Or COVID! There's been some reports about long term damage to people's lungs and such. To be frank, that's what scares me a lot more than the acute disease as someone who's still relatively young.

Have you actually researched that though? I have yet to see a study that examined people’s lungs before they got COVID as a comparison.

And it would be worth knowing the numbers before jumping on the fear wagon. Is it 1 in 10 young people or 1 in 10,000?

It seems to be at least a few percent of all cases. A majority of cases which are hospitalized have long-term effects too. It's also common enough that anecdotally -- I'm in a city hit hard and early by COVID. I can't tell you if it's 30% or 2%, but it's definitely not 1:10,000.

There’s no evidence to suggest COVID causes serious damage to those with minor to medium level symptoms. When the media talks about lung damage they seem to be talking about those who nearly died from the disease.

Not trying to minimise the seriousness of COVID, but simply suggesting there is no evidence of serious long term impact to the majority of cases.

I know of three colleagues who had minor cold like symptoms, 2/3 still talk about being winded climbing stairs, and both are physically fit 30 somethings.

I think lack of evidence is more a symptom of limited information.

Not lost on me that despite being a rare disease I know five people that have had guillain barre syndrome[1]. And I know about ten people who appear to have some sort of chronic malaise. I suspicious those are the result of viral infections.

There is also the minority opinion that some forms of dementia are due latent viral infections.

[1] You don't guillain barre syndrome takes years to recover and is absolutely traumatic.