> Long COVID is a big deal

Long Covid is not a defined term. It comprises everything from "post-hospitalization syndrome" -- which is something that has existed since long before Covid -- to "slight cough for a few weeks". If you're young (under 65) and otherwise healthy, you are highly unlikely to have anything more than a minor illness. Particularly after vaccination.

Here's a paper that might interest you:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

> In this cross-sectional analysis of 26,823 adults from the population-based French CONSTANCES cohort during the COVID-19 pandemic, self-reported COVID-19 infection was associated with most persistent physical symptoms, whereas laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection was associated only with [loss of smell].

In other words, in a large study out of France, the only "long covid symptom" actually correlated with SARS-CoV2 infection was loss of smell. All of the other various symptoms were associated with self-reported illness, but not confirmed illness.

This is a fairly strong argument that "long covid" is at least partly psychosomatic. We'd probably see this more clearly if the various "long covid" studies didn't rely exclusively on self-reporting of symptoms, and mix together all levels of illness.

Ironically if this is true, then the people loudly handwringing about "long covid" are the ones who are inflicting it on others, by encouraging people to fear it.

To combat this, perhaps we could swap the masks out with gags. /s

That article is so bad it might as well be misinformation. 79% of the people in the study were hospitalized, and the authors did not correct for this.