I always catch flak for saying it, but we need to be honest about the fact that long COVID is largely a psychogenic illness. It can be a real thing, in the way that any infection can leave a sort of malaise that persists for years or even decades for the unlucky, but such reactions are incredibly rare. Yet based off the self-reported surveys, you'd think the rate of long COVID was like 10% among progressive twitter users in their early 20's...

I don't have the link to it but I saw a hilarious pre-print on "long COVID" the other day that was comparing the incidence of long COVID amongst people that had vs never had COVID. In many groups the people with COVID had more long COVID (but not enough to reach significance), but in the age range of like 12-15 years old there were literally more kids who never had COVID who reported long COVID than those who had COVID. It's as if people forgot that fatigue and malaise and chronic inflammation are all things that happened before COVID and will continue to happen long after...