[jnovek]

A cursory google suggests that post-viral fatigue from COVID is expected to last a few weeks. Long COVID can last months; I know at least one person who still has long COVID symptoms from an infection that occurred in April 2020.

[blagie]

Long covid is generally defined as >4 weeks. There are subdefinitions for different lengths. However, a lot of long covid may be a form a post-viral fatigue. That doesn't discount it's importance, though. It's a lot more common than with a cold or flu.

Anecdotally, for people I know, it would take six weeks to half a year to resolve.

[zoklet-enjoyer]

Have they tried paxlovid?

[blagie]

I'd be very surprised if it helped. There's pretty good evidence that long covid isn't caused by persistent virus.

My own speculation is that it's autoimmune, simple due to having it seen resolved when people were vaccinated. However, "anecdote" is not the plural of "data," and it just as well be unrelated.

There are wonky changes to organs during covid, which many doctors speculate are the root cause.

In either case, I'm unaware of any mainstream theories where paxlovid would be likely to help.

[zanfr]

long covid is a viral persistence in some tissue

[blagie]

Why do you believe that?

[zoklet-enjoyer]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10159620/

[blagie]

Thank you!

Footnote: That's a 180 turn-around from state-of-the-art science a year or so ago. At the time, we thought there were individuals where it persisted (evidence in immunocompromised), but nothing like this.

[blagie]

Edit: Additional thank you. That's a fascinating article and really well-written. I'm learning /a lot/ from it.