Are there similar stories of lingering pain/symptoms from people who suffered traumatic injuries or survival events?
I (35M) fell ill with covid-like illness and a period of post-fatigue between feb and april and still haven't 'recovered fully'; When I test my body, it's obviously very capable and fit (more than before when I was sick, even) and so I've come to an understanding that I must approach this as something like a trauma that I'm still processing or an injury I'm slowly mending from.
If you were in a serious vehicle accident or injure a major muscle group or tear a ligament, your posture and form doesn't just return to pristine form when the body repairs itself, common wisdom would say to go to a physical therapist and practice a set of deliberate exercises designed to restore your strength and help your body re-learn what is a correct form/posture/movement/recruitment. After plenty of injuries, there's an expected "you won't be the same after this"
It makes sense to me that something similar is at work here; I wonder, how many of these people are making an unreasonable assumption that they would recover to their full capacity without trying to cultivate it? How much of the association with 'long-term symptoms' is an anxiety/panic/fear/trauma response from grappling with a novel virus which was once advertised as extremely serious and likely fatal?