Long Covid

But it was just my imagination, once again
Running away with me
--The Temptations

'Long Covid' sounds like a position in some arcane financial security. In reality, it is meant to signify a condition where unpleasant symptoms deemed to be associated with CV19 are thought to persist even after acute infections are past. 

Fatigue, muscle pain, insomnia, and other pedestrian symptoms are said to be representative of long Covid. Because such symptoms are common to a variety of illnesses and ailments, the legitimacy of long Covid seems questionable.

Alex Berenson reviews a recent AMA paper that further fuels long Covid skepticism. Researchers asked French adults whether they had previously been infected with CV19 and whether they had subsequently experienced any of 18 symptoms commonly associated with long Covid. They found that self-reported CV19 was strongly associated with reports of lingering symptoms.

Of course, self-reported infections and symptoms invites methodological problems of 'common methods variance'--where psychometric data on both proposed cause and effect are taken from the same subject.

Fortunately, the researchers also had CV19 antibody tests for the people they surveyed, meaning that, regardless of the self-reports, they knew who actually had been infected with the virus. 

When the researchers compared the symptoms reported by people who had actually been infected per the antibody tests to symptom reports from the general population, they found no significant difference in most symptoms. One exception was loss of smell, a known lasting side effect of CV19 which becomes a nice validity test of sorts for the study's method.

The researchers also found that nearly 60% of those people with CV19 antibodies did not know that they had been infected.

Results suggest a psychosomatic basis for long Covid. People are using previous CV19 diagnoses, real or imagined, to explain away pedestrian physical symptoms. The findings also suggest that actually being infected with the virus is less risky than thinking you've been infected--at least for many people.

Berenson suspects that patient, physician, and public health investment in the long Covid concept that they won't let it go regardless of evidence to the contrary. 

Seems a safe bet, since it would be consistent with overall response patterns to the virus for going on two years now.