> Why do you need a control group? We know that typical people don't just randomly get coughs on a daily basis.

Because this is science, not a spread in the New York Times. And if you read the link to the paper I cited, you'd see that "typical people" do randomly get these "symptoms" on a regular basis (I'm coughing right now!) And in fact, once you control for this, you find out that some of what you thought was "long covid" was just...what happens in a normal population of people.

As for your paper, it fails the criteria established:

"COVID-19 symptom data were obtained at the time of acute illness or retrospectively recounted at a 30-day enrollment visit. A total of 234 participants with COVID-19 were contacted between August and November 2020 to complete a single follow-up questionnaire between 3 and 9 months after illness onset."

In other words, this is self-reported data. The control group isn't actually a control group, because the people in each group knew if they had Covid, and are self-reporting their own symptoms...in a survey about Covid. It's a recipe for confirmation bias.

A good study of this sort would follow N people over time, randomly selected and matched on various demographic criteria (age, weight, gender, etc.), split into known sero-positives and known sero-negatives. You'd then survey all of those people over time about a few selected health issues, without telling them you're doing a study about Covid.

A gold-standard study would find a way of objectively confirming the illness, and wouldn't rely on self-reported data (e.g. medical exam with lung volume test). But even if you can't do that, you can still do a lot better than this. This is just...meaningless. It's like taking a group of people who broke their legs in the last decade, and asking them if their leg hurts today. Sure, maybe some people have "long broken leg", but your experiment is a bad way to find out.

> Besides, you're playing "judo" with the argument. If you want to convince ME that long-haul COVID19 is fake news, YOU are the one who has to pull up the study indicating evidence in your favor.

Nope. Again, this is science. The burden is on the person making the claim to prove the claim. If you believe that Cooties are a thing, or that head shape predicts personality, or that fusion can occur at room temperature in a can of Mr. Pibb, I am not obliged to believe you simply because you want very badly for it to be true.

> Nope. Again, this is science.

Your turn to demonstrate your science. Please, procure a paper that supports your point of view and simultaneously satisfies your requirements.

Science is not a black and white issue. There are "cheaper science" (surveys and other "lesser" studies), and there's "expensive science" (10,000+ experiments with control groups). Both are science.

But what you're doing isn't science at all. You're just shitting on other people's work without showing what you actually like. The papers I pointed out are in respected journals and respected methodologies, albeit cheaper than what you want.

But given your "standards", I'm convinced that the "studies" you want simply don't exist, either on my side of the argument nor on yours.

> Your turn to demonstrate your science

It's not "my science". It's just "science".

The fact that you keep trying to personalize this only underscores the point that you're not coming at this rationally. You're engaged in advocacy, not science.

> Please, procure a paper that supports your point of view and simultaneously satisfies your requirements.

I gave you the one I knew about that comes closest. The fact that there are no papers meeting the criteria for a good study in this area is not an indication that my standards are too high, but that yours are too low.

> But what you're doing isn't science at all. You're just shitting on other people's work without showing what you actually like.

Science is about applying skepticism to questions and demanding evidence. Again, we're not talking about emotional spreads in People Magazine here.

> I'm convinced that the "studies" you want simply don't exist, either on my side of the argument nor on yours.

The studies don't exist. That's exactly the point. And it's not "my side" or "your side" -- I have no attachment to the outcome here. Show me a study that meets the standards I set out and provides evidence for your claim, and I'll believe you. You can't.

If the best you've got is anecdote and low-quality data, then you get my prior belief in your claim, which is that you're probably mistaken.

There is a certain kind of person who is stuck in their belief and they will do everything they can to ensure that their belief system remains in one piece. They will raise the bar for evidence that contradicts their belief to the point that no such evidence remains, they will lower the bar for evidence that confirms their belief. They will ascribe to figments of the imagination of others when it comes to their personal experiences (because 'anecdote') and will claim to be doing science while ignoring the fact that science is by definition pretty messy until it has settled.

There's also "a certain kind of person" who has no scientific or medical training. They have an emotional connection to the subject, and desperately wants to believe something is true, and therefore willing to grasp at any shred of circumstantial evidence to justify that belief.