There is a growing body of evidence of longer term effects in adults. Obviously the picture is still developing because this is a novel coronavirus, but I think there is plenty of reason to be very concerned.
It's technically true that it's a novel coronavirus, but functionally it is incredibly similar to SARS-1 (what we used to just call SARS).
SARS-1 is much more deadly and much more symptomatic. But structurally they resemble each other; they share the characteristic spike protein and a bunch of other features.
Immunity to SARS-1 confers immunity to SARS-2.
Now, SARS-1 being a more severe version of SARS-2, serves as a great model of what severe COVID-19 might look like.
And we know that in SARS-1, there are not these supposed long-term effects. You can get lung damage that lasts for a few months, but is undetectable at the 1 year mark. That's not long-term damage.
I also want to mention that the "long-hauler" narrative does not have real evidence behind it, except for those who are immunocompromised and therefore would be a "long-hauler" for literally any virus they got infected with.
Unfortunately, and I am worried that saying this will trigger reflexive downvotes, almost all US mainstream media has an incredible leftist bias (see: recent events in the NYT, WaPo etc). Therefore anything coming from the atlantic, vox, CNN, is very transparently trying to perpetuate the "doom" narrative. That's why they don't report on any of the incredibly positive/surprising facts, such as the widespread T-cell cross-reactivity in those who have never been exposed to either SARS-1 or SARS-2, or the fact that children surprisingly don't seem to spread it to adults in any real numbers, or the logical conclusion of the fact that SARS-2 kills the very old but not the very young, which is that recurring deaths (deaths in subsequent years) from COVID-19 will be virtually nonexistent.
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Back to the long-term effects. The article you linked is not scientific at all and just rattles off a serious of anecdotes. So I don't really know what there is for me to argue against.
There was a great study of SARS-1 lung imaging that I love to cite, and yet I can't find where my notes on it are. So take this random one I just came across:
> Lung function studies carried out on 258 patients from Xiaotangshan Hospital in Beijing 2 months after discharge showed that 21% patients (54 of 258 patients) had evidence of impaired diffusion (DLCO < 80%pred) while 6% (16 of 258 patients) had restrictive ventilatory defect (VC < 80%pred).18 Fifty‐one of 54 patients had lung function tests repeated one month later. DLCO was found to improve in 80.4% patients (41 of 51 patients), and FVC in 81.3% patients (13 of 16 patients) (Table 3). These findings suggest that lung function abnormality caused by SARS might improve spontaneously over time.
(BTW, long-term damage and the "long-hauler" meme are technically referring to two different things)
As a counter-point to myself, the following study identified abnormalities (although keep in mind abnormality doesn't mean it's necessarily a massive problem) at the 6 month mark:
The study I'm looking for but can't find showed abnormalities at the 3 month mark but no abnormalities at the 1 year mark, so that study I just linked doesn't actually contradict my own expectations.
Finally remember that we're using SARS-1 here as a model of what really bad SARS-2 looks like. For anyone who doesn't have invasive-ventilation-level COVID-19, the expectation that they might experience long term damage is completely unfounded.
SARS-1 is much more deadly and much more symptomatic. But structurally they resemble each other; they share the characteristic spike protein and a bunch of other features.
Immunity to SARS-1 confers immunity to SARS-2.
Now, SARS-1 being a more severe version of SARS-2, serves as a great model of what severe COVID-19 might look like.
And we know that in SARS-1, there are not these supposed long-term effects. You can get lung damage that lasts for a few months, but is undetectable at the 1 year mark. That's not long-term damage.
I also want to mention that the "long-hauler" narrative does not have real evidence behind it, except for those who are immunocompromised and therefore would be a "long-hauler" for literally any virus they got infected with.
Unfortunately, and I am worried that saying this will trigger reflexive downvotes, almost all US mainstream media has an incredible leftist bias (see: recent events in the NYT, WaPo etc). Therefore anything coming from the atlantic, vox, CNN, is very transparently trying to perpetuate the "doom" narrative. That's why they don't report on any of the incredibly positive/surprising facts, such as the widespread T-cell cross-reactivity in those who have never been exposed to either SARS-1 or SARS-2, or the fact that children surprisingly don't seem to spread it to adults in any real numbers, or the logical conclusion of the fact that SARS-2 kills the very old but not the very young, which is that recurring deaths (deaths in subsequent years) from COVID-19 will be virtually nonexistent.
---
Back to the long-term effects. The article you linked is not scientific at all and just rattles off a serious of anecdotes. So I don't really know what there is for me to argue against.
There was a great study of SARS-1 lung imaging that I love to cite, and yet I can't find where my notes on it are. So take this random one I just came across:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1440-1843...
> Lung function studies carried out on 258 patients from Xiaotangshan Hospital in Beijing 2 months after discharge showed that 21% patients (54 of 258 patients) had evidence of impaired diffusion (DLCO < 80%pred) while 6% (16 of 258 patients) had restrictive ventilatory defect (VC < 80%pred).18 Fifty‐one of 54 patients had lung function tests repeated one month later. DLCO was found to improve in 80.4% patients (41 of 51 patients), and FVC in 81.3% patients (13 of 16 patients) (Table 3). These findings suggest that lung function abnormality caused by SARS might improve spontaneously over time.
(BTW, long-term damage and the "long-hauler" meme are technically referring to two different things)
As a counter-point to myself, the following study identified abnormalities (although keep in mind abnormality doesn't mean it's necessarily a massive problem) at the 6 month mark:
https://thorax.bmj.com/content/59/10/889.abstract
The study I'm looking for but can't find showed abnormalities at the 3 month mark but no abnormalities at the 1 year mark, so that study I just linked doesn't actually contradict my own expectations.
Finally remember that we're using SARS-1 here as a model of what really bad SARS-2 looks like. For anyone who doesn't have invasive-ventilation-level COVID-19, the expectation that they might experience long term damage is completely unfounded.