[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.