What we don't know -- and what articles like this ignore -- is how common and serious the symptoms are. And asking a group of people, one-quarter of whom haven't even tested positive for the virus, to self-report everything that has them feeling crummy, is not science.
The Atlantic is not a scientific journal, but their "science writer" should at least be aware of this basic standard of evidence, and at best, avoid the temptation to spread panic based on speculation.
Like you say, it's the Atlantic, not a scientific journal. I prefer to say "not terribly useful or accurate" rather than "not science".
I mean,in the US alone covid already killed nearly 190k people from a pool of around 6200k infected. Doesn't this justify having informed evidence-based discussions?
If people have vague symptoms that are uncertain and ambiguous, then their opinions on the nature of their illness are probably not terribly useful or accurate.
But if there exists a severe illness, it seems almost certain that there are some people out there who have a mild form of it that is ambiguous and uncertain because there is a spectrum.
More generally, I believe that evolution implies that diseases evolve in a manner such that people find them hard to identify. Because humans are pretty ruthless at eliminating diseases that catch their attention. HIV is an example of a virus that had gotten very close to coexisting, but then people noticed it and have been trying to wipe it out. Vague chronic problems that are blamed on the victim are inherently what everything logically has to become in the long run.
To take the argument to the extreme, even hypochondria must be a physical disorder, even though of course like cancer etc. there might be many causes that are arguably not the same.