinic is the people who were never hospitalized with COVID, who had only a mild sore throat, a cough that went away, or a bit of fever — and then [experienced] the lingering, persistent, and then debilitating brain fog, headaches, dizziness, muscle pain, trouble with smell and taste, blurry vision, tinnitus, and intense fatigue.”
Other research has backed that up. “Turns out people with the mild cold-like symptoms are the people with the neurological manifestations,” says Avindra Nath, clinical director of the NIH’s National Ins ute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Those symptoms corresponded with patients’ self-reporting of a lower quality of life and issues regarding cognition, anxiety, depression, and sleep. The patients also performed worse than expected on tests of processing speed, attention, executive function, and memory.