[hilbertseries]

Long covid is very real and is not anxiety. There have been studies linking post covid fatigue and conditions to viral persistence and micro clotting. This type of post covid is just anxiety discourse is incredibly harmful.

[Llamamoe]

This kind of discourse has been par for the course for as long as "mental illness" has existed. I don't know a single chronically ill person who hasn't gone through being undermined and treated this way.

[nradov]

Post viral syndrome has been been recognized for decades and linked to a wide variety of different viruses. So although the exact mechanisms aren't clearly understood there's no reason to think that SARS-CoV-2 couldn't cause similar effects.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1710789/

But in terms of specific symptoms, a recent study found only a weak correlation between confirmed COVID-19 and brain fog. Other persistent symptoms such as anosmia are much more common.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01909-w

[Madmallard]

This is just a case where the tools we have for examination are lacking and subjective symptom description barring specific indicators is pretty useless from a research standpoint.