[t11hrow]

Sorry, I don't buy it. Some people are just more prone to suggestion and then get stuck in a weird loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania.

> It is so odd how people are so desperate to call bullshit on long covid

It's the other way around. This is something that didn't exist just a few years ago, that has no verifiable way to test it other than self-reports. Most of us have moved on, or weren't that scared of the virus itself.

I think some people are desperate for long covid to be a thing.

[ljf]

Do you buy that some people were ill for a long time after SARs? After Spanish Flu?

Check out https://www.science.org/content/article/blood-abnormalities-...

You started this by saying you had done zero research, if you want to chat more I'm happy to, there is plenty of study in this area.

[Llamamoe]

It absolutely existed, ME/CFS has been known for a long time, and persistent post-viral symptoms after other infections are a thing.

Even if you find the evidence for long covid weak, there's much stronger evidence on the cardiovascular and neurological damage COVID causes, both of which can in turn explain long COVID.

[t11hrow]

Maybe you and the other user (ljf) are both right, but we'll probably never know. All of the people I know who had covid, including my 84 and 87 year old grandmas had no lasting effects. It run through them like a flu.

I don't even know if I had it or not because I never got tested nor vaccinated for it. Same as my gf, her sister and her sister's boyfriend.

The only person who mentioned lasting effects was my uncle, who is a known hypochondriac, and it was all over the place: lack of strength and brain fog, and other weird symptoms. After a while he just stopped talking about it. I've seen lots of people claiming all sorts of symptoms for covid and long covid: impotence, menstruation issues, constipation, ear pain, tinnitus, etc. So many that it's impossible to really determine if that's what's causing it or if other million of things that could be going wrong in the human body (including suggestion/nocebo).

[Llamamoe]

An anecdote is an anecdote, means nothing. You're right that the studies estimating long COVID prevalence have shaky foundations, but we've also had ones from the original strains, when the rate of really debilitating post-covid symptoms was way, way higher, and while that's clearly not the case, the mechanism of the virus transmission is still the same, the physiological damage is still evident, and people going from well to disabled is still happening.